Page 1: Head unit, Speakers, amplifier, wiring.
Page 2: Sub enclosure, amp rack.

Introduction
This is a page to highlight my girlfriend's 92 Toyota Camry. She's had this car for a long time and is quite attached to it. She decided that she wanted to uprade her audio system, so I obliged.

I'm not into the "sport compact" or "import tuner" scene at all. I'm a die-hard domestic guy, so I wouldn't plan on seeing any sort of exterior modifications to this car. I installed the stereo and attempted to provide a tasteful install that pushed my abilities as far as they could go. It was also very important to me that this stereo not draw any unwanted attention. For this reason, absolutely everything is hidden, or made to look stock.

The car
It's a bone stock 1992 Toyota Camry LE.

Head Unit
Initially when my girlfriend said that she wanted a stereo, we worked out a $500 budget. Since she had an Alpine head unit, this budget could go toward amplification and speakers. After getting halfway through the component speaker installation, I discovered that her Alpine didn't have pre-outs. I didn't want to use a line-output-converter, so I "donated" one of my spare head units. The head is a Kenwood PS-907. This was the top of the line Excelon head unit from the first year Kenwood made Excelon (1997 perhaps?). This is a great head unit that has everything a good head unit should have (0-bit noise gate, defeatable display) and none of the useless crap that it shouldn't (crossovers, internal power, etc). Once I get the trim ring finished I'll post pictures.

Sound Deadening
To help deaden the doors, I tried a no-name brand of Peel & Seal that you can buy at your local Home Depot. This is a heavy, very sticky tar based roll that is designed to seal the gaps on plywood before shingles are installed. People have discovered that it makes a very good, very inexpensive sound deadener. It works nearly as well as the more well known (and far more expensive) products like Dynamat. The one area where this product falls short is staying adhered during high heat situations. For this reason, I would not use it on roofs or trunk lids, but for floors and doors, it's fine. It is important when installing this that the surface is super clean. I used paint thinner to clean the area, then I applied the material. After it was pressed into place, I used a heat gun to heat it to the point where the tar boiled. I then pressed it into place very firmly and let it cool. I'm convinced that if my heat gun didn't cause it to fall, no 90 degree weather will. If you don't heat it and press it into place, and if you don't have a perfectly clean surface, you might not be so fortunate.
Anyway, here's a pic of it on the door:

Component SpeakersFor front stage, I decided to use CDT CL-61a components. The CDTs had a great reputation on most of the message boards, so I decided to give them a try. The mids were installed in the factory door location. This was a fairly easy swap, although all 4 mounting holes didn't line up exactly with the factory holes. Since the speaker is installed in a plastic pod, it was easy to drill one new hole and get the other 3 to fit. The CDT woofer is shallow enough that it does not interfere at all with the window. The picture below shows the woofer mounted in the factory location:

The factory woofer had a much thicker gasket that was used to seal up to the door panel. I purchased some 1/4" thick by 1/2" wide weatherstripping at a local parts store and attached it directly to the foam gasket on the driver. This gave the same height as the factory driver's gasket and sealed well to the door panel. This odd arrangement could work out to your advantage if you buy speakers that are a bit too deep for the door area. You could build up a 1/4" spacer to put behind the speaker. This will allow the original speaker gasket to seal with the door panel, and give you an additional 1/4" of magnet clearance.

I decided to mount the tweeters in the kick panels. Prior experience has taught me that the farther forward you can get the tweeters, the better the soundstage tends to be. This also helped push them farther away from the listener to help equalize path lengths. I used double-backed tape to stick the tweeters in place while I listened to the stereo. Ultimately I chose a position that aimed both tweeters toward the center of the car.

I wanted the tweeter install to be clean, but not all that noticable. I decided to flush mount the tweeter grills into the kick panels, and mount the tweeters directly behind. This gave me a very clean, almost stock look that nobody even notices unless I point out. This also gave me the freedom to aim the tweeters to some degree behind the grills.

