Hey everyone, just thought I'd share a recent build of mine. I wanted a little fuller sound in my FiST but nothing too crazy that my ears would bleed. I decided on an 8" subwoofer and it had to be mounted under the hatch cargo deck lid. A handful of companies offer a shallow mount subwoofer model including Rockford Fosgate, Pioneer, JL etc. I decided on the Kicker Comp RT8 because I felt it offered a good value for money being mid priced for it's power handling capability. I decided to pair it with a Kicker amp as well and went with the appropriately matched CXA300.1 amp.
Not being able to find a pre-made box that would fit and have at least .2 cu.ft. of volume I had to build one myself. I used 1/2" MDF for the box and to get over the minimum air space for the sub I had to design it to fit around the bracing and the plastic lid mount in the floor. I designed it to mount right behind the seats instead of all the way to the rear as there are uneven bumps in the back half of the floor area, I needed the box to sit flush on the surface to avoid teetering. I used the rear space to mount the amp on an MDF shelf with carefully placed pedestal pieces underneath to lift it 1" up to avoid the bumps in the floor, it also provisions a space to run the cables. I used a line out converter for the speaker signal from the rear passenger speaker.
The sub woofer is about 3/4" below the hatch lid and as far as I can tell does not interfere with the bottom of it, I do have that section of the underside matting removed for extra clearance. The sound is great, I have the system wired at 4ohm to feed the sub with 150 watts and the gain and boost turned down, like I said I only wanted an improvement to the factory system, not a db drag car. Here are some pictures, I still need to do some wire re-routing to clean up the install.
Not being able to find a pre-made box that would fit and have at least .2 cu.ft. of volume I had to build one myself. I used 1/2" MDF for the box and to get over the minimum air space for the sub I had to design it to fit around the bracing and the plastic lid mount in the floor. I designed it to mount right behind the seats instead of all the way to the rear as there are uneven bumps in the back half of the floor area, I needed the box to sit flush on the surface to avoid teetering. I used the rear space to mount the amp on an MDF shelf with carefully placed pedestal pieces underneath to lift it 1" up to avoid the bumps in the floor, it also provisions a space to run the cables. I used a line out converter for the speaker signal from the rear passenger speaker.
The sub woofer is about 3/4" below the hatch lid and as far as I can tell does not interfere with the bottom of it, I do have that section of the underside matting removed for extra clearance. The sound is great, I have the system wired at 4ohm to feed the sub with 150 watts and the gain and boost turned down, like I said I only wanted an improvement to the factory system, not a db drag car. Here are some pictures, I still need to do some wire re-routing to clean up the install.
