As per post 67 in the sticky, I give you

The trunk well subwoofer box. 1 cubic foot sealed minus driver displacement. The measurements in the post are excellent, the 18* cut is bang on the money.

I plan to retain the well cover, I’d like to move my amps away from the box. Maybe an amp rack over t top bag, up against the back of the rear seat.

 

Nice looking subwoofer enclosure.

 

Managed to get it setup for testing today,

Sub is happy and performing well.

 

I like the old school Alpine amps. Do you have other old school Alpine equipment installed in the car also? Maybe a Alpine radio with 6 pretty green Chiclet buttons at the bottom right?

 

Shouldn't there be some sort of opening for bass reflex somewhere? I'm not too deep into these kinds of builds, but I think the air needs to be able to go somewhere for the sound to travel.

 

Looks good in the car for sure.

 

I can’t do Alpine green and Pontiac red together.

 

It’s a sealed enclosure, good for sound quality builds (musically accurate). Folks looking for greater spl output would have a ported box.

 

It fits remarkably well. If a guy were to just do a “baffle board” the measurements in the drawing for the top plate are remarkably accurate. I used a 4.25” hole saw for the rounded edges at the plastic panels, perfect.

 

This is an acoustic suspension speaker enclosure. A sealed enclosure design that uses the woofer's surround, spider, and the "air spring" inside the box to control and dampen cone motion.

 

Thanks for the update, Airwolfe!
I had never heard of that before.

 

Interesting choice going with a sealed box. bet it sounds tight.

 

Woofer Qts is 0.68 - already a fairly “tight” woofer, which favours sealed vs ported. Generally we would like Qts less than 0.45 for a woofer in a ported enclosure.

 

Stacked Amps anyone?

Keep your gear stacked under 6.75” and you can close the trunk well cover.

The little guy isn’t part of the install, place holder for DSP.

 

+1 for the above dimensions working well! Fit was as described.

 

Nice looking subwoofer enclosure you built there.

 

What size sub are you guys using for this short box? 8”, 10”? Definitely not a 12” right.

 

Thanks! Hoping to finish up all the wiring this weekend.

Mine is a 10" Kenwood Excelon KFC-XW1041.

 

Mine is a 10” as well. Interior dimensions for the 1/2 well box are right at 1 cu ft. Perfect for an old school single 10” on 300W, you could likely run a new school 12” if you were careful with dimensions and power.

 

That’s a tight install. Looks great.

 

Thanks, finished all the wiring this weekend. Ended up upgrading the charge wire off my alternator and added some heavier gauge grounds.

Hits plenty hard for what it is.

 

Fourth Gen LT-1 battery ground and positive cables are the poor man’s “big three” for cars with passenger side battery.

Upgrades alternator charge wire, chassis ground and provides a 6 gauge accessory wire.

 

With the LS swap, all of my wiring was upgraded at that time. Just didn't have a big enough charge wire in my mind with the upgraded audio draws.

 

Well, as it would turn out 10” just wasn’t enough.

I’ve remade the box to fit a 12”. The box will give you right at 1 cu ft sealed which is enough for any efficient driver. The Alpine SWR 1223D is absolutely overkill, an Image Dynamics 12” would work amazing at half the cost.

 

raymond, I'm glad that you posted this about fitting a 12" sub. I've got a 12" Kenwood sub and my plan was to build this same box but I wasn't sure if the 12" cone would physically fit. You confirmed it. I'll be driving it with a JL Audio 5-ch amp.

 

Nice. You’ll see I mounted to the drivers side, might be tight on passengers side depending on year of your car and woofer. The rear panel does angle forward as it rises.

 

I'll probably mount my subwoofer to the driver's side as well. The JL Audio amplifier will go on the passenger side.

I've got another set of subwoofer plans where the box seems to be a couple of inches taller than your sub box. The taller box would give me more room both in depth and in upper surface area to mount my 12" Kenwood.

 

I can’t say that would work out. This box had to rolled into place to fit, there’s no room for additional height - unless the upper section is installed after the fact? I’d like to see a drawing if you have one.

 

I’ve been cobbling car audio for 3 decades, never did use T nuts. This box is too nice to butcher, well worth the effort (not so sure about $20 CDN in hardware?).

 

Since you are Canadian did you use Robertson head screws?

We used them all the time from the 80's on up in our cabinet shop. I used them exclusively when building subwoofer enclosures for automobiles and loudspeaker enclosures.

 

You can build a subwoofer enclosure that sits even with the the flat area behind the rear seatback. I built many of them in the late 1980's to early 2010's

 

Agree^^

I used a 1" baffle board w/2 JL free air 12's, carpeted it to match the car's carpet, then dropped it in where the cargo door had been. It ripped, and I could still put luggage under it, and I put "regular cargo" over it (for me, that was skis, mtn bikes, water skis, typical luggage)....so it didn't degrade from the usability of the rear cargo area in a meaningful way.

 

I'm trying to attach the PDF file here. Hopefully it attaches. It is a file that is attached to post #62 of the sticky, "Dimensions for well sub box."

It appears to be a little taller than your box but I'm really not sure.

 

The pdf came through. It does specify that there will be difficulties getting the box installed near the end of the document, I’d agree. I probably would have built this box instead if it weren’t for my car having the sub well trunk cover, which wouldn’t fit with this box installed.

 

Raymond, thank you for this information. My car doesn't have the trunk cover so maybe this particular box may be the better choice for me.

 

No, I’m a clamp & Brad nail guy. At work do however ship our core & warranty claim parts back to the USA with Robertson screws (the pride of Milton, ON. We would’ve won WWII sooner with the Robertson but the English recognized we needed America to win that war & then bought in on the Philips head instead…). The manufacturer keeps asking us to use Torx & we keep shipping crates built with Robertsons lol.

 

This was super common. I even built one myself just for the sake of interest. It got the job done at a very limited price.

 

With the latest generation of shallow woofers this would be my go to with a coupe. So much less waisted cable & space going to the trunk well. I’d want the cargo cover for sure though.

 

I’d go mdf & round off the exterior corners. Too many pieces for a successful birch build, you’ll want to do as much bracing as you can (3/4” mdf trim is cheap & easy to find)) and acrylic latex caulk every seem.

 

Yep. It sure did. Hard to beat...esp for a driver.

 

I'm planning on using MDF. I do have a router so that should work good for rounding off the exterior corners.