JetskiReese
CarAudio.com Newbie
I have a 1991 Toyota Celica GT Convertible with 230k miles and I want to do something cool with it until it dies and is ready for my buddies d-series. I just cleared up my stereo situation. When I got the car, behind the head unit was a rats nest and absolutely intimidating, every connection (only 7 wires were connected to anything from the radio harness) was just twisted together and taped up. I left it alone because it looked like my factory harness was cut to twist the wires, and there were 2 little runs of speaker wire to the 2 4" speakers in the lower dash. It was such a bad job that yellow and red (constant and remote) were wired together to a switched 12v source from the cut up harness, and the ground wire was stuck between the plastic trim and the metal mounting bracket for the radio. It was an absolute mess and it sounded worse than it looks, its a good kenwood radio with a good amt of settings, but it could only reach around volume 15 before the distortion took over, and it was super quiet all around, with my exhaust you had to idle to hear anything. This past weekend I ripped everything apart to get the back speakers working and maybe even improve the sound. Once I got the radio out i started checking for continuity across speaker wires and anything I could think of. Absolutely nothing, couldnt find proper 12v power in any form. I started digging deeper into the dash and found out there were some harnesses that made some weird turns and ended up in a frequency filter i think? I had my neighbor that had much more experience with older things and told me it was likely to filter out CB frequencies or something. The cut up harness was actually the extra one, Ill try to find a picture of it but it was like it just extended the harness a little and changed the colors. All that really mattered to me was I found the factory harness. I had constant 12v, switched 12v, continuity across all of my speaker wires, everything was FINE. I used the extra harnesses and cut them up to solder to the head unit pigtail. Its all hooked up and sounds decent up to around 35 and is 20x louder than before. I have the rear half of my car taken apart and this is my project car, so I decided I want to fill it with subs. Im willing to remove the soft top as I have no rear window, its ripped, and theres a huge open flap on the side. I want to make it so I have enough room to recline the front seats some and move them back, from that point back is free space for the enclosure. I have little experience with starting from the ground up so I need suggestions on what shape the box should be, like would it be squared off or should I contour around the inside bits? And should I put just woofers or could I put mids and tweeters along the sides of the enclosure(seperate box/chamber). Money is a large restricting factor in this, Im most likely going to do things seperately over time, starting with designing/building the enclosure. I will most likely either buy dirt cheap subs and use an old amp to start off while I save up for a bit bigger setup. I want this thing to be as loud as reasonably possible. My buddy had an old volvo wagon with 8 8" loudspeakers in a huge box, was loud and clear across a decent sized parking lot. I feel I should reserve the trunk for amps, I know im going to run out of power quick, thats why I plan to go very cheap on speakers and amps the first time around, and do some major work to the charging system. If needed I will remove my AC compressor that doesnt work and fab an alternator mount and modify the factory mount to take a different alternator (cheaper high output alternator around same size) unless I can find high output ones that fit my car. I am dedicated to building this setup, but I need a good amount of help figuring things out. For example, how much is this going to cost? I can buy 4'x8' sheets of particle board with a white finish for $35 and I have tons of nails, screws, and glue. How many of each type of speaker should I use? I know this is a bit of a far out idea, but I know it can be done. Any and all help/suggestions/references would be greatly appreciated.
