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The Green Goblin (yes, I know it wasn't green)              

This is my tribute to my '93 MX6, affectionately known as the Green Goblin. Yeah, I know it was black, but so what? This project started in June '97, and was constantly evolving, even up to the car's eventual demise in June '02. The entire system was designed and installed by the dynamic duo of Wil and me (or is it Wil and I?) Anyway, here is the basic layout of the system:

And now, the story.

Here we see the gaping hole in the dash where the factory tape player used to be...

In its place went the Alpine CDM 7824. This player featured 4v Pre-Outs (a high number at the time) and ID Logic.

A shot of Wilby, smiling as always. BTW, that is 3/4" Medium Density Fiberboard, the material of choice for speaker cabinets.

A little Liquid Nails never hurt anybody.

Always pre-drill, especially when using MDF. Eventually, this will be the enclosure for the three JL's.

The holes are cut. A router would really have come in handy here. The box will be acoustic-suspension (fancy word for sealed), and the subs will share a single 2.8 ft³ chamber.

Time to break out the carpet. One of the goals of this project was to have everything look like it had come stock (where possible.)

A generous amount of Fiber Fill is stuffed into the enclosure. Its now time for the speakers, three JL Audio 10w6 subwoofers. They each have dual 6W voice-coils.

Step 1: The two 6W coils on each driver are wired to each other in series, giving each speaker a nominal impedance of 12W (notice the thick 10 AWG cable.)

Step 2: Its hard to see, but the 3 12W drivers created in step 1 are parallel wired together, creating a single 4W load.

Schematic explanation of the subwoofer wiring technique.

The view from inside the box. 

The completed, carpeted enclosure. The angle was measured to exactly match the angle of the seat back.

The box in its final resting place. Time to work on the grille. (no, not the Foreman grill. - Ha!)

Another piece of MDF was cut to fit around the speakers.

Flexible masonite was used to create a fascia panel to cover the whole thing up.

A little more carpeting on the panel, and some grille-cloth for the cut-outs.

Not too shabby. Only 25% trunk space was lost, and access to the spare is no problem.

Now, for the fun geeky stuff. An Audio Control EQT II 1/3 octave (31 band) EQ was installed in each rear seat back (yes, one each for right and left.)

A carpeted platform was created to elevate the soon-to-be-installed PPI amplifier. Also visible is the 1 farad capacitor, and Phoenix Gold fused distribution block.

In goes the Precision Power A600.2. This 2 channel power amp is used to power the 3 JL subs. It is rated at 150wRMSx2 (4W stereo), but in this application, it is running at 600wRMSx1 (4W bridged mono.) (isn't Ohm's law great?) The power-cap was turned vertical for this to fit.

A close up of the Xtant 2140c 2 channel (70wRMSx2) power amplifier which will be used for the high-end. Also visible (on the left side) is the CM24x 24db / octave active crossover plug-in module.

The amps resting comfortably in their new home. Careful attention was paid to ensure that the two beasts were exactly parallel to each other. 

The electronics rack with the wiring in place. 4AWG was used for main poser / ground, while 8AWG feeds the amps. The speaker cable is 14AWG (subs are 10AWG.)

A view of the rack with an oscilloscope and the "Autosound 2000" test disk visible. 

A close-up of the rack, showing off the stainless steel shroud on the Xtant.

More masonite was used to fabricate a fascia panel for the rack.

The panel is test fitted over the amps. Now you see why it was important to make the amps parallel to one-another, and why that platform was created to make the PPI level with the Xtant.

The panel is in place, and the amps appear to be flush-mounted. The angle perfectly matches the seat-back angle. Pretty slick, if you ask me.

After many initial mountings of the Oz Audio tweeters, the dash corners won out over the doors and kick-panels. Here, a Roto-Zip is used to make a small hole.

Back view of the 1.5" tweet. Man, is that an ugly rug or what?

The final resting home of the tweeter. Not too bad.

More pics to come.....stay tuned.

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