Hey Everyone,
I have a 91 RS Convertible. I am installing a system into it currently and have hit a brick wall. I built a custom sub box that fits where the old storage compartment was. And now I need to find a place to mount the amps. The problem that I am running into, is that I want to keep my trunk space. I was thinking about mounting them into the rear seats? Anyone know how difficult this is? I saw there used to be a set of instructions in the Tech Articles but its not there anymore. Does anyone have a link to a site that describes the steps to make this install work?

Thanks In Advance,
Mark B

 

Spare tire well? That is, if you arent running one..

 

I thought about that too... But I may be moving my battery there?
(Plus then I can show off my amps!)hahahaha

 

I don't have the link, but I can tell you about the rear seat install. I've just finished doing it and it's not too tricky. Actually, it would already be back in my car if I wasn't strung along for a week and a half with the promise of a 4th gen seat set (they're the same size rear seats and I think the install would look MUCH better with the updated interior).

Anyway, that fell through so I'm going to spend tomorrow doing a whirlwind tour of the scrapyards to see if there are any decent interior around. Long story short, I hope to have all my interior back in the car by Early next week with any luck. After that I'll post some pics.

As for the install itself, it is pretty straightforward. If you pull out the rear seat backrest, undue the zipper, and pull out the hog rings holding on the material then you can slide the cover right off. Then seperate the foam from the plastic seat frame. After that, you're basically just measuring out the cut-out hole for the amps and determining how far to space them from the outside surface depending on whether you want them flush, raised, or recessed. I mounted mine slightly raised up so that I can access the gains and x-over if need be. Other people have recessed them and installed a plexiglass cover (sometimes with a fan).

I've heard people voice concerns in the past over structural integrity... whether the seat can handle having chunks of plastic cut out of it. Well, I mounted two amps with a large crossover in between them, and now that the seat is back together I can say with confidence that it can handle it. So I say go for it. For a pretty trick looking install, it certainly wasn't much of a headache. Here's a quick pic I posted earlier of a test mount that I did when fitting it (the crossover wasn't in there yet, but you get the picture):

 

Check out my rear amp install that I did YEARS ago. At the time I was the first person to get it done. I thought it turned out alright .

 

TrueBlue, did you use a mounting plate to mount your amps? it looks like thatis what the amps are on in that pic. How did the amp stay put in the seat? Both you and JPrevost have awsome setups there. I plan on doing this over the winter so we will see how it goes.

 

Apparently this is pretty common, because when my car was burglarized, they left the back seat leaning forward, as if they were checking if I had built amps into the back seat.

weird, huh?

 

No mounting plate was required for mine even though I cut out quite a lot of the backing material. It's pretty freakin' solid still... and I have a couple of heavy amps on there. I did glue some small cubes/strips of MDF onto the plastic so that I could get the amp height the way I wanted and so the mounting screws would have something to sink into, but that's about it.

I should put up some picks of the finished product; it's pretty clean. I lucked out because I managed to get a set of leathery vinyl seats off eBay and it made the edges appear much smoother; it was flexible enough that I could just tuck the overlapping parts underneath. I'll see if I can track down some of the pics I've already taken...

I say go for it... I'm nowhere near a pro at installing stuff, and I'm really happy with how mine turned out. When you take the thing apart, you get a much better idea of what needs to be done.