So far i'm about a week in and got about $50 into this.

A little background - Prior to me getting out of college, I worked as an installer. I was MECP advanced certified and still am to this day. I've seen my share of great installs, and some that should have burned a car to the ground.

I bought my car last fall and am just now getting to fixing the stereo. PO had some crappy flea market "thump" amp under the drivers seat. That was the first to go. Here's the equipment i'm using:

Pioneer 4x6 dash speakers (these were already in the car, i'm going to glass my dash this winter and mount up some components at that time)
Pioneer D series 6x9
Fusion 4 channel amp - will power the rear 6x9's and my 10 inch sub
Kenwood 10 inch sub

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My rear side panels aren't in the best shape. Rather than replacing, i decided to glass in an enclosure into the passenger rear well.

I began by gutting everything out. I discovered a pack of 80's newports and a few old fan belts in this area. Score!



Then, I taped off the well area.

 

After taping the area off, i took some spray glue and LIGHTLY misted the tape and put down my aluminum foil. I do this to stop any resin from seeping through. This stuff is NASTY so its best to be safe.



After the foil is complete, i applied another small mist of spray glue and put some fiberglass mat down.

 

I mixed up about 2.5 quarts of resin across 4 different mix cups. I only added hardener to the one that i was working with to give me more working time.

I laid down about 3 layers of mat and went through every drop of resin that I poured. So far I have about 24 square feet of mat in my mold.



As you can see I had a little part of the mat fall down on itself, no big deal. It's easier to cut than it is to re-glass.



Make sure you wear a respirator when laying this stuff in an enclosed area like this. I was in outer space after about an hour.

 

are you only doing the one side or both?

 

I am only going to do the once side. Here's why:

If I were to put a sub on the drivers side as well, it would be facing the other sub. When subs are aimed at each other like that, a lot of frequencies will cancel and it'll sound like poop. You would either have to wire one speaker in reverse polarity so the speakers push and pull together as opposed to working against each other.

For sealed enclosures, i don't think that's the best way to go about a wiring configuration.

 

Oh I didn't know that.
Looks like I learned something new thank you

 

is the sub enclosure gna take away the ability to use your trunk? will you be able to close the well lid with this build?

 

My car does not have a well lid.

 

Whatever happened with this, did you finish?

 

Since then I've popped out the mold and its sat in the garage rafters. I changed out my weatherstrip but in process, the door panels disintegrated.

Long story short, I switched gears and went to finish the interior before building an enclosure. Realistically I may do something a little different.

 

OP, how deep did you go down in the spare tire well? I am trying to do this right now and after looking into it a bit, i am afraid if i go down to far, when i pop the mold out it will be stuck in there. My sub only needs 1 cubic foot so i do not need a lot of space.

 

Frank, i was able to go all the way to the bottom. The resin will not stick to the floor so long as you seal it off well enough. I used tape, then aluminum foil and none seeped through. I was able to pop my mold out but it fought me pretty bad on the far right side.

If i did it again, i would use MDF and square it off inside the well area. From there, i'd cut my ring into the factory panel and use the fleece / resin method to seal. The resin soaked mat didn't want to stay vertical once saturated. It'd be much easier to mock it up and do it outside of the car. Just my .02

 

Thanks for the info, I was going to make the base out of MDF, not using the deep part of the spare tire well, but after playing with that idea for a few days, i am just going back to all glass. Nothing is square in that area at all, so i think it will be better, but like i said just worried about being able to pop out the mold...

 

You can pop it out as long as you don't go too high on the far right side. I did, and had to cut a little bit.

My advice is to go thin when it's in the car. You may need a little flex to get it out.

 

What if you had molded the bottom and the lower sides and then made a frame out of thick dowel rod or 1x1 and then wrapped that in cloth and put your resin on that and then a layer of fiberglass cloth? think that would have worked?

 

Probably would have! I should have run some dowel rod to staple up some fleece

 

(subscribed). I LIKE this idea. I would like to do something similar down the road and am anxious to see how it comes out. Nothing like Trial & Error as it's a one off...


BTW... Car in the sig looks Good! Any more pix. Wheels are 18"?

 

I pretty much messed up and scrapped the idea. This is the route I went. Not as cool but I decided to go for functionality over form.