What are you gonna charge me to make a duplicate?
The JL is a better sub but if you put it in a box that doesn't have enough space it will sound like a cheap sub. I have been building boxes for over 20 years and the main things I have learned is to have enough power and enough space. I built a box for two real cheap planet audio subs with the correct space and it blew away more expensive speakers sub because they were in prefab boxes that didn't have the correct amount of space.
For subwoofer to boom, you need most of all, have a cabin that can be more or less sealed. If your car is a convertible, it cannot be done. The way to overcome this is to unload the sub in the trunk and then vent the output to the interior, however, then you have to deal with rattles in the trunk and trunk lid going up and down, forcing you to use a loading board to minimize this. The most effective solution and the simplest one is to pick a driver with good linear excursion and decent power handling to overcome the effect of running your sub in small sealed box (very inefficient enclosure with low air spring effect). I do not see either the pioneer or jl subs as high excursion drivers. You need displacement, and with small cone area, excursion is the only solution.
Have you considered a BP using bulkhead openings as merely exit points for ports? How hard is it to get the bulkhead off? My car is on jackstands so I cannot get to anything right now but would like to know ahead of time how to access the space behind the bulkhead. I bet there could be a solution to this problem. I already saw the fuel tank as a major obstace but who knows... I have a few Earthquake SWS subs sitting around in 8 and 15 inch sizes, they are shallow, small air space drivers and allegedly with large excursion. I would say these drivers would be a better choice to get the job done but this is just my opinion. Personally, I think the floor mounted sub is a bad idea because it is always in the way and tends to create localized sound through tonal archifacts. If there was a way to mount the sub there to fire against the corner of the cabin, you could get at least a partial loading effect but I think you would have to mounted the sub on the side of the front of the console. In viper, this is just a pipe dream though.
Its easy to pull the bulkhead cover. There is a cover behind your seat and it just pulls off. Then you have to take out two bolts for each roll bar. They are long and you have to use a 13mm socket to get them out i use my air ratchet. Then the stock roll bars just pull up and out. then pull all the screws there are six if i remember correct. Two are under a panel that sits beside the seats by the doors. They just pull strait up no screws.
In open top car, there is nol cabin gain to reinforce your bass. When you fire into open air, the sound energy dissipates quickly without energizing the air to reproduce bass. Looking at your floor mounted sub, it will do excactly the same thing since it is not pointed against any solid wall to unload. With that said, your choice of drivers is responsible partially too. These subs would need larger enclosure to reproduce low freqs louder. These things can be done but it takes a bit of effort to set it up, picking suitable drivers.
Audio manufacurers lie like anyone else, I never got around to trying them out and kinda doubt they really have the claimed and LINEAR excursion, and I never saw any tests done on them like Dumax or similar testing process. Anyway, you can pick them up cheap on fleabay. I stopped doing car audio a couple of years ago, getting a bit rusty, LOL.
I just cleared up my box. Anyway, does the bulkhead snap in using clips or is there something else involved?
Just the screws. I will post some picture tomorrow of how its done.
As everyone can probably guess by now speaker enclosure design is equal parts science, experience and luck. PeterMJ is covering all the bases very well. I will add matching the amplifier to the speaker/enclosure is critical when the overall air space is so tight. Obviously there are many other specifications that can influence your overall design and performance of the finished product but these two are very important. Basically without getting too technical “damping factor” is the ability of the amplifier to control the speaker movement. Considering our main concern is tight bass particularly at higher volumes a high damping factor is better for our application due to the small air space. The speaker “SPL” rating is how efficient the speaker is, typically the higher the wattage capability of the speaker the lower the SPL rating. An example would be if using a stock amp do not use a speaker with a 500 watt rating. To get a better understanding and more details of these specifications Google “damping factor” and speaker “SPL rating”. In my “04” I shoe horned a JL into the original housing (gutted), I tried both closed port and ported and found the ported option works best but requires fiberglass damping. I will be installing a high quality amplifier sometime soon for all speakers (JL’s also in door) soon but first need to install the more important sound system option…..headers and exhaust
As everyone can probably guess by now speaker enclosure design is equal parts science, experience and luck. PeterMJ is covering all the bases very well. I will add matching the amplifier to the speaker/enclosure is critical when the overall air space is so tight. Obviously there are many other specifications that can influence your overall design and performance of the finished product but these two are very important. Basically without getting too technical “damping factor” is the ability of the amplifier to control the speaker movement. Considering our main concern is tight bass particularly at higher volumes a high damping factor is better for our application due to the small air space. The speaker “SPL” rating is how efficient the speaker is, typically the higher the wattage capability of the speaker the lower the SPL rating. An example would be if using a stock amp do not use a speaker with a 500 watt rating. To get a better understanding and more details of these specifications Google “damping factor” and speaker “SPL rating”. In my “04” I shoe horned a JL into the original housing (gutted), I tried both closed port and ported and found the ported option works best but requires fiberglass damping. I will be installing a high quality amplifier sometime soon for all speakers (JL’s also in door) soon but first need to install the more important sound system option…..headers and exhaust
I think he is talking about the enclosure behind the bulkhead. Fitting subs in the doors, even using light drivers would not be feasible considering you would have to decouple the driver from the door (build an actual enclosure in the doors). In the past, I had 10 inch subs in the doors but that required to rebuild the doors and door panels.
