I replaced the stock 10" sub woofer with a JL Audio 10W3v3-4 and added an amp with about 250W RMS. I recommend it to everyone. Check it out:

Here's the stock 10" Bose upside down after I removed it. In order to remove it, I took out the rear seats and rear deck. There's a thread here somewhere on how to do that. just remember to unbolt the rear shade from inside the trunk before pulling out the rear deck.

Anyway, look how small the magnet is. It was very thin and light too...


The stock sub sits here in the trunk. If you get in your trunk and look up here, you'll see the little sub and magnet. I've removed the rear deck and sub in the pic below. From inside the car, you see the oval Bose grill.



Here's a comparison of the stock vs. the replacement JL 10W3, hahaha. look at the difference in the magnets. And the weight difference was huge, haha.



So, let the cutting begin! Measure twice, cut once! Below is the template I made off of the dimensions given by JL. I used the cardboard to draw a circle in the car to cut.



No turning back! This stuff cut like butter, by the way. It's important to use the correct tools. The cutter I'm using is a 90 degree cutter designed to cut this way. You could use a dremel, but you'll get fine iron powder spread everywhere that is impossible to clean out entirely and turns orange when wet. I turned my black BMW interior orange doing this, haha. So I bought some black interior spray paint to fix it. I digress...



Please wear eye protection as getting metal shavings out of one's eye is likely costly, time consuming and painfull. Juss sayin.



So there it is!



There's room for two 10's, if you move the first aid kit. But you really don't need to do that, unless you want to have a stupid amounts of bass. hmmm...



I'll be back to finish up later. Peace!!!!

 

are you running that sub free air, or did you build an enclosure around it?

 

I've wanted to do this for SO LONG.

 

So I'm running "free air", or "infinite baffle", just like stock. But since were pushing some real bass now, I wanted to seal everything up.

Home depot is my friend. Bought some sheet metal there and some glue.

Notice the broken glass, by the way. I bought the car used. Must have been in a nice wreck or something. That explains why the car was mint. haha Everything was replaced.



I cut little shapes to fill the holes. Then glued it up.



Seemed to work for me.



Now for my little secret. PROTECTO WRAP!!! (/superherovoice) It's butel based (similar to Dynomat Extreem) not asphault base. No oder. And it's cheap at Home Depot.



Here we are after deadening and cutting a ring out of 1" thick mdf with a jig saw. I secured the ring to the deck with the same glue, or construction adhesive, and four screws.

If I had to do it over, I would make the mdf wider (across the deck), but not deeper, due to the stuff in teh way. Reason is, when I really crank it up, the whole sheet metal deck moves significantly. hahaha



More to come!

 

Here's one of the four screws securing the mdf ring to the sheet metal.



Glued and screwed:



Here we are with the sub mounted. Can you see the difference compared to stock? haha



This pic was taken from eye level. You don't see the sub.



For wiring, I tapped into the line going to the factory sub and ran that to a line output converter, then to the amp using RCA's. The amp was screwed to the trunk carpet with a 1/4" board behind the carpet. The power to the amp was tapped from the power to the stock amp. And there's a stock ground point by the stock amp. Werks perfectly.





I hope that this helps and inspires some of you! Go do it!

 

have any pictures of the amp wiring?

 

I can see the amount of effort that you put in. Good thing you did this before the heat of summer kicked in.

That JL is awfully heavy to have sagging in the rear tray. Structurally speaking, I'm wondering what the consequences will be for having that amount of weight free hanging.

Did you need to do any eq'ing to help out the sound? Free air installations move quite a bit of air, so my above point becomes all the more concerning.

If anyone is looking for an easier route, I suggest a box and sub.

Ed

 

Thank you so much for this! Its just what I needed.

Did you have any problems putting everything back together with the new much larger sub?

What is the OD on the wood ring? I'm in the process of getting my own sub in place, and am afraid I'll have problems clearing the sunshade.

 

No, I didn't take any pics of the amp wiring. Just buy a Line Output Converter (LOC) for $20 and connect the wires that were going to the factory sub to the LOC. Then connect RCA's between the LOC and new amp.

Then you just need power, ground, and remote to your new amp.

Ground is next to the factory amp. You'll see.

Power is the larger red wire with purple stripe (as I recall) going to the stock amp. Just tap into that power line and run that to your new amp.

Remote was found in the fuse box on the other side of the trunk. I just tried different ones until I found one that turned the amp off with the key removed. I think it was the first fuse.

Bestbuy sells an amp installation kit and LOC. That's what I used.

 

No eqing for me. I'm using stock everything else. I just adjusted the gain on the amp so that it sounds good with the bass on the middle setting on the head unit. When I turn up the bass on the head unit, it hits very well.

I could install the remote gain *** for the amp, but I just don't feel the need and don't want my car appearing modified.

Also, I like subtle mods and have never installed an mdf box. I've made a nice fiberglass box for my BMW and considered doing that for the Merc. But the stock sub in the Merc makes for a perfect oportunity to go IB. It sounds great. In fact, I had the same JL sub in a fiberglass box in my BMW, and the IB set up in the Merc sounds the same.

But if you do want huge bass, get a ported box with a couple of 12's and pound away.

 

You're welcome!

Putting things back together required some pushing. haha I think that's just how it is, even with everything stock. But I left everything else stock and unmodified. The foam sound absorber had to be pushed around a little, but no problem.

The ring is about 1.5 inches wide. You can see that I just eyeballed it and cut the OD with a jigsaw. The ID is important, obviously. Just take a look and give it a shot. Always remember, anything can be fixed. hahaha

 

Ohhh no, you have me mistaken. I'm a bit of a sound snob. I'm running a Speaker Works DVC 10 in a sealed box with just under a 1 cu ft air. Never been a boomer.

I actually thought I had a nice sounding car stereo until I recently upgraded my home stereo. Now I have a new benchmark to reach.

Again, I can see the work you put into this, plus having the stock head really will cut down on the probability of theft.

What does the JL weigh? Likely 15+ lbs. I just don't know what that weight will do over time on the package tray. In addition, I wonder what resonance issues come up. I saw that you used a dampner on the tray so perhaps I'm overthinking it.

I'd add some type of brace from under the tray to the trunk floor. But that is just me.

 

Just out of curiosity, can U post a pic of your head unit?

 

It's the stock cassett head unit.

 

I have the stock cassette but no sub-woofer nor have I looked for an amp. I believe the speakers are 2ohms apiece so difficult to swap with aftermaket speakers.

 

Awesome install, this is exactly what I want to do, but how do you connect the aftermarket amp to a stock CD player head unit?

 

Hi,
Where did you get the +12V

 

Power for a subwoofer

This thread shows how to use the battery as a source for 12 volt power. You may also be able to use the rear SAM (signal acquisition module.). I don’t have any experience using the SAM as a power source. I was not sure how to do it and I didn’t want to damage anything.

 

Nice ! This video is all I wanted.
It shows how to get +12V from the battery to the trunk.
Thanks