CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

**Curt Palme**

I'm one of the cheapest SOB's here, no doubt about it. Late last year I bought a 1992 Toyota Paseo for $400, the second of two I own. The reason I bought this car is mainly because I bought one in 1993 new from the dealer, put 298,000KM (about 200K miles) on it before I traded it for my Rav 4. It's basically a Tercel frame on a sports body. I had to replace the engine in it, but Sparky has been driving it for the last 6 months, and short of a tiny exhaust leak and it needing front struts that I'm too cheap to put in right now, it runs fine. I've always wanted to put a mega stereo into the car, but completely on the cheap, without sacrificing looks and (hopefully) trunk space.

I'll add pictures tomorrow, but here's what I've done so far:

I bought a bunch of stuff online, including:

-Sony AM/FM/MP3 deck for $65 that was about 2 years old, has the fancy 'movie' b/w display panel. It was a factory return, seemed new in the box save for the spliced wiring harness.
-8 gauge wiring kit for $20
-3 Pioneer 125 watt/channel power amps, as is for $100 total. All were super easy fixes
-Audio Control parametric eq/crossover for $110.
- 4 6.5" woofers and 4 dome tweeters from Parts Express. $169 total.
1- 4" thick piece of foam- $42.00

I'm leaving the door speakers stock for now, two tweets are getting installed in the doors as well.

I suck at installations, but am quite proud how the back deck is coming along. I stole this trick from a car that I did in 1986 for a car show.. The back deck has room for two 6" full range speakers in it. That's it. What I did is mount four 6.5" woofers/mids to a piece of 1/2" plywood, and fired it upwards through the two 6" grilles. Problem is, the rear trunk springs run crisscross between the speaker locations, so the piece of plywood had to be suspended about 4" below the deck, making for poor/no acoustical isolation between the front and back of the speakers. After thinking about it, I got a 4" thick piece of foam from a foam shop, cut out the area for the speaker fronts, and then cut slots in the foam for the trunk springs. Tomorrow I get some small diameter redi-rod (threaded rod), and will squish the foam between the back deck and the plywood housing the speakers. End result should be a pretty air tight compartment that will completely isolate the front from the back of the speakers, giving enough bass. Assuming these Parts Express speakers will put out enough bass, I may not need the JBL 15" subwoofer that will fire into the back seat, but we'll see. The remaining two dome tweeters will be mounted on the back deck, so all you'll see are stock grilles along with 4 dome tweeters. I will probably add Aura bass shakers under the set, but haven't bought those yet.

Wish me luck!

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2009 2:44 pm Post subject:

Yes on the bass shakers for that small car or you'll loose to much trunk room.

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

Screw truck space - put in the sub. You gotta bump when you roll, Curt. It's the only reasonable thing to do.

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2009 7:24 pm Post subject:

Put the stereo aside this moring, had a projector to sell. WIll post this afternoon as I get back to work on it.

ecrabb · Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2009 9:45 pm Post subject:

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 12:57 pm Post subject:

OK, pictures.

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

The saw, the hole saw, and nothing but the saw.

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 3:14 pm Post subject:

Yeah, it's not quite up to your precision level, is it? Smile

I figured a standard hole saw would shred the foam, and since it's for sound absorption anyways, I figured other than looks, a rough edge wouldn't make a difference.

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 3:39 pm Post subject:

All the upholstery guys use an electric carving knife.

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 3:42 pm Post subject:

Yeah, I didn't have one of those either. Sad