Saab 9-3 stealth install

[Electrodynamic]

One of our customers emailed me their installation photos and I thought I would share.

This single BM mkIII is powered by a JL 250/1 and wired with Kimber Kable. The enclosure is 0.4 ft^3 with a Variovent in the bottom. This customer put the Stereo Integrity sticker under the epoxy that covers the top of the enclosure for a nice finished look. Here are the pics:

[Goldenidol]

Nick asked me to post a description of this project, so here it is:

The idea was to keep the cargo carrying capability of the Saab (9-3 Sportcombi), particularly the width of what it can carry, which meant that building an enclosure into the sides of the cargo area would cut into the width -- besides which, there are a lot of fuse boxes and electronic black boxes behind the carpeted sides. So the only room was where the spare tire lived, and I wanted to keep the spare! If you measure the space in the inside of the emergency spare it comes out at more than 0.5 cf3, which makes it ideal for the BM III.

The enclosure was built up from layers of fiberglass and resin shaped inside the spare (with aluminum foil and a slit garbage bag providing protection to the spare). The top plywood baffle was built up from glued together rings cut with a Rotozip tool. Baffle and enclosure were bonded together with urethane glue; the baffle was thickly coated with the clear two part epoxy used to coat bar tables; and the enclosure was sanded to shape and then protected with three coats of Herculiner truckbed paint. The inside shape that holds the Scanspeak variovent (to compensate for the slightly small 0.4 cf3 final volume) is bumped up in the middle to make space for the round threaded disc that holds down the spare tire in the middle.

The inside of the enclosure is coated with a water-based silicon-ceramic mud-like paste used to dampen car doors, then a layer of acoustic foam, and then a bit of acoustistuff fiber dampening. I used tee nuts and 1/4" square drive bolts to hold the BMIII in the enclosure.

Driven by the JL Audio sub 250 watt sub amp, the BMIII gets pretty loud with very little movement by the driver. There is little overhang or blurring even when playing a Kodo drum soundtrack at unreasonable levels (no rattles because the entire back hatch and spare tire well are lined with Dynamat). For those of you into home theater, this sub reminds me of the Velodyne HGS 10 or Sunfire Jr. servo-woofer systems, which I think is very high praise. Right now, it's crossed over at 65 hz to JL Audio 6.5 inch woofers in the front doors, so even with the false cargo floor in place, there is virtually no effect on the bass quality!

Hope this helps those of you with your own installation issues. And thanks to Nick for producing such an engineering marvel

[cjj2d]

wow! would love to seemore pics.