My Budget Stereo System

The Stereo

Before Pictures - Wiring Up the Car
	This is what my car looked like during some of the install. I can say that this might be one of the most time consuming things I've done to my car. I figure it took more than 12 hours of work with blood and sweat to prove I did it. I took apart just about every interior body panel to hide the wires as best as I could. I think I did a very good job tearing my car up as you can see. I made sure the RCA cables did not get near the power wires, speaker wires, etc. The music is nice and clean. No distortion even when I turn it up. The install spanned over 3 days and I'm still trying to tune the amp. I have a decent idea on how to do it. The Kappas are on high pass while the bazooka is on the low pass. I don't quite know how to work the bass eq. If anybody knows, could you let me know. I could barely hear the difference with the bass eq up or down.

The install was not hard, just real time consuming. I had 2 major problems that took a bit of time. The first major problem I ran into was trying to wire up the woofer to the crossover on the left side of the car. I can do the door no problem, but running the wire into the available hole... I couldn't see where the damn wire came out from the other side. All I could see were the fuses and the millions of wires in there. After many hours, I figured out that there was a secret compartment behind there. I managed to tear a hole into that secret compartment through the bottom and voila.. it works. The other problems I encountered were the body panels. They just didn't want to line up correctly. I'm not a super perfectionist, but I did want it done right. The worst panel was the one near the passenger foot panel. There was this metal thing holding it in place I think, but didn't know how it worked, so I left it out. Still works and looks good, so I'm done.

After Pictures - Almost All Done

Here's my Infinity Kappa woofer. You can't see the speaker with the door panel in place, so I took a picture with the speaker in the door. You have to cut the speaker basket to make the larger magnet fit, but otherwise fits perfect. It looks pretty good because it matches up with the color of the car. I like it.

This is just a speaker comparison between the new kappa woofer and my old Boston Acoustic CX6's. They both look pretty good. Note the Bostons have the 13mm tweeter in the middle. The Kappas are components meaning there is a separate tweeter which is mounted where the old tweeter used to be.

Here's my Hifonics 4 ch amp. It's sitting pretty in the top right of the trunk. I hid the wires underneath the plywood near the spare tire to keep it clean looking. It's sitting on particle board right now, so as to keep it from moving. I put other pieces of particle board to keep it from sliding around. This is temporary until I figure out how to make it look better, yet practical.

This is another view of the trunk. Currently, I'm borrowing my cousin's bazooka which is bridged to 2 channels supposedly giving out 220 watts. It's on the low pass freq around 120 hz or so, give or take. I saved probably from $100 to $200 by doing it myself. My install might look like crap to a pro installer, but considering I didn't even know how to wire an amp up ... I'm very proud of myself and happy. Yup!

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After Pictures - Almost All Done
	Here's my Infinity Kappa woofer. You can't see the speaker with the door panel in place, so I took a picture with the speaker in the door. You have to cut the speaker basket to make the larger magnet fit, but otherwise fits perfect. It looks pretty good because it matches up with the color of the car. I like it.
This is just a speaker comparison between the new kappa woofer and my old Boston Acoustic CX6's. They both look pretty good. Note the Bostons have the 13mm tweeter in the middle. The Kappas are components meaning there is a separate tweeter which is mounted where the old tweeter used to be.
	Here's my Hifonics 4 ch amp. It's sitting pretty in the top right of the trunk. I hid the wires underneath the plywood near the spare tire to keep it clean looking. It's sitting on particle board right now, so as to keep it from moving. I put other pieces of particle board to keep it from sliding around. This is temporary until I figure out how to make it look better, yet practical.
This is another view of the trunk. Currently, I'm borrowing my cousin's bazooka which is bridged to 2 channels supposedly giving out 220 watts. It's on the low pass freq around 120 hz or so, give or take. I saved probably from $100 to $200 by doing it myself. My install might look like crap to a pro installer, but considering I didn't even know how to wire an amp up ... I'm very proud of myself and happy. Yup!