Ascalise

So, after reading through endless threads, both here and at the other place, I decided to pull the trigger. Forgive me now for the long picture-heavy post, but since I learned quite a bit reading through all the info, I thought I would contribute with my findings and thoughts. To give a bit of background, I am a bit of an audiophile, and have been for 30 years or so and have built many high end speaker systems, etc.. Also, I have done countless installs in all kinds of vehicles and always try to better the sound in my vehicles. Anyway, my car has the A$$, NON-B&O system, which I think is absolutely terrible. I started by installing the 10" 4-ohm SVC woofer in the rear deck along with the Kicker Key 500.1 amp. While I was in there, I did some sound deadening, and plan to do more under seats, etc.

Gather your goods and tools:
Woofer - your choice, something that performs well as in an infinite baffle setup. <-- While it is far from perfect, you can not go wrong with the Kicker CompC. Part # 44CWCS104 - On sale at Best Buy as I type for $80.99
Amp - again, your choice, but I went with the Kicker Key 500.1 <-- This thing has a lot of power, and a lot of flaws, but is very tiny, which is why I chose it. Part# 47KEY5001
<-- Surprisingly, I found these on amazon after looking all over. The item in the photos looked right, and they were.
Amp Kit with decent 8ga wire
<-- Cheapest and quickest option for me that surprisingly arrived in one piece. Well, two, since it was a 2-pack
Decent 3/4" long #8 wood screws to attach woofer to spacer.
4 - 10/24 x 1.5-2" flat head counter-sink machine screws, 3/16" fender washers, 3/16" think rubber washers, and lock nuts. Home depot / Lowes. Personally, I do not use stainless fasteners for things like this. Locknuts and stainless fasteners don't play well together. Just get regular screws and save a few bucks.
Countersink for your drill, 3/16" bit <-- More on this later
Right angle drill attachment <-- I bought this one because it was cheap, and it most likely will never be used again.
Tiny ratcheting bit holder <-- I bought this one because my older craftsman model like this had seen better days. This is a nice little tool.
Cordless drill <-- Don't need to link one of these.
, knife, and scissors. <-- I bought this because it was economical.
Surprisingly, it is very nice stuff and is easy to work with. We'll see how it holds up. It has a very faint odor, that so far is not bothering me.
<-- Pick any. I bought these, and mainly used the wider one.
Decent Pry-Tools
Various connectors, cable ties, etc.

Plan for quite a bit of time. I have lots of experience doing things like this, and it took me most of the day yesterday. The fact that I'm a bit of a perfectionist may have contributed to this. Also, I really didn't want to break anything whatsoever. I enjoy working on German cars since they are so well engineered. They tend to come apart and go back together many times without and issues.

As you have probably read in other threads, start by taking the headrests out of the rear seats. There is a button on one side of each one, and a hidden button that requires the use of a small flat head screwdriver to release the locks. Set them aside and fold down all three parts of the back seat. Next, grab your pry tools and pry open the D piller at the top, front-facing corner. You should be able to see in there enough to see where the clips are and carefully pop them out. I broken them all loose, then pulled the covers toward the middle of the rear deck to pull the tail out of the far back end. It looks like this behind them.


I did not take any photos of the next few steps, but it is pretty straight-forward. Next, remove the speaker grills by prying up the inner front corners, then the fronts, then slide them out toward the front of the car. After that, remove the 4 torx screws that hold the deck material down. (Save or throw these away, since you will not longer have the factory sub to screw them back into.)
Now, lift up the deck material at the front edge where it wraps around the sheet metal and pop all of the front clips loose. Once they are all loose, lift up a tad, and slide it out toward the front of the car. Remove the 3 bolts that hold down the cheapy plastic sub to the rear deck, unplug the harness, and toss that junk out of the car.

The next steps are what took me some time. The hole in the thin, flimsy sheet metal deck IS NOT FLAT, so I carefully built it up with sound deadening material until it was. <-- This is something that no one else mentions in other posts. I feel this is absolutely critical. If you tried to bolt the spacer ring to this, it would either bend up the sheet-metal, the ring, or both. If the ring gets bent, when the woofer gets screwed to the ring, potentially causing the woofer basket to warp, it could cause all sorts of funky noises from the driver, etc. See the next three photos. The last shows some of the spots where I built it up with sound deadening material.




Once I got this level and was happy with how it mated with the ring, I moved on to laying the sound deadening material down on the rest of the rear deck. I also plugged the hole next to the woofer on top and on bottom. After this, I started to fit the spacer ring. The ring got one later of material on the bottom as well. I put the spacer ring over the hole, dropped in the driver, and found the spot where it didn't rub the sheet metal too badly and marked around the outside of it with a sharpie. I then pulled the woofer out and took it, along with the spacer ring to my bench, marked the woofer holes, drilled, and ran the screws in and out a few times, since I have worked with MDF plenty of times and knew that space was very limited under the rear window and didn't feel like wrestling with tight screws. This next photo shows the holes to the deck already, as I did not take one before hand.