Overall I'm quite happy with these speakers. These speakers have a lot of detail and very nice clarity without being harsh. The soundstage is high, vocals are centered nicely on the windshield, and the soundstage is wide. I think the sound quality is very good considering the sub-$300 price that the CL-61s sell for. When I consider that I paid under $150 for these because they are the "off color" Cl-61a model, I'm blown away. The paint color on the baskets is of no concern to me, and I was happy to save over 50%. I have my doubts as to whether this is a legit mistake or just CDT's way of getting their product on the street. Either way, I couldn't be happier with the sound quality that I got for the money.

Amplification
For the amplifier, I chose a Phoenix Gold T400.4 4 channel amp. The amp is rated at 50x4, but is one ohm stable. This is important because it allows me to bridge 2 channels and run a pair of paralleled 4-ohm subs on it. This simplifies wiring, and maximizes the power from the amp. Even running this low impedance load, the amp never gets hot. While this amp doesn't provide the kind of power that most people seem to be running these days, it does do a good job of making this system far louder than my girlfriend will ever use. The amplifier was installed in the trunk in the enclosure that also holds the subwoofers. That buildup can be seen on page 2.

Wiring
Wiring is one of those things that a lot of people overlook. This is unfortunate, because wiring is very important. This amplfier has 50 amps worth of fusing on it (two paralleled 25 amp fuses). That current rating calls for 4 AWG wire. I bought a Phoenix Gold amp wiring kit that came with 20' of 4 AWG power wire, 2' of ground (who the hell only needs 2' of ground???), fuse, holder and a remote turn-on wire that I didn't use. It also had the gold ring terminals pre-crimped on the wires so that I didn't have to screw around with it.

The fuse holder was mounted on the factory air box. This air box is quite sturdy and made a good mounting point. A small amount of silicone was put on the backside to prevent air from leaking by the screws.

The wire was run through the fender by removing the plastic inner fender in the wheel well opening.

Once the wire was in the inner fender, I routed it into the interior by poking a hole in a pre-existing grommet that passed other wires through.

After the two above pictures were taken, black (sorry, no bright yellow crap here) split loom tubing was installed over the wire. This will protect it from chafing on the fender.
Once in the interior, the wire was run on the driver side, under the door sills & under the carpet, then under the back seat into the trunk area.

The ground was attached to some sheet metal behind the carpet on the driver side of the trunk. Rather than just sinking a screw into the metal, a hole was drilled, the metal scraped bare, and a nut & bolt was used to secure the ring terminal to the chassis.

For RCAs, I used some cheap buyout RCAs from Parts Express. They had a small gauge power line in addition to the RCA lines. This was used for the remote turn-on. Everybody screams that you need good RCAs. No you don't. They are a waste of money. The day somebody can show me with a spectrum analyzer and/or an oscilloscope that the waveform passing through expensive RCAs is somehow different than what's going through cheap ones, I'll switch. I've used expensive RCAs. Usually they are poorly built with weak solder joints, and use a smaller gauge copper than the cheap ones. I also can't tell you how many ends I've pulled off on the "good" ones when running them through interiors. I'll also dispute anybody who complains about running the remote power lead with the RCAs. It's hogwash. The current is far too low to induce any audible noise into the signal path.

Anyway, the RCAs were routed up the passenger side of the car the same way the power wire was run up the driver side. Here is a pic of the wiring behind the back seat:

The speaker wires for the component speakers were run up each side of the car for that respective speaker. Once again, the speaker wire is passing a sufficiently high voltage & current that they will not pick up noise from the power wires. The speaker wires go up to the dashboard where the crossovers are mounted. From the crossovers, speaker wire goes through the factory door boot (a royal pain in the ass) to the door speakers, and from the crossovers to the tweeters.

Page 2 shows the construction and installation of the sub enclosure/amp rack.