My New Car Audio

[JTM]

THIS IS THE GUIDE I DID FOR A MX5 FORUM, THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE ITRESTING REGARLESS OF WHAT YOU DRIVE

Right I wanted a decent stereo in my 5 as Ive had in my other cars and although hard in a roadster, It is possible I think. So I did the first load of hard graft last weekend.

My major jobs were to get the wires throughout the car cleanly

Get tweeters mounted at a proper ear height, in front of occupants.

Sound deaden certain areas

Close some holes in doors

I previously already had my headunit and amp ad some wiring:

Pioneer DEH P77MP - I think the nicest looking, and one of the best sounding for the price. Love the no frills look and this was my ideal HU, which Is why I bought it

Alpine FRP 240 Amp - 4 channel amp which also looks quite nice. My lovely girlfriend bought me this last crimbo (she was advised by dandud, ta dan lol) Nice sounding amp which will be bridged into 2channel giving 100wrms to each side.

Wiring - Already got some speaker cable and a decent pair of RCAs aswell as power and earth with decent connectors and fuse.

Bits I bought for this car:

Well these ae my fave thing about this install

CDT EF-61CF 6.5in front comps. Kevlar coned and sexy crossovers Cost me £130 posted but are around £240ish ew, yum

Erm then theres the speaker cable etc I bought

Your gonna need:

All you ICE components plus:

Fibre Glass resin

Hardener

Tights or old t shirt etc

Glue gun and sticks

Soldering iron and solder

If you want to wire up like me, ie. crossovers in boot your going to need 20m of speaker cable btw!!!

Right first things first, where to put tweeters. Well I dont think this has been done before in a 5, but I saw a mini guide elsewhere on the net and thought it was perfect in a mk1 as there is simply o where else to stealthily mount tweets. So I bought a set of A-pillars off someone on here and set to work..........

1)

These are the standard new A pillars I bought. Removal (if using you originals) is a case of removing sunvisors, 2 bolts and then peeling back side rubbers. Slide a screwy between the trim and metal and prise it of near the clips, its obvious.

2)

Take a drill or in my case soldering iron and cut out a hole in the pillar, at ear level where your tweeter cup will go.

3)

Try different positions for the cup but mainly you want it ear level aimed toward the centre of the car, which is quite easy with mk1 pillars as they are sort of triangular. Once happy, hot glue them in place and seal the gaps best you can.

4)

Take your t shirt or tights or whatever and pull it fairly taught over the whole pillar. Make sure its smooth with no creases. Hot glue the material round the back of the pillar down one side and then pull i tight and hot glue on the other back side.

5)

Not got a pic of this, but then you need to mix fiber glass resin in something with the correct ammount of hardener, looks like pink jizz lol. This is evil stuff so dont get it on anything valuble ad for the love of god DONT USE TOO MUCH HARDENER! like I did lol, leaves you NO time at all. Apply it to the stretched material with a brush, do it quick as the brush will soon go hard. Let it dry and repeat, no need to sand between coats. Once dry sand it a little, doest need to be super smooth really but as good as you can get it. Trim all the excess material and resin from round the back with a sharp knife etc. Then you need to cut the hole where the tweet will go and do a test fit. I smoothed mine with a dremmel using a light grinding bit. Works wonnders but I also tried a half round file and that was fine but more work. Get the tweeter to fit nicely like so

6)

Next I wired up the boot roughly to have something to pull the wires against when putting them in cabin.

The go through hole behind the spare wheel nicely, with RCA, Tweeter cable x2, remote lead going down the centre console and up into the headunit, and up behid the glovebox/steering column to the A pillars for the tweets. The othe pair of speaker cables go down the sides of the car under the sill plates and into the doors. Best way of doing this I found was to pop the rubber wiring tunnel off with a screwy, then feed another cable from the outside in, tie your speaker cable to it and pull it back out the door. The its just a matter of playing and feeding it through the rubber boot. Only took me bout 10 mins per side whe I expected for it to take longer. Getting to cable from inside to out was much harder I found.

7)

Then I prepared the doors. I uses a roll of roof flashing tape as sound deadening. Basically foil backed bitumen. Heated it up with a hairdryer and sealed up the big holes and created a seal for the mid driver aswell as deadenign the space behind the mid on the outed skin of the door.

8)

Next I mounted the drivers securely by drilling a few holes and screwing them in. I soldered the cables to the mids for security and did the same for the tweeters.

9)

Then did a proper test fit with trim and rubbers on etc. Realise that the bits where rubbers and roof latchs go on were now to fat due to excessive FG, so out came the dremel for some trimming. Maybe you should bear his in mind when FG-ing

10)

I took them of again and went about fitting the faux leather material I bought, cost me a fiver for enough material to do about 5 a pillars and is a excellent match

11)

The final product. Havent got a good pic of it really, sorry. But then look totally OEM and sound fantastic. Get wing and rear view mirror wobbles when up nice and loud Something ive never managed before with out a sub.

Heres a bad pic of my head unit without the surround on, suits the car well due to subdued looks

This weekend I should be sorting my boot out as its a mess! Enjoy

Edited June 24, 2006 by JTM

[quick_spider]

You do know you can get headrest speakers for the MX-5...?

Jon

[JTM]

yeah but then they are behind you And ecased in foamage, not good

[James]

even though i imagine there isnt a great deal of mx5 'ice'ers' on the forum.. bloody good of you to go to the trouble of making the post. good on you mate. hope you really enjoy what you've done. nice one!

[Bendee]

you may have bought a old mans car but your still young at heart hanging in maccys car park

installs looking good, ive never liked the pioneers just sumin about them that isnt right.

and you say you mounted the tweeters at ear height, ive allways been under the impression that to get best results you mount them as near to the components as possible

[JTM]

Lol i lift share to work and we meet at maccys car park to leave the car there all day! Bad idea though cos maccys breaky is very tempting..........

Tweets should be ear height full stop, Mids as close to them as possible. But mids being close to tweets is not as important as tweets being ear height

I love my pioneer Much nicer than the equivalent alpine imo. And I wanted understated looks, alpines are too busy, to be honest so are most other head units

Edited June 24, 2006 by JTM

[sexymike]

you may have bought a old mans car

U what?

its a hairdressers car

Perfect!

[Bendee]

Lol i lift share to work and we meet at maccys car park to leave the car there all day! Bad idea though cos maccys breaky is very tempting..........

Tweets should be ear height full stop, Mids as close to them as possible. But mids being close to tweets is not as important as tweets being ear height

I love my pioneer Much nicer than the equivalent alpine imo. And I wanted understated looks, alpines are too busy, to be honest so are most other head units

ah right ive never heard that ah well. always got the tweets as close to mids as possible.

with the pioneer alpine thing i think its personal preference i cant hear the differences between them its tight but i went for the 9855r unit as it gave more bass and suited my car more.

[br3n]

any reason why you glassed the entire pillar and not just the small section that needed it?