Final checklist before building impressive trunk setup

[danfortner 10+ year member]

Aight, I am going to be going home for winter vacation and during this time, I will be building a moderately extensive setup in my trunk. Things I will be doing are: building a ported box for my 12" Eclipse Titanium with a plexiglass window and neons, another amp rack, and everything with carpet to make it stock looking and better than what I have now (picture at the bottom of the post.)

The ported box wil probabbly be 1.5 cu ft, tuned to 35hz for SQL. The amp rack will also be connected or sit flush with this. I plan on having the back side of the enclosure have a plexiglass window, aprox 10' x 10', so that when you open the trunk pass-through inside of the car, you can see the sub. Also I want to put white neons inside the sub so you can see at night.

So I started a list of everything needed or unsure if needed, please tell me what to add, THANKS:

tools:

chorded and chordless drills

router

table saw

hammer, screw drivers

staple gun

3/4 MDF (1 inch if I can get it)

screws

?? some sort of sealant for the box???

speaker terminals

plexiglass ?? dont know where to get??

box carpetting

white neon

plywood for amp rack

thanks

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[86TaurusHSC 10+ year member]

You probably want to get some good caulk, a caulking gun, acouple of "C" clamps, acouple of those slide clamps for big stuff, some good wood glue, spray adhesive for the carpet (unless you staple it), some gasket material for the subwoofer. You can probably get the plexiglass at home depot or the like. Hope that helps.

 

[danfortner 10+ year member]

You probably want to get some good caulk, a caulking gun, acouple of "C" clamps, acouple of those slide clamps for big stuff, some good wood glue, spray adhesive for the carpet (unless you staple it), some gasket material for the subwoofer. You can probably get the plexiglass at home depot or the like. Hope that helps.

Yeah thanks. I have all of that stuff. But, why would you need caulk and wood glue? Are you recomending glueing paneling as well as screwing? And caulk?

Also - gasket material, my guess is for around the opening to make the subwoofer seal on tighter?

 

[86TaurusHSC 10+ year member]

I used wood glue and screws to make sure everything is tight, then to make 100%sure things are sealed i caulked on the inside of the box wherever panels meet. Yeah the foam or rubber or whatever it is goes around the sub to help it seal up

 

[Jayson Hisel 10+ year member]

i would get lexon glass not just plexi cause it is more dense it wont flex or break under presurre and you only need 1/4 inch. and you dont need 1 inch thick mdf thats over kill 3/4 will be fine but yes use wood glue and silicone not caulk cause caulk wont dry and it will flake off. you should think of making your box atleast 2.0 too but thats up to you .

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

i would get lexon glass not just plexi cause it is more dense it wont flex or break under presurre and you only need 1/4 inch. and you dont need 1 inch thick mdf thats over kill 3/4 will be fine but yes use wood glue and silicone not caulk cause caulk wont dry and it will flake off. you should think of making your box atleast 2.0 too but thats up to you .

Lexan (polycarbonate) flexes just as easily as plexiglas (acrylic sheet). Plexi and Lexan are the exact same density. Lexan is considerably more expensive. If you scratch plexi you can buff and polish it out. Scratched lexan is ruined. You can't polish the edges on the lexan either. As for thickness, it is entirely dependent on the size of the window. The larger it is the thicker it should be. I personally would use 1/2 inch at least.

Silicone is not a good sealant for a sub box. If you do use it make sure you give it a few days to cure before you mount the sub up. Silicone gives off fumes when it cures that will eat the surround on most subs. You can seal it with a bead of wood glue. I prefer hot melt glue myself.

 

[danfortner 10+ year member]

i would get lexon glass not just plexi cause it is more dense it wont flex or break under presurre and you only need 1/4 inch. and you dont need 1 inch thick mdf thats over kill 3/4 will be fine but yes use wood glue and silicone not caulk cause caulk wont dry and it will flake off. you should think of making your box atleast 2.0 too but thats up to you .

Thanks, I am going to be getting 1/2 plexiglass, which is actually stronger than 3/4 mdf.

But about the box size, I originally thought that my box was going to be 2.0cuft. Because I really want this to sound very similar to my sealed box, just louder, I am trying to keep the Qtc close to .7070 . Using the equations on diysubwoofers it says that a 2.0 cuft box would have a qtc of about .49 . I actually don't know all that much about Qtc, but I assume that is too far off to be good.

If you have another calculator that suggests cuft based on a sub's thiel small parameters, please tell me, or if you have personal experiance with eclipse titaniums, let me know. It is just that these subs excell in smaller than normal sealed enclosures and I think that makes their ported boxes also farily small. Help me out if you can though, I am still torn on the box size I will make. All I have to do is decide that, and then I can construct.