Budget Audio Upgrade - Parts List - Suggestions?

That's a good point on checking for thickness. I hoped to avoid going to the store because of time and effort. I come home from work, play with the kids, then hit the books everyday. Kids and schoolwork on the weekends until the 12th when I get a break. I'll head to the dollar store, then Target one day, though.

11" x 14" makes sense to me as being big enough, but I don't know how much bigger the bracket is than the stock speaker. I'll pick up a second just in case.

It is looking like this will be a solo job. Any ideas on how much time I'm looking at to pull the interior (including carpet), deaden two doors, the back wall, and part of the floor, wire up the amps and speakers, then put it back together? I'd like to think that I could do it in a weekend, but some of these installs sound like they're taking longer than that.

 

That's definitely ambitious for a weekend. You can do it without getting too in over your head though - just don't rip it all apart at once. Maybe start with the floor so you can get all your cables into place. I'd probably shoot for the doors next, but what works for me may not work for you. Doors make the biggest difference as deadening goes, but you need cables in there too. Back wall & quarters you can do whenever.

 

Might have to put it off for another few weeks, then. I really only get weekends to work on it and need the truck for daily use during the week, so I'd like to keep from using it while partially pulled apart (i.e. no passenger/rear seats in it). I'll have to see if there is a weekend where I can start disassembling Friday night, then hit the ground running on Saturday.

 

No need - go ahead & start if you have a weekend. You can have the floor done & cables in position & interior re-assembled with everything in place for the next phase if it needs to be delayed. Maybe take a little time & lay everything out on a floor or bed or something & get all the cabling, connectors, etc traced out to all your gear & ensure things fit so you have no surprises. That's a bad time to have surprises.

 

I got some of the grunt work done tonight. The sub is put in and the wiring harnesses are soldered together. I'm quite sure I got this right, but just to confirm, the factory head unit has the female side on it, so I put the speaker wire leads to the LOC on the male harness, correct? God, I hope so. Also, there is an orange wire on one harness and an orange/white on the other. I didn't connect those to anything. Same goes with a couple of brown wires on one harness that aren't on the other. Are those just extras for certain applications not applicable to the Tacoma? Can I just leave them? Take a look at my pictures below and make sure I didn't miss anything.

I still have to seal off the other side of the sub enclosure as it is designed for two 10's, but I'm just doing the one. It gives me a bit of headroom in interior volume, so it works out.

I've laid out where the amps, LOC, and the crossovers for the door speakers will get mounted on the box. It should be fairly organized. Making a little progress, which is nice. I might get to start pulling seats tomorrow night to give me a head start on the weekend. If I can have the back wall and floor deadened with the wires run by the end of the weekend, I'll be happy with the progress.

Does this look right?

Speaker wire leads to LOC:


Extra orange wire on the male side and orange/white on the female side:



Extra brown wires but, in hindsight, I'm thinking this harness is completely unnecessary:

 

I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. If your sub is already in an optimal sealed enclosure, and you double the enclosure volume you should wind up with a lower F3 but at the expense of power handling. You're giving yourself LESS headroom in that regard. What I'd do personally is find a sub that works well in that airspace with a passive radiator in the other side...like a Dayton HO. Err the sub you have might work - would need to model it. That way you get the benefits of a ported enclosure without port noise. And it's tune-able via cone mass on the radiator.

 

Read my write up . I spent $2000 mind you but thats up in the Great white North .
With this said , you could spend $400 bucks on your side of the map and get the same system .
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...ab-2010-with-pics-and-prices-write-up.364009/

 

The enclosure has a total air space of .65 cu. ft. according to the specs I found. Per Crutchfield, the recommended sealed enclosure for the sub is 0.35-0.82 cu. ft.

The design of the enclosure is such that the air space is shared by both subs. It is open in the middle. Sealing the one side should leave all of the air space for the one sub.

 

Ooooh, gotcha. I was thinking you were going to seal the other speaker hole. .65 cubes total or each side?

Seriously though - consider the passive radiator option. You'll get a lot more output, it will dig deeper, and you won't have to bother with trying to install a divider - which I can only imagine would be an enormous pain.

 

Ugh. Thought I had just .65 cu. ft. total, but now realizing that it is per side. The specs I read kept referring to .65, but now that I'm reading further in to similar boxes, I guess that wouldn't really make sense. Like I said, I haven't messed with car audio in a long time, so it didn't hit me right away.

