DIY Car Subwoofer

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I've been planning getting the Toyota MR2 back on the road and one of the things I have been messing with for the last 20 years is getting a decent sound system without breaking the bank. The MR2 originally had the front speakers in the dashboard with an optional subwoofer under one of the seats, but the dash just doesn't provide enough baffle for a decent sound.

In 2010 I built this speaker cabinet which sits between the seats and provides pretty good sound along with 'flux capacitor' visual effects!



I have since recovered 2 of these weird speakers from a high-end plasma television I stripped out. The sound quality is frankly amazing for the size of the units. The internal baffle and reflex design is excellent. I want to see if these could be either fitted inside the doors or mounted as pods on the doors themselves.


To go with these I need a subwoofer which can either fit under or behind the driver's seat and this little one came my way. It was part of a Hitachi stereo system that had failed badly. The power supply and amplifier were mounted in the subwoofer with cables out to the CD player and main speakers. I gutted out the electronics just leaving the speaker.


I then fettled a new back from the plastic lid of a broken laptop (yes really, it was a Dell and if you look carefully you can still see part of the 'D'!). I fitted the reflex tube and a speaker connector and it all worked as it should.


I wanted this to be a proper subwoofer so that needed a low-pass filter. I considered making one from scratch, but I was able to buy 2 of these ready-made crossovers for $4 online, so why bother. I'm only using the low-pass side in this application.


Job done, but I want this to have it's own external 12-volt amplifier so that is the next task.

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