I'm just finishing up my subwoofer console mod. I did a few things differently, some of which I may not do if I had to do this all over again.
first was removing the console - pretty easy.
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but I almost broke this connector... I was trying to unplug it at the dark grey point near the harness.
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I was able to save the little washer-nuts that hold the outer console onto the inner console (or vice versa). My sub had this cover over it, which broke off when I tried to remove it. It was just glued on.
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the sub wasn't damaged nor had it deteriorated like I've seen.
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the factory sub, amp, and heatsink were all removed.
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I'm using the Kicker Comp RT that everyone else has found to be a close fit...
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play dough was used to determine how much clearance I had above the sub enclosure.
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I drilled out an approximate area and cut it away. I had to do this a few times until the sub would sit flat.
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I built a patch and glued it into place.
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I covered it with dynamat to deaden the enclosure, but also serve as a seal in case I didn't use enough glue (I used enough glue).
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I filled in the notch where the factory harness was routed with a piece of plastic.
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And I covered it with some foam to act as a gasket. Here you can also see the inside of the patch and the ribs that I had to grind away to get the magnet to fit. If I had to do it again, the heat gun/yeti tumbler method might be the way to go.
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Here's where I did something a bit differently. I used a transfer punch to make divots in the enclosure that matched with the sub's mounting holes. I then drilled them out. I tried using speed nuts, but they wouldn't give me the clearance I needed - they stuck too far into the opening and hit the sub's basket. I ordered some 8-32 t-nuts and bolts from boltdepot.com and lined them up. In order to ensure that the nuts held in place when I started bolting them down, I used a bit of bondo to "glue" them in place. I covered the back of the nuts to ensure the bondo didn't get into the threads. It is ugly as can be but it works. I added some weather stripping to work as a gasket. There was very little margin for error in getting everything aligned but somehow I didn't screw things up. The t-nuts will allow me to remove the sub if I need to and re-install it without damaging the enclosure. I am also able to torque the bolts down more so than if I had just used screws. I also lined the inside of the enclosure with a bit of Dynamat.
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I built a replacement for the heatsink that I removed. Because the sub has two voice coils, it can be wired for either 4 or 1 ohm configurations. I ran speaker leads for each voice coil to the outside, allowing me to wire it either way without needing to re-open the enclosure itself.
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Here, it's wired for 4 Ohms.
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I also lined the outside of the enclosure with Dynamat. The seams where the Dynamat meet up were covered with aluminum tape. I also loaded poly fill into the enclosure itself. The white weather stripping helps seal the opening where the heat sink was. It's not as effective a seal as I'd like, so I'm going to either glue it down, or add additional screws. or both.
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And that's it - here's the finished sub enclosure. It's pretty impressive on the test bench, I may decide to re-configure it for 1 ohm to get more output. I'm driving it with a
Rockford Fosgate T-500BR.
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