That's a lot of tinkering, I think, for a passive radiator. If you have a quick solution for a 10" passive going in a 1.3 cu ft. sealed box alongside an Alpine SWT-10S4, then I'll look in to it, but I'm not going to fart around with it much. I really just did this to give me something to do because I find driving a truck kind of boring. Hell, I listen to podcasts and talk radio all day anyways, so, other than the "thrill" of a project, I'm not even sure why I'm doing this .

My hunch is to hack the other side of the box off and seal it up, leaving me with ~.65 cu. ft on the subwoofer side. Jigsaw ought to make short work of the cut, then wood screws and wood glue to seal it up and I'd be set. I can leave the middle portion for mounting the amps and such.

 

I almost want this box so i can run 2 10s

 

It's yours for your single! If I owe you a few bucks, so be it.

 

Lemme chew on this.. when were u planning on cuttin, if u cut?

 

It was going to be this weekend, but I'll have to see how the rest of the install goes. I got the rear seats, rear storage, and lower storage out tonight. Debating on if I'm going to go through with pulling the fronts and center console or just chicken out and run everything along the side channels. I can sit on it for a little bit if I need to.

 

Gotcha.. dont let me hold you up. Its honestly more of a project than i want to tackle. I wont be able to fit my amp, lci and epicenter in that spot in the middle. Would have to figure that out

 

Sounds good. Let me know if you decide to, otherwise I'll start getting after it when I'm ready to install it back there.

 

It won't be quick, but I'll model that for you if you want. I did find the T/S parameters through Pasmag - they did a little writeup on it too.



Sounds like you might have an easier solution already. Actually I think you'd need more radiator area than a 10 would give for this to work though.

 

Yeah, I gathered that I'd be looking at a 12" radiator at least with my really quick research. I think I'm either hacking the box I got or leaning on @Silverspool to trade .

I got the back wall deadened and insulated, as well as most of the floor. Wires for the LOC have been run under the carpet to where they need to be. I'll be doing the amp wiring after I hand my daughter back off to the wife. Last will be running wire from the crossovers to the front door speakers. I think I can get all of that done today, then start putting the truck back together.

I'll admit, I chickened out and didn't pull the carpet. I pulled it from the edges, but left the center console in. I was able to get the vast majority of the floor, so I'm pretty happy with that. The center console has just been what I can get at from the top side. It's really a time constraint issue. I have my daughter's birthday party today and I'm BBQing, Mother's Day tomorrow, work all week, then my mom's birthday next weekend (surprise party) that I'm cooking for, and only part of that Sunday available, all before I get ready to start my next class the following week.

Eh, it is what it is. Once I get the doors done up right, I think I'll be pretty pleased with the sound control part of it all.

 

Yeah, the floor is probably the least critical element as all its contours and connections help control resonance. You also have carpet and pad and some factory damping in place. MLV will make more difference on the floor than anything else as it will block the noise radiated under the vehicle. Doors make the most difference. Sealing the doors makes a HYUUUUUUGE difference...from almost no midbass to gobs of it. Bass guitar and drums (and everything else in that range) have a LOT more kick to them with sealed doors.

 

Driver's side door is done. It is bonkers how much of a difference that sound deadening makes. The door sounds like tapping on a granite countertop. Pretty satisfying. Running the wire to the door was a massive pain in the dick, but I got it. Not looking forward to the passenger side.

With the material I have available to me, I sealed the door as best I could. Dampener covered by CCF. I know it isn't the right way to properly seal them, but hopefully it helps some.

Speaker brackets were made from cutting boards. Pretty neat solution. Each board made a bracket for a mid and a tweeter. I thought the tweeter was mounted far enough back, but when I snapped the door on, the cover flew off. It was too close by the thickness of one washer. Simple fix and I know it now for the other side.

The biggest frustration was realizing that I hadn't run the cable for my sub level control. I had the center console already put back together and the bottom of the rear seats put back. I was pissed. Got it run in about half an hour.

This project is whipping my ass if I'm honest. Hope to have the passenger door done tomorrow, then I'll look in to wiring everything on Tuesday, maybe.

Oh, for the sub, I just ended up sealing off the center area so that each side is its own sealed enclosure. A can of expanding foam filled it all in, then it was covered in a hard epoxy. I've used this method for some cooler radios that I've built and am confident in its ability. Worst case, I chalk it up to a $50 loss and buy something else. This should be solid, though.