I recently picked up a 2006 Pontiac GTO and it has a weak factory stereo. It comes factory with a 6.75" sub in the rear deck, but it is just terrible. I want to replace it with a nice 8" woofer that is still free air capable. I am not looking for something that will be just as loud as possible, I want something that sounds clean, since this is still my daily driver and I just want it to sound good. Any recommendations would be great. Thanks

are you sure its free air? most factory subs I've seen are in a sealed enclosure, usually made out of plastic.

I think the kicker cvt8 is a free air sub if not they just came out with a 6.5 cvt that i was actually about to install for midbass.

he probably means infinite baffle not free air

do you plan to add a new amplifier or use the factory amp for the sub?

an 8" sub will not get very loud ib (although it could out perform the oem sub), just not enough displacement. personally i would either do a larger driver ib or run a seal or ported enclosure.

also need to know space requirement if you want to move ahead with a oem replacement.

considering that if your planning to modify it to allow an 8 inch sub, is it possible to fit something larger?

sharing some pictures of the oem location may give us an idea as to what you could do to allow for a large sub. i've have seem some cool baffle designs that allows larger subs to fit oem locations.

Edited April 8, 201213 yr by lithium

NOTHING will sound good "free air"

If you meant Infinite Baffle, then okay things can sound good but you'll need A LOT more cone area than an 8.

I do mean i.b. I may be able to fit a 10" but that would be cutting it awefully close. I would rather try to figure a way to make an 8" work. This is not a full blown, sql competition vehicle or anything, I just need something with a little more bass to make music sound a bit better. I will be getting a matching amp for whatever sub I end up getting.

10" is really not enough for an IB install either. You need WAY more cone area IB than in an enclosure.

OP, you could try making something of a manifold to allow you to mate a large driver 12"+ with the smaller diameter hole.

it would require you to allow some extra room for the subwoofer to move, so it would be about 3-4 layers of mdf. 1 subwoofer baffle, 1 or 2 layers spacers, 1 baffle meeting up with the oem hole.

something like this

Edited April 18, 201213 yr by lithium

Are you completely against a sealed 10 our 12 in the trunk? You could do a fairly small install in the fender area and have way better results while sacrificing very little trunk space.

That manifold idea looks interesting. Especially in a GTO, because the gas tank is above the rear suspension. That blocks a lot of transfer into the cabin, where IB wouldn't have that problem. 1 12" IB still doesn't seem like much.

i don't think i would have enough room to do the manifold idea, it has to be a fairly shallow sub, and making it sit 2-3 inches lower would not help anything. Taking the factory sub out of the rear deck is supposed to make the sub in the trunk a bit more noticeable, but then i get to listen to the whine of the fuel pump which is directly under the factory sub.

so how much depth do you have? the spacer would need to only be 1.5 to 2.25 inches depending on the subwoofers excursion capability.

from a fucus to a goat... NICE!!!! lets see some pics!