Budget stereo build

[toast]

My goal for now was to use the stock head unit to drive new front channels and a sub. After sound deadening the entire car I worked for a while to utilize the open areas behind the rear passenger trim panels but wasn't happy with the result. Wound up putting my old 12" sub and box in the trunk and hearing how great it sounded, so I set about making a new sub enclosure and jettisoning the spare tire (having never gotten a flat in 25 years of driving I'm sure to get one now). Finally mounted everything and got the system tuned up.



Sub is a Kenwood 12" thin mount that I had from my STI in a new fiberglass enclosure driven by a Soundstream class D PN2.350D amplifier (also from the STI). Sounds amazing in such a tiny interior volume. I got another of the same amp to drive the fronts (rears are disconnected, I don't like rear fill). I'm a huge fan of Dayton reference series drivers, have RS180 7" drivers in the doors after making mounts out of simple MDF and RS75 3" full range drivers in the dash. No pics of the woofers, but I did grab one of the aluminum mounts I made for the dash speakers.



At $49 and $21 each, they are stupidly cheap and sound fantastic. I'm crossing them over at 6 dB/octave at 800 Hz. The door speakers then get a 12 dB/octave high pass applied by the amp set to 70 Hz. Line level conversion is done by a Navone Engineering LOC that I put inside the factory door amp cage.

Like I said, I had most of the stuff laying around, but even if you were to buy everything this would be a very cheap system that frankly sounds amazing.

RS75 x2 = $42 (partsexpress.com)
RS180 x2 = $98 (partsexpress.com)
Crossover caps and coils = $14 (partsexpress.com)
Soundstream PN2.350D x2 = $154 (onlinestereo.com)
Navone Engineering LOC = $25
Kenwood KFC-XW1200F = $199 (crutchfield)

Only upgrade I'm really thinking of at this point (besides a head unit eventually) is building pods for the dash speakers. In their present location I'm getting some comb filtering from the windshield and it is making a dip just over 500 Hz that is tough to clean up. If I'm going to spend the money on a DSP I'm going to go all out and get a Pioneer headunit that lets me use ARUnchained with my phone.

[Garrett@Openflash]

Sweet build

[troek]

realy clean job!

[Achilles]

Nice mate, where did you pull the signal from the OEM head unit?

[toast]

I removed the door amp and grabbed the signals there. Someone wrote a thread on which Toyota plug your can order to make it plug and play. Having the amp removed also gave me room to mount the LOC and store all the wiring for it.