Rear Stereo Speakers

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Major System Category: Electronics
Task: Build speaker box for rear speakers
Parts: Wood Board
            Carbon Fiber Vinyl
            Infinity Reference 3032cf 3.5-Inch
Prerequisite Tasks:
Additional Costs: $75
Time Requirement: 6 hours
Date Started: January 14, 2014

Date Completed: January 21, 2014

Initially I was going to just go with speakers in the doors. There really isn't a good place to mount rear speakers. I started to look at the rear quarter glass. These are really worthless in terms of seeing anything. I plan to rely on mirrors and cameras to see what's going on around the car. Vraptor Speedworks sells a NACA duct that provides air into the engine compartment. I plan to replace the quarter glass with these ducts and use the ducts to push air directly into the cold air intake.

Everything seems so straight forward when you start out. I am just fitting the box together using clamps.

This solves two problems as it now gives me a place to mount the rear speakers. 

The tricky part was getting the hole centered and big enough. I came across a great multiple hole saw kit for about $12 that handled everything from 1/2 to 6 inch holes. 

There are no mounts for rear speakers in the GTM design. There are only mounts for door speakers built into the inner door liners. I 6.5 inch speakers for the doors and 3.5 inch speakers for the rear. Time to make rear speaker mounts!

This is sanded on the seams, glued and screwed together. The speaker wires are running through the small hole in the back of the box. I also have a rubber grommet installed to minimize chaffing. 

I found a sturdy 1 x 12 x 48 pressed board at Home Depot. This is your basic 7th grade shop project where you need to build a box. I managed to mess it up a little, but eventually I had box with a center hole to mount the speakers and rear hole to feed to wires through. I purchased enough board to fix the mistakes. I secured everything with wood screws and glue, then I sanded it down used wood filler to take care of the gaps on the seams and level things out.

I am prepping to wrap in vinyl. I made 45 degree cuts in the vinyl so I could wrap the box.

Since the box is going to be two rather large frame posts and the quarter windows are going to be dropped from the design, the visible part of the box is basically the speaker and the edges leading away from the speaker. This doesn't have to be a perfect job. It just has to look good from the top. Of course, now I have two tan colored boxes. This is where carbon vinyl wrap comes in very handy. This doesn't cost a fortune and it is relatively easy to work with.

Finished product. Now all I have to do is get the GTM transported to the New Southerns Man Cave this summer.

I wrapped the boxes before I installed the speakers. Once I had the component pieces assembled, it went pretty fast.