Upgrading my stereo on a $100 budget

[christw]

My new to me work truck came to me with more problems than I'd thought. By now, I have less than $100 to spend on the stereo. I started with these weird blown Pioneer speakers. Door speakers? What door speakers!

The head unit is probably older than the internet. 40 watts... max? It feels like about 10w RMS / channel. At least it has that 1/8" input.

I put in some speakers I've been using around the house for years. They've got a good sound, decent efficiency, and go down to ~100 Hz.

I decided it's time to add a sub. I kicked around the idea of a small used home theater sub but couldn't' find any under $50 locally. Instead I eBayed an Audiopipe 8" and box. About $23 each. I don't like how the speaker surround extends all the way out around the frame. That'll make it easy to damage.

I have a Boss R3002 and wiring kit on the way for power at a cost of $66. For now I'll use a cheapie Chinese ebay amp for the sub. It's one of those "250 watt" models that delivers 25w RMS x 2 at 4 ohms.

This won't be a wildly interesting install. I'm just curious how it'll turn out as I'm looking for moderate levels of clean sound. Well, as good as it gets with speakers buried in the back of the cab.

 

[simpler=better]

It looks like you're on track

Make sure you run beefy wires to everything and I think you will be golden. At 200W and 8" I had to run at half volume to keep from going deaf, your setup ought to be smooth!

 

[christw]

I'll be using 8 GA wire for the "600w max" R3002 amp that I'll never really run that hard. The head unit maxes out before it gets too loud and I'll be using speaker level inputs so I've still got a rather limited range.

 

[christw]

UPS has managed to postpone my sub boxes once again. In the meantime, I hooked up the 2x 25w watt eBay amp and my god what a difference. The radio can't have been doing any more than 5 wpc. The HPF on the eBay amp is at a useful frequency for tuning a sub with this admittedly ratty but surprisingly good sounding setup.

 

[simpler=better]

<-this face when the amps work, right?

 

[christw]

Absolutely! Those speakers do surprisingly well down low given just a moderate amount of power. Running them with the HPF isn't too obnoxious and makes me feel a lot safer. If only UPS would get their shit straight and deliver my sub boxes now. One's overdue by 9 days. My amp and wiring kit is still days out too though.

 

[christw]

Parts got here and I did a little prewiring. My 8 gauge wiring kit was 10 gauge. Yay ebay! Here's the setup next to a 15" I'll be toying with later.

The sound is pretty good and hurt my ears before it distorts. I've got a 9 dB boost going at 45 Hz right now and still find my output under 80 Hz a little lackluster. Then again, I doubt my entire system has been over 40 degrees since install and I am being cautious with it's limits. The amps input sensitivities are also quite different. I'll reserve my judgment for warmer weather once I'm more familiar with the setup.

 

[christw]

Well, the woofer's breaking in nicely. It can get into the 30's in a .5 ft^3 sealed box and manage a really respectable output in the 40-80 Hz range. Not too bad. I need to reinstall my ground properly and clean up wiring but it's all working nicely. I'll be putting some Infinity 6012i's in the doors so I don't have those KLH speakers flying around everywhere.

 

[christw]

Update! I'm alotting another $200 on this project:

$43 Infinity 860w
$55 Infinity 6832cf for rears
$50 eBay labyrinth ported .8 ft^3 box (may end up in my Accord with the Audiopipe)
$30 dist blocks and 4 gauge wiring
$20 SSL 400.2 off of CL for doors/rear

As for now, I got the Infinity's in the doors between rainstorms today. No pics but it wasn't that eventful. I cut the adapters to fit, ran some wire, and done! I also found out that I ran the truck out of gas the other night when I was pulling people out of ditches.

Here's the happy little woofer inbetween the seats. It sounds better facing forward but can go face down if I have a lot of cargo. The good news is that it takes about 5 minutes to uninstall and make dog ready.

Six speakers in the truck and none of them had any surround!

 

[christw]

Well, she's got a bad head gasket. The build stops here, sadly, as all the parts are rolling in. Guess this'll be going in my Accord when I fix it.