After this, I positioned the spacer where it needed to go, then clamped it down and mark the front and rear.


Next step is where you need to look underneath and at the top several times, feel around, measure, whatever you'd like, but make sure you get the holes so where there is plenty of meat to grab both in the ring, and room for washers and nuts below. Once you are happy with your locations, I found that 12, 3, 6, and 9:00 worked best, drill the 3,6,9 holes with your drill and right angle attachment. Another thing to mention here is that I found and purchased the shortest 1/4" hex 3/16" drill bit that I could find at Lowe's knowing that space would be as issue, and it still was. See Photo:


The hole at the 12:00 position CAN NOT be drilled from the top, there is just no way. So, get in the trunk, put some safety glasses on, and carefully drill from the bottom. See photo:


Now, crawl back out of the trunk and back into the back seat. Release the clamps, grab the ring, and take it to your bench. It is time to counter-sink the four holes you just drilled. Make sure the flat head screws are flush with the wood, or even better, a little deeper. See photo:


Put the ring back in its spot on the deck, drop in the screws, and from the bottom, stack on a rubber washer, a fender washer, then the locknut. Tighten with a stubby and a socket or wrench on the bottom, preferably a socket and ratchet, since these are locknuts. You will need the little ratcheting screwdriver mentioned in the tool list above to get to tighten the one at the 12:00 position. See photo:


When I tightened this down, the sheet metal did not bend, warp, or move one bit. <-- This is why I built up the mating surface with the sound deadening material. The mounted ring should look something like this from the top and bottom:



Now, drop in your speaker and start the #8 3/4" screws with a stubby, then run them down with the drill/right angle attachment, then tighten carefully with stubby and small ratcheting driver. DO NOT use the drill. You don't want to round off or strip out these screw heads in this position.





Once the driver was mounted, for $hits and giggles, I connected it up to the factory connection using the same adapter I bought. My impressions are that it is quieter, since it is a 4-ohm woofer and factory woofer is a 2-ohm, it digs much deeper, and is a lot more articulate. This MAY be ok for someone who rarely cranks up the stereo. I was actually considering leaving it connect without an aftermarket amp, but figured that I had already purchased the amp, so what the hell? The next photo shows the woofer and sound deadening material through the back window.


Now, on to the trunk. I did not take too many photos of the disassembly process here. Again, these things are straight forward. Start by taking the carpeted trunk floor out, then yank straight up on the trim piece across the back that surrounds the latch, then pull the driver side hooks out. To remove those, lift them up, and use a T30 bit to remove the screws. After this, carefully pull the seal away from the left side where it covers the left side inner trunk trim. After this, pry the light out and unplug. Then, there are two push pins that need to be removed. They are located at the very front and very back at the top. Take the trim ring off where the trunk hinge protrudes through the trim. There are 2 clips if I remember right that attach the trim to the body. These are tough. They are near the back closest to the tail light. Pry the trim back and take a look inside. I was able to get my metal pry/clip tool in there to pop them loose. After this, you should be able to start pulling it out of the car. The second most difficult part of this was removing it from the seat area. Take your time!

I decided that I wanted to lay down some sound deadening material in the trunk, and also decided that I wanted to mount the amp in the driver side trunk cubby somehow. Here are some photos:



On to the wiring. I splice the adapter on to a few feet of 12ga speaker wire, plugged in the adapter to the factory plug, wrapped it in cloth tape, then secured it to another section of the harness nearby. <-- No rattles here! There are two holes in the corner of the deck that you can pass the wire through that will come out behind the side trunk carpet. The speaker wires can be seen in my photo above.

Now, for the power. I disconnected the negative terminal first then took a good look at the contraption bolted to the positive post. I decided to connect the amp power wire to the post where the lower-most giant red cable was, since this was not fused. My best guess is that this is the cable that goes to the starter. I then tied the amp power cable to the two thicker cables that go from the positive post down and up to the left side cubby compartment. There is a cheapy plastic/rubber box/cover thingy to the left that I passed the wire through as well. See photos of connection point at battery, and wire routing:




Once it was through there, it came out right where the mess of electronics/wiring/fuse panels etc are behind the cubby. See blue wire and the location the amp will now call home in the next photo:



For ground, there just so happened to be an unused stud directly behind the cubby about 4" from the amp's new home. I sanded the primer off around it and mounted the ground cable there. See photo:



Now install your fuse holder and tidy up the wiring. Also, one thing to mention, the kicker amp includes a 4 wire high level harness that has RCA plugs attached to it. I cut them off and summed the channels together and spliced on to my wire that I spliced the audi/vw connector adapter to. I did not take a photo of the finished product, but you can see there extra piece of speaker wire hanging in the photo. One comes from this adapter, and one goes back up to the new woofer. Here are some photos of the adapter needed:




At this point, tidy up your wiring, reconnect the negative battery terminal, and get your test tones ready. <-- More on this below.

