A couple of days ago I got tired of looking at that sub in 6 pieces strewn about man town so I slapped it back together and ran my 'B' speaker outs to it from my little 2 channel Pioneer SX-650 in man town. The ports were just put in place but not glued in permanent like. So I set the crossover and volume on it by ear. I had it blended in pretty nicely. The whole idea was to make sure that it worked before I started with the 'mods'.
The driver had socket head cap screws going into about 3/4" particle board. Well, I wanted to install threaded inserts. Hurricane or jack nuts had too much of a flange and I didn't think those spiked teeth would do much beside break up the particle board that close to the driver hole. After much hassle I get my parts from Grainger and they referred me to a place to get just the right socket head cap 10/32 X 1-1/2" screws. I grabbed some 1 inchers just in case and some 8/32 inserts with a couple of different screws for that too. $44 later I'm equipped to modify the screws on a $100 sub. Don't think for a minute that that went smoothly either.
A friend of mine had come by with a piece of 1" thick Owens Corning 705 not too long ago. I cut it up and wrapped the pieces in pieces of a coarse blanket that I could breath through. This too was a massive PITA. The stock insulation was probably 1.5 lbs/ft^3 (pretty fluffy). Before I installed the insulation I ran three strips of that Peal & Seal on the sides and top thinking it probably wouldn't make any difference but ya never know! I also ran a piece of roofing rubber around the outside of the amp housing and ran a '+' pattern with the peal and seal on the inside of the amp housing. I'm starting to feel like a bit of an @sshole for messing around with this stuff but I just can't afford the high dollar sub solutions and this might pay off. Here's the kicker ... it's too late to try it out.
I seem to be the only one on here doing this kind of crap and I have a word of warning for anybody thinking about it. This takes time. Anybody that tells you that one of these mods is quick is full of it. I also gasketed the driver, amp housing and amp before putting them back in. A few years ago some guys were throwing out this gasket material instead of installing it on the lockers at Emerson College in Boston.
I used gobs of translucent Phenoseal caulking to glue in the ports. I had planned on running some additional bracing but got impatient. Like Dude, it's a sub ... not a science project. This is a lot of work ... did I mention that I'm sick of it?
