Just recently installed an audio system in the car and wanted to share. I am notoriously bad at documenting, so there are a lot of things I forgot to photograph along the way. To preface, I haven't ever done an actual "full" audio system before with a sub/amps/the like, just a basic speaker swap in the doors and a single DIN radio swap. I picked up this kit from HiFiSound, some speakers for in the doors, and an https://www.sonicelectronix.com/item-201932-Alpine-S2-A36F-New-Damaged-Packaging-Product-A.html to match the one included in the sub kit because I'm anal retentive and wanted matching amps. Found the amp available "new with damaged packaging" for like 20% off. Box looked perfect and everything inside was new.

I realized when it arrived that it didn't have the older S-W12D4 woofer like the listing said, but instead the newer S2-W12D4, thought that was cool especially since the sum of the parts of the kit was more than I paid. Box quality was pretty good, nothing to note.


Test fit in the car and it's nice and snug. There's about 1" of space on the top side, but that's great for running speaker wire up to the amp and tucking the excess down and out of the way.


I ran power through a rubber grommet under the battery, down the passenger side of the car and into the trunk. I ended up running the 6 channel RCA cable and 2 speaker wire runs there as well. It's a bit snug and the carpet has a bit of bulge, but if you don't know it's there, I don't think you'd notice.


I picked up a 2' x 4' sheet of 1/2" MDF for an amp tray. In retrospect, I would have gone with 3/4" for a bit more rigidity. I made a cardboard template of the area in the trunk where the spare tire goes and cut the MDF to shape. It's roughly 14" deep and 19.25" wide. I bought some grey felt online and with some 3M spray adhesive, covered the MDF to make it look a bit nicer. Cat litter plastic was supposed to peel away nicely but just stuck to the glue and pulled off the felt. I just re-glued and stapled it again. Hydraulic crimper was used on all power wiring along with heatshrink tubing.



I wanted to make sure the sub worked, so I ended up hooking up the system with the bare minimum to test it. The sub was a bit boom-y so I ordered some for later. I was originally planning on using the rear strut bar bolts as a ground but decided to pick up an M8-1.25 x 60mm bolt to replace the spare tire tie-down and use that as my ground. It's a solid ground connection and much cleaner. I have the amps mounted on 1" nylon spacers to help with airflow and to allow clearance for the ground bolt as the other amp is covering it. The 3 different colors of fabric irritates me but not enough to do anything about it. I also found Alpine sells a grille for the subwoofer so I picked that up as well so I don't accidentally damage it.


Power side of the install. I picked up some since the S2K isn't setup for additional battery hookups. I mounted the 150A fuse and holder to the divider panel with some Loctite. To protect the acrylic fuse holder a bit, I ended up covering the back side of the black divider panel with some gold heat tape I had sitting in my cabinet from a different project. You can can kind of see it, but there is an addition ground coming off the negative terminal that heads down near the battery tie-down. I was worried about how small the stock ground lead is on this car so I added a second, beefier ground from the battery terminal to one of the bolt on the battery tray.



Final amp hookup with some wire cleanup. I decided to get a power distribution block with some fuses and gave each amplifier an 80A fuse. I have the signal wire running into the right amp and then a second wire breaking off to give power signal to the left amp. Both amps have 1" nylon spacers under them and bolts fed up from the bottom so I can remove the amps without having to worry about nuts and lock washers on the bottom of the tray. I ended up not putting the decorative covers that the amps came with on, mostly due to space/access constraints.


Everything hooked up and tidied as best as I felt like doing. The section of 2x4 was cut to ~1-1/4" and acts as a support to prevent the grounding bolt from trying to pull the amp tray all the way down. There's another 2x4 @ ~1-1/4" block to act as a standoff for the coilover side. You can see in the pic with the tray upside down. You'll see there's a bit of bow in the final product, but it's snug on the 2x4 and everything is incredibly tight. I ended up having to unbolt the right amp to tighten the grounding bolt and then bolding the amp back to the board. It's a tight squeeze on this car. I could have avoided the amp sitting directly over the bolt if I made the tray about 1" wider; there's definitely space for it without any interference. But, it would cover the coilover adjustment knob and I wanted to avoid that.


Everything in its place and working. I found a switched 12V source for the signal wire for the amps so they power on and off with the vehicle. I have the wired to the front and tucked in the net in the passenger footwell. Added 1lb of polyfill to the sub enclosure, and it seems to have helped a bit. System sounds good, crossovers are set to 80Hz both, with a high-pass for the Polks.


I don't have any picks of mounting the Polks in the doors and I was too busy cussing up a storm pulling the speaker wire into the doors, but it's very straightforward. I used 3B VHB tape to mound the crossover boxes in the little cubbies in our doors, used round M/F crimp connectors for the speaker hookups. System sounds great so far. I haven't gotten to drive the car really since installing it thanks to work being so busy, but I'm glad it's done and it was fun to do and learn along the way.

ALSO, if you see something glaringly, horrendously bad about the install or how I did something, please please please let me know before my car burns down.

 

Looks like a great setup. I would like to do this some day but at the moment I mostly listen to audiobooks while driving if anything at all. I would like to do an exhaust first, then eventually an audio setup like this.

 

More often than not, I'm listening to the engine as a soundtrack. I've got the T1R 70R-EM Sparrow Dual, but it drones a bit around 3-4k RPM so some music is nice while cruising around.

 

I have this same issue in my 98 M3 with the UUC exhaust. Sounds amazing, but just drones like crazy around 3-4k. Totally off the subject of your original post but I wish there was a program where you could try multiple exhausts until you found the right one. Obviously there is no way to make this profitable but still.

 

I would have loved a program like that. I agonized so much over exhausts, and while I'm mildly disappointed this one drones, overall it sounds great so I'm happy enough with it.