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Review it for me: Civic install with obstacles

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I haven't installed anything in a year, but my buddy needs an experienced mind.

 

He's got an eighth gen civic si, and would like to replace the stock, 8" sub.  He's up for complete removal, since he knows he won't get a true subwoofer-type sound without an enclosure or sealing the trunk.  Now, it needs to be extremely stealth (carpeted box, all black, tucked in the corner, no visible wires anywhere). 

 

He's dead-set on a type-r and an alpine 500W amp to match.  I'll set him up with some black knu wiring, too.

 

Two options I've thought of for the box:

-Sealed, cut to the shape of the rear, side of the trunk, carpeted, with a grille.

-bandpass, carpeted, ported up and toward the center of the trunk. (not much familiar with bandpass, nor am I sure this is a viable option).

 

Now, his civic, I guess, has a volume cap on the stock sub, so we cannot use the subwoofer speaker wires to run a line-driver from.  He's willing to give up his rear speakers for this, but that's a lot of re-routing wires, right?  To do so, I would need to run the speaker wires from a rear speaker to the back, and hook those up to the line-out driver, right?

 

Anyone know if there's a bypass for the volume cap on the stock sub?

 

Thanks for any help, y'all.

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I'm not familiar with the car, so this is just a thought. I would avoid using the speaker level outputs if possible where he has a stock sub because it's likely there is filtering going on at the head unit to not send those bass frequencies to the rear speakers. I would imagine the volume cap is also built into the stock head unit, theres no reason to use discrete components for something like that these days. It going to suck to hear, but he's probably better off replacing the head unit or getting a processing unit like an ms-8 (probably not of this calibur) to properly get it booming. Those stock head units in modern cars can be a bitch to work with.

 

Good Luck!

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I don't know what an 8th gen civic is.

Need to know how much output is desired.

Need to know budget.

Doesn't matter whatsoever if their is a limit on the factory sub. The aftermarket amp will have a gain and you will adjust accordingly.

Need to know the set skill of the installer. This is going to be the biggest deciding factor.

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When i had my stock headunit i just disconnected stock sub, and made my own rca plugs from there with a noise filter in between. At first i thought it would be a hassle but turned out to be even better than I thought due to the fact there was a dedicated subwoofer signal to tap from.

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A line out converter (LOC) connected to the factory subwoofer wiring will work fine, I do it all the time. 

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I'm pretty handy, I'd say.  I can figure out just about anything to do with wiring and taking apart the interior.  Unless we're talking aftermarket processors and whatnot, I'm not sure what his budget will do.  He's entirely against changing his head unit, and we used an LOC last time (that's what it's called, thanks) and the volume cap superseded it.  I figured the rear speakers would have some sort of filtering, but I guess I'd assumed with all the filtering going on that the HU would be smart enough to allow me to turn it all off.  When we cranked the gain on his last system, it just sounded like poop and wasn't even entirely loud.

 

How would these processors help?  I'm new to those.

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If you are just adding a sub you won't need any processing.

The most cost efficient method would be to use a PAC SNI-15.

Before you do anything I would verify factory filtering. All you need to do this is a few test tones and a DMM.

If he is not looking to add a ton of output a single 10 or 12 fiberglassed into the fender area would save the most space. Or he could just opt for a nice sealed enclosure that could be removed if he needed the whole trunk.

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I want him to look at the SA-8.  He wants to keep it as small as possible.  What would I be looking for on the DMM if there is factory filtering. 

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If you are just adding a sub you won't need any processing.

The most cost efficient method would be to use a PAC SNI-15.

Before you do anything I would verify factory filtering. All you need to do this is a few test tones and a DMM.

If he is not looking to add a ton of output a single 10 or 12 fiberglassed into the fender area would save the most space. Or he could just opt for a nice sealed enclosure that could be removed if he needed the whole trunk.

Or he can opt for IB via the seat back with 2 12's or 15s

 

That's if he doesn't mind losing the fold down

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I want him to look at the SA-8.  He wants to keep it as small as possible.  What would I be looking for on the DMM if there is factory filtering. 

small and that 8 dont go together

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Obviously as small as possible within the subs requirements, but he's set on the Type-R.  So, simply an LOC and find some way to bypass the sub limiter?

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