LOTC

I have an aftermarket amp hooked to my box right now,but i want to get rid of the box becuase it is too heavy.

Is there a way to hook it up to the factory subwoofer.
My amp is already hooked up and i wanna know can this be done and can the factory subwoofer can take the abuse of the more powerful amp?

LOTC

I need to know if it will work first.If it does i think my amp might overload it,but i do not know how.If it works i will just turn the bass all the way down.

FusionMan79

As long as the impedance of the amp matches the impedance of the stock sub there's no reason it wouldn't work. You just have to be really careful not to give it too much power or you could blow it. I think that the stock amp provides something like 40 watts. The sub itself probably can't handle much more than 50 watts. I agree with epk, you should probably go with an aftermarket infinite baffle sub but there's really no harm in hooking your amp up to the stock sub. If you blow it, then you can justify getting a better quality aftermarket sub. Hope that helps.

LOTC

I think my 800 watt amp will blow it,but i will try it with the bass turned all the way down first.

But i need directions into how tho do this.It is the pionner 8in subwoofer.

Does anybody know how,the sub looks quite different than most after market sub which already have outlets to plug in the speaker wires from the amp,but i cannot find any on this pionner 8in sub.

FusionMan79

I believe that the original wiring is actually soldered to the factory sub. Look for the brown wires that run into the underside area of the sub. Just look in the trunk. I'm not sure if the terminals are on the underside or the top side. If they're on the top side you can just pop the sub cover away from the deck. You can see the clips popping through the rear deck into the trunk. Push up on those or pry it up from inside the car. You'll probably have to desolder the wires and resolder your amp wires to the sub. If you want to jerry-rig it you could just clip the wires soldered to the sub, strip them down a bit, clip the wires from your amp strip them down a bit and connect them with crimp style butt-joint connectors.

Like I said before you should be fine with your amp as long as you turn down all the levels controlling the amp volume. If you were able to turn the amp down all the way on your previous subs so that you couldn't hear any sound out of them, you'll definitely be fine. After you connect the amp, turn on the system, if you get any distortion (cracking, popping) with no volume, turn it off and disconnect it. Otherwise, ease up the volume on the amp very very gingerly and back off if you start to hear any distortion. If you can ease the volume up gently enough you'll get to the point where you hear a little bit of distortion, just back off a little from that point and that's the max volume your sub can handle. The speaker can handle a little bit of distortion but having prolonged distortion is what will blow it out, plus it sounds like s*** anyways with distortion. Hope this helps.

LOTC

I do not wanna do it work and not be able to get the factory sub working again because i cannot get the factory brown wires to connect back on to the sub cleanly.

I might just keep my stock 8in and buy two more 8in subs and have them on the left and right side of the stock sub and then i can have a total of 3 8in subs and still the total weight of that will be much lighter than a heavy box with 2 12in's.

LOTC

I dunno anybody know who makes 8in subs, i heard they are kinda rare to find.

tonka_ca

true. 8 in subs are hard to find. Why not just go with w 10 JL subs? with a box itll run you around 290

LOTC

tonk_ca i already had a box with 2 12in. JL's and i thought it's extra weight,slowed my car down a little.

I am looking for 2 free air 8in subs which i could hook up to my aftermarket amp,plus it would be lighter in weight as well.

SQ-LS

Pioneer and JL are the only free air subs I recommend.
You said your getting 2 of them, where are you going to put them?

LOTC

Loule i wanna put them to the left and right of the stock one,do you think this is possible?

Also do you think that will look wierd

SQ-LS

That would require you to cut a opening in the deck on both sides. Plus, you have to modify the carpet that goes on top of the frame. I don't recommend this at all.
I thought about this before I started on my wild project to have more holes so I can port sound through and we finally said no to the idea because of the rear stability issue. That is there to increase the rear stability and decrease the sway in the rear where your gas tank is.
Any holes cut in it, especially a 2 12" holes, will seriously increase sway in the rear on turns. Umh, no.
I highly don't recommend you doing this.
The only thing I would recommend is to just increase the existing hole where the factory sub is to fit one 12".

LOTC

I am talking about mounting two 8's of the exsiting stock 8in,wow this would cause all the.

Yeah maybe i might just stick a larger size in the stock 8in sub hole.

Ear Candy

You can pretty much do it how you would like. Anything is possible given the amount of time and your abilities.
If you hook up your amp to the factory sub, turn down the gains and give it absolutely no bass boost, you will be okay.

The impedance of the factory sub will most likely be higher then 4 ohms, so there for no need to worry, just turn down the gains to where you will not overdrive the sub.

The free-air set up will be a large improvement over the stock sub, but you will notice poor sub 40hz reproduction. Yes you can mount 2 8inch subs left and right of the existing sub. No you will not need to cut hole but the bass will not be are tight as it would be if you mounted them in the decklid. just use a bracket the would mount around the tank, (drawing a blank on the shape of the tank and underside of the decklid, if anyone has a pic of this please post it, as to induce my recall abilities)

Another option is to increase the diameter of the existing sub hole go with a bigger sub. Another still is dump the mdf box and build one from fiberglass. So long as you brace the box very well, you can get away fairly thin walls, 3/16 to 1/4 inch.

You best bet will most likely be replace the factory sub, with a nice free air or IB (infinite baffle), a hoard of companies make them. If you are good with your hands then try something more trick, it will definitely be worth it.

When you cut into your decklid, make sure not to cut into any factory cross bracing, but if you do make a strut brace like piece that will envelope the tank and the subs if you put them in the decklid.

LOTC

Still deciding on what to do,cut two more and have 3 8's in the back or replace the stock 8 for a bigger one.

Epk, a free air 18in sub will crack my winshield and my ear drums.:eek: