[Silly Little Cars] How to get a ridiculously loud stereo in an Interceptor...

[Alec Bennett]

Hallelujia, R2D2 is officially obnoxiously loud, I just installed a 10"
subwoofer and two 6"x9" speakers. I put them under the seat, so they're
blasting at my ankles. I mounted the 6x9's vertically (so they're 9" tall)
and put the subwoofer inside that odd little storage compartment under the
seat. The amp is above the air filter, out of sight and hopefully out of
crackhead reach, controlled by one of the many dashboard switches that once
controlled the roof lights, and there's a headphone jack next to the seat
for an ipod or whatever. See the attached pic for a diagram.

I was a bit worried about the odd speaker angle, but so far so good. I
reserve the right to mount a couple of tweeters up high sometime in the
future though.

I really need to install an indicator light for when the amp is on, I've
already run my battery dead once from leaving it on overnight. Oops. Easy
enough to install though.

If any of the Bay Area folks are interested, I had the speakers installed by
Auto Tech on 5th & Harrison. I officially recommend them, they did a nice
clean job and included lots of extras like the spacer they had to fabricate
so the "passenger side" speaker would clear the air filter. They charged
$150, which included building the subwoofer box and sealing it up with
silicone. I tried cutting the speaker holes myself but the aluminum is super
thick and hard to cut, and plus I'm lazy. If you want to go the 6" round
speaker route, it's probably fairly easy enough using a hole cutter and
powerful drill, but watch out for that air filter...

Before going the Cadillac route I installed the amp and put a couple of
those little Radio Shack bookshelf speakers down in that storage compartment
under the seat, which sounded pretty good too. I attached long speaker wires
so I could put the speakers on the dash if I wanted, but they sounded fine
down in the box. But of course nothing compares to a nice punchy subwoofer.

As far as the amp, I'm a big fan of 4 channel Kenwood amps from the 90's
with built-in crossovers. This one is a Kenwood KAC-744 which I got used off
ebay for $70 or so, and to my ear it sounds great, and the best part is that
since its 4 channels (2 stereo pairs) you can set two of the outputs to
power the regular speakers (my 6x9's) and bridge the other two outputs to a
mono signal for the subwoofer. The built-in crossover sounds great, to me at
least.

Now the next time I get into the staredown with a metermaid at a traffic
light I can blast them out of the water with some Biggie Smalls that
properly rattles the sheetmetal.
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