Installation...

When your best friend tells you he wants to sell you his amp and sub for just $50, you of course get really excited. However, installation is a lot more work than it looks, and this is probably why car audio installation is such a booming business - I can find over a dozen places within 30 minutes of my house that sell and install car audio equipment.

With that in mind, I wasn't about to pay someone to install 3 year old equipment, so I decided to do it myself. Little did I know that I would be busy for almost 12 hours! I hope that if you are planning to do a similar installation, you can learn from my mistakes!

What the...?

Before you ask, this is a "custom" subwoofer box. I say custom because it used to be a bandpass box, until my friend sawed it in half and sealed it with caulk. Don't ask, I don't know why.

Mounting the amp

The amplifier is a Pioneer GM-X542. I decided to mount it to the driver's side rear seatback for several reasons, the main one being that I felt it would be too hot underneath one of the front seats. I've also never been a fan of mounting it to your subwoofer box, since vibration isn't the best thing for precision electronics. However, mounting it here wasn't easy because I had to drill through an extremely thick steel plate, breaking two drill bits in the process.

Running the cables

Although you can't see it, I chose to run the RCA cabling underneath the center console instead of along the carpet next to the doors. I thought this would be easier, (it wasn't) but my main reason for doing it this way is that I hope to add a switch to the remote turn on lead in the future, and I want to put this switch in the console somewhere.

The power cable ended up being a real problem. For the ground, I simply loosened a beefy seatback bolt and connected it there, but the length of power cabling was too short to make it to the amp from the battery since my friend's car is much shorter than mine and he had cut his cable rather than coiling it. I ended up having to make my own power cable from some bulk Monster Cable instead. I reused the Rockford Fosgate fuse holder and connected gold MTX ring terminals at each end. I covered the power cable in wire loom to protect it, but you can barely see the fuse holder in this pic, resting next to the washer fluid tank.

Inside, I couldn't seem to find a place to run the power cable through. I eventually located the rubber plug covering the spot where the clutch would've gone through, but while trying to force a nail through it to make room for the cable, I accidentally knocked the plug right out. This was a problem because I couldn't see where it was to put it back in, but I figured out that it was easier to make a nicer hole in it while I was holding it and then simply put it in backwards from the inside. The cable was tucked nicely behind the carpet there, but I pulled it out a little so it would show up better.