Ive been wanting to upgrade my audio in my 84 fiero. I've replaced the dash speakers, but I want to put some subs in it. I've read up on some peoples ideas, and have seen some products such as the tlg, and the west coast box. But they want an arm and a leg for them. Whats my best bet for setting up a subwoofer, without spending a lot of money and losing space? And ideas are welcomed.

quote Originally posted by Dmbowers98: Ive been wanting to upgrade my audio in my 84 fiero. I've replaced the dash speakers, but I want to put some subs in it. I've read up on some peoples ideas, and have seen some products such as the tlg, and the west coast box. But they want an arm and a leg for them. Whats my best bet for setting up a subwoofer, without spending a lot of money and losing space? And ideas are welcomed.

Unfortunately, its sort of a give or take... I did both, spent too much money, and take up lots of space. I built my 15" box from scratch, and the center console is a West Coast Fiero unit.





You could put in a "Performance Sound" sub box and Tang Band 5.25" sub. My dad's 86 has this setup with a stock 1986 amp and it works really well actually. He has the late model Grand Prix GT stereo now, but here is a video of that setup before the new radio. It definitely makes a difference, but it doesn't rattle the mirrors....

Do you think I could get away with making a box similar to yours, only using a shallow mounted sub and making it a little thinner?

6.5" or 8" at most, and mounted under the dash in a custom enclosure, designed to fit and mount where the factory sub mounts.

You can retrofit a stock performance sound amp and wiring into your car, and power it that way. It won't be the best in the world, but it will be cheap, won't lose you any space, and will sound decent. If you've got decently good speakers for the rest of the speakers in your car, then this will sound roughly as good as the factory Bose setup in a new Silverado, depending on speaker size, quality, and box design.

I had a JL 6w0 mounted under the dash, powered by the factory performance sound amp, for 8 years. It worked great, and provided a decent amount of low end fill, but it won't shake the neighbor's trees.

It does sound good, is easy to install, and is pretty cheap, though. You can use a small aftermarket amp that is matched properly to what the sub you choose needs, and it will provide a lot more thump (the factory amp is like 20-25W RMS), and you can still do it easy and cheap.

quote Originally posted by Dmbowers98: Do you think I could get away with making a box similar to yours, only using a shallow mounted sub and making it a little thinner?

Yes I definitely think you could. I'd recommend it too. Build your box out of 1/2" MDF, instead of 3/4". Also, you could make it essentially half the mounting depth with a shallow 10". If you don't have the skills or time to learn glass (like me), I'd just cut and build this one out of MDF. It will really only cost you $50 max.

Thanks! I'm gonna go ahead and try that! I'll post pictures after its done!