Something that my older brother got me into in my teen years was car audio, namely in the realm of bass/subwoofers. Back in the early 90s, cars were manufactured from the dealerships with crappy paper cone woofers. It is insane how terrible these speakers really were–it was like the manufacturers made speakers out of construction paper. In my experience, bass in automobiles just didn’t happen off the lot–it was all aftermarket.
I seem to recall my brother introducing me to Miami Bass culture which mainly consisted of breakbeat tracks with the addition of super low frequencies (80 hz and lower). Being born and raised in Florida back in the 90s, this culture was very popular. Do you remember 69 Boyz? If you’re from Florida and in your 30s or 40s you probably do.
Generally, these low frequencies are not heard on door speakers as the crappy cone woofers don’t have the excursion necessary to reproduce them. You could replace them with higher quality woofers and get some reproduction out of the doors, but a better method is to just add subwoofers.
I’ve gone through my fair share of subwoofers through the years. Back on the 1982 Toyota Cressida I think I had a couple Pioneer 10s. I also had two Rockford Fosgate 12s installed on my 1999 Mitsubishi Galant ES. Around the time I upgraded that to my 2008 Mazda 3 Touring I went back to a single Rockford Fosgate 10 and sold my 12s. When I sold my Mazda 3 to my brother I gave him the system with it. My 2018 BMW M240i M Performance Edition that I was daily driving at the time came with a sound system that was more than adequate so I was good. One thing to note is throughout all of these stereo systems I had someone else install. I think my Dad and brother installed it in the Toyota. I also enlisted their help on my Mitsubishi. I went to a local car audio shop for my Mazda.
The reason I bring this all up is because of Project CELICA. When I bought the car, the speakers in the front were apparently blown while the speakers in the rear were acceptable. I overcame this issue by just sending my stereo DSP FADE settings towards the rear and removing BASS from the door speakers. I also knew I wanted to do all my own work on Project CELICA so I invested money in component door speakers up front, coaxial speakers in rear, a single sub, and a 5 channel amplifier. The plan was to run it all from A to Z, so I spent several weeks researching.
I gathered all of the wiring harnesses, wires, and equipment and began storing it in my garage. I also loaded up on replacement clips with the expectation that they would break. The extra clips turned out to be of great value. I worked my day job until Saturday morning when I got to work on this project. It ended up taking me three days to install the speakers and sub in addition to replacing the door actuators so that the keyless entry and interior door lock switches would operate properly. I learned a lot in those few days, and the car is not only in one piece, but significantly enhanced!
Things I learned:
- Apparently I am clumsy. It is also possible that I simply wore out muscles in short order that just were not ready for the task. I ended up dropping several screws/bolts/nuts. One of them (nut for securing car battery in engine bay) I ended up finding by making room. One of them (interior screw) I ended up finding another item in my garage that replaced it. Last one (nut for power lead for battery) fell into the abyss (engine bay) never to be seen again. I ended up going to AutoZone and buying another one. I also ended up losing a hex-socket set screw and found a replacement at Home Depot.
- This is something I already knew about myself, but managed improving about myself as a result of this project. I tend to dwell on minor issues that I run into during a project–issues which sometimes are not worth the battle. When I dropped the battery lead nut into the engine bay, I spent two hours looking for it. I could have just moved while I waited to buy a replacement, but I was determined to find it. I tend to do this with missing screws a lot, which I accept is silly because–nuts and screws are a dime a dozen. Fortunately I realized I was doing this and for future hiccups found workarounds more quickly.
So first thing I wanted to do is what I foresaw would be the most difficult–running the power line from the battery, under the hood, back to the trunk. I was worried about gaining access to my interior from the engine bay. After about an hour I managed to use a wire hanger and a lot of electrical tape to run the cable through an existing grommet in the engine bay firewall. Once I got that sorted I worked on getting the fuse installed on this cable and that worked out OK.
With that cable run I moved on to the speaker wires, which I knew were all homed back to a JBL factory amplifier behind the glovebox. I bought a harness that extended these runs back to the trunk perfectly–all good! I ran the remote cable and the RCA cables for the low-level speakers signals back via the same path as these harness wires. I replaced the head unit with essentially an identical head unit that was more powerful (4V pre-outs instead of 2V) but managed to snap parts of my dash kit in the process. After running around the area looking for local replacements, I ended up ordering a replacement on Amazon and using the existing dash kit as well as I could. That was one of the types of hiccups that I usually could not get past–I only wasted about an hour on that one. I knew exactly where I wanted the ground cable to run and got that sorted without issue. Once the cables were run under the back seats I could get them to the trunk.
I knew when the door panels came off that I would potentially need to drill out rivets as well as replace door actuators which would make things slow down a bit. It was obvious the speakers were blown with the naked eye. I wish I knew more history than that but I can only speculate. Fortunately I did not have to drill out rivets. Installing the component speakers was new for me–I ended up cleaning in the door panel and installing the crossover using double stick pads. In the past I usually just plugged in two-way or three-way speakers and moved on.
Th door actuators were the worst. I replaced both door actuators and put the doors back on. I still had problems with the door locks, so I knew that something else was the problem. This was disheartening, but I removed the door actuator assemblies again and found that they needed some good ol’ WD40. Grit apparently got into the assembly mechanism where the actuators were unable to overcome the resistance of the moving parts. After the WD40 the locks were working again.
The rear speakers were a chore. I had to take out the back seat and rear panels to get to them. I knew I needed to do that in order to run the wiring back to the trunk anyway, so I did kill two birds with one stone. One of the clips under the back seat exploded because I guess I pulled it out incorrectly. I ordered a replacement and moved on. Replacing the rear speakers did require drilling out rivets which I managed to do without drilling a hole through the side of the car!
With all the door speakers replaced I wanted to get the subwoofer installed and get the amp wired up. I found some 8 gauge wire for my 12 inch subwoofer and got everything situated. All the speakers worked as expected, but I still needed to tune the gain on the amplifier. I also needed to put all the panels and seats back. I tried to clean a little bit while I was at it, but I was more interested in getting the car back together. I ended up tuning the amp and tightening up to finish up the project. I also threw a 2×4 wood block in the back just to help secure the subwoofer in the trunk. It’s not a pretty install, but it is functional.
What’s next?
- Order of plastic clips that were destroyed that I did not have handy after project completed…
- Ordered shift boot as existing one is torn
- Purchased overhead console (dome light and moonroof switch) which I already installed… Now the moonroof both works and doesn’t work at the same time. More research required…
- Order of shift knob and floor mats
- Need wheel balancing and spare tire reviewed
- Still have clutch kit, flywheel, rear main seal… need to install
- Ordered steering wheel cover–cheap solution for steering wheel until I feel like engaging in a project to rewrap it.
- I want to give the car an inside and out detail. I will probably need to do it again after the clutch and flywheel, but I’m not concerned.