Ok, so I did the suggested procedure to gain-match three times using all of the 0db, -5db, and -10db .WAV test tracks, along with the sweep after each. I did not like the results of any. 0db is too weak, 5db is too strong, and 10db is just useless. I dont remember where I left off, because I ended up disabling the amp corrections for now. I do know that on the -10db gain match setting, not only is the bass way too loud, but it is very annoying when the volume of the stereo is turned way down. It almost sounds like someone is next to you with heavy bass playing in their car. I am going to give the speaker some more time to break-in before I start tweaking the settings some more.

I will say that it is very very capable, and really wakes up the sound system. I did not expect a off the shelf cheapy car audio woofer to perform so well in an infinite baffle installation. This thing digs very very very deep, is fairly tight, and with the right power going to it, so far is distortion free. Keep in mind that this amp is overkill in the power department for this speaker in its environment.

I honestly think that the rear deck is way too weak for a driver this heavy and this powerful though. It does move the sheet metal far more than I am comfortable with, which can sometimes make the bass a little sloppy/lazy sounding. Also, my driver seems to have a mechanical motor noise on certain tracks. Some of you may or may not know what I am trying to describe here, but it is a noise coming from the motor of the driver, like a voice coil rub, too short of leads to the voice coil, etc. This is also a reason why I chose to make sure the woofer mounting spot was completely flat. Things like this are almost guaranteed when woofer is not perfectly flat. Another thing that I did not do, that may be in the near future, is the installation of the bass volume **** from the amp to the front somewhere.

I am probably forgetting something, or possibly many things here, so feel free to ask me any questions. Hopefully next week, if my ali express connectors come in, I will be replacing dash tweeters with faital pro 3" speakers, along with the center channel 4" with a faital pro driver. This took a while to type up, so I am hoping it helps someone. I sure do appreciate the help that is provided by other members on these forums, so thought I would share my install and two cents.

Bobby Kinstle

Nice job. I love the use of the clamps to hold everything in place. I wish I thought of that.

I do suggest plastering over the entire bottom side of the rear deck with your mat material. You want to cover every possible hole, especially the fist sized holes in front of the sub on the underside of the deck. It tightens up the bass a lot more than I expected it would.

bruce_miranda

@Ascalise that is a super install and well done for posting the pictures. They always help.

Would you be kind enough to post some pictures of the actual OEM subwoofer you pulled out? Maybe with some measurements etc. This bit helps a lot of future DIYers, who might want to try another subwoofer.

Ascalise

Thanks Bobby & Bruce! I want to see how this Killmat holds up in the heat before I "hang" some from the bottom of the deck. I did cover every hole on the top side, except for the one the wires go through. Where I live, it gets HOT during the summer. I do have PLENTY of this stuff left and definitely will do under the back seat with it. Yesterday on my commute to work, I noticed that the car is even quieter with the material on the trunk floor under the spare. Bruce, I will get the sub photos for you later today.

Bobby Kinstle

Get one of those 1" wide metal rollers like the one from Noico and really press the material in there. I've had my car up to 115F and no sign of any of the material coming loose. It's a pain to use this tool, but it works very well.

https://noico.info/products/noico-me...allation-tool/

Lift up the back seat and put some material there too. That's a big entry point for road and exhaust noise. It'll help the mid bass a lot.

Ascalise

I do plan on doing under the seat when I have some more time. I didn’t find it difficult to roll this stuff on well. I had read that other people did though. Did you also use the killmat product, I can’t remember?

Ascalise

As promised, here are the pics. This thing is not worth messing with in any way shape or form. I personally would never try to bolt a real driver to it. The actual oem driver is a rickety, super light, plastic frame driver. There is no way this bracket would support a real woofer like the Kicker. Also, when bolted into the car, this thing does not even come close to sitting / sealing against the rear deck. Not sure what they thinking, but this was not thought through..

Bobby Kinstle

I've used Dynamat Xtreme, Sonic Barrier, Noico, and Rattle Block listed in my order of preference. Never used Killmat before.

Bobby Kinstle

The B&O version of the same subwoofer has a much beefier frame and does form a pretty good seal to the rear deck fabric. Someone already has gutted one and installed an aftermarket sub. It actually went in surprisingly cleanly.

A lot of the design choices around the subwoofer probably came from some marketing guy demanding the sub can't hang down much into the trunk.

Ascalise

It seems to be priced the same as all of the others on amazon. I do remember that Noico was one option on Amazon that I was looking at. I'll bet it's all made in the same factory. The comparable Noico product I looked at was the same coverage, thickness, and even cut the same size, IIRC. Looks like ti just has a different pattern stamped in the aluminum.