alright,

as a bit of a car audio nut, i am not happy with the stock location of the speakers in the 240. ideally in a car audio setup we want the sound arriving at our ears at approximately the same time, at the same levels. thus we want our speakers to be as close to the same distance from our (the drivers) ears to make the music sound crisp and clear.

the 240 as we all know has probably the worst possible speaker placement for a car, as the left speaker is significantly closer to the driver than the right. we can change this by creating a new mounting location in the lower door, using the current map pocket and mounts that are existing. using the map pocket will retain the volvo(ish) design, but is a little more complicated than moulding this right into the door. i want these to be removable, as i who like to drive beaters dont know how long im going to be keeping my current car.


anyways, lets begin.


first you will need your materials:



Fiberglass resin
Fiberglass matte
Cheap, disposable brushes
Disposable gloves
Popsicle sticks
Bondo or other body filler
Spot Putty (if you plan on painting)
a few meters of cheap polar fleece (thicker is generally better and stronger)
mdf - 5/8ths is usually good for this

these can be had at canadian tire or wal mart, wal mart is the far cheaper option, they will have the fabric too at about half the price of a normal store. i got all this for about 60 - 70 bucks

you will also need a fume type respirator and saftey glasses, you can get this at the home depot for about 50 bucks, you see me wearing them.



tools you may need:

i had access to a full industrial wood shop at school, so not all of this is nessisairy, just better for a more precise finish.

table saw/circular saw
bandsaw/jigsaw
drill w/ holesaws
mitre saw

okay, to start,

saftey saftey saftey, this crap is toxic, very toxic, so a fume type respirator is an absolute MUST!!! i cant stress this enough, also wear gloves and glasses, this shit is nasty. also dont use anything that sparks near this stuff, its like napalm. be careful. and lastly dont do this inside, you need ventilation, i did it in the garage with all the windows and doors open.


remove your door pockets, if you have major cracks like i did you will have to repair them, fiberglass is a good option for this as it will cure harder and more stable than the plastic is in the first place



start your repair by cutting the fiberglass matte into squares



next support or line up your cracks so they dont sag and cure unevenly or so the whole peice bows (this is bad, it wont fit back on the car if this happens, see later because thats what happened to mine)


mix some resin in a disposable container following the instructions on the can, the more hardener, the faster it will harden. and it will harden under water and in solvent, so wear shitty clothes.



next, brush some resin onto the area to be repaired, then lay matting over the crack, saturate the matte with the resin, continue laying matte, making sure to overlap each peice untill the area to be repaired is covered. let this cure for a few hours or at least untill hard before proceeding.



we are going to enforce the plastic with more matte and resin, as time has made the plastic brittle, we dont want it cracking down the line and ruining our little project. so continue coating the outside of the panel in matting and resin, dont cover the larger map pocket, we will be cutting this out later.




the finished, enforced map pocket, this will be our base for the next step.



that is all for now, ill update this thread later when i get more time, as other projects for school are in the way right now.

feedback is welcome.

My feedback? Somewhere in my 20 years of car stereo modification, I've come to the realization that it's pretty much pointless to try and get good imaging in a car, and in my 10 years of Volvo driving, I've come to the reailzation that getting GOOD sound in a Volvo is tough. The closest I've ever come to GOOD sound came in a 240... using the stock speaker locations. MBQuart 4" coaxials (the old style, with the 3/4" titanium dome tweeter), 3 way'd with a set of 8" speakers in the doors (elminating map pockets entirely and building pods out of MDF), and a pair of 10" subs in the trunk. I basically threw imaging and staging out the window in favour of balance and response. It also only sounded GOOD when cranked right up, drowning out the rest of the noisy-as-hell 240.

Keep in mind that if you're going to mount the speakers low in the doors, you're going to hate the way it sounds when you install a passenger. Their legs will completely block the speaker.

If you're really serious about sound quality, you'd probably want to investigate one of the ways of delaying the 4 channels individually, as well as modifying the outputs of each channel. It would be far easier to do that than to search out the PERFECT locations for speakers, which incidentally can move much higher in the car (avoiding leg and coat interference)

Also, the best imaging (in my opinion) without electronic help comes from properly designed kick panels, which I'm not about to go through the trouble of designing in a car that's going to have muddy winter boots bashed against them, especially one where I'd have to relocate the fuse box.

I've got a set of USD Waveguides that I bought for my 240 but never used. I'm damn curious to know what they'd sound like with a good set of midbass, but they aren't going to be easy to deal with in my 780. I might try one day, though.

Cool project...but how do you calculate the volume of this sort of enclosure ? In my experience, there is little point in trying to make your car listening environment perfect - you just can't get it there. Better is good enough for most. Getting some better speakers installed up front and getting the rear ones to fire more at your ears instead of at the rear window is a great start.

Next up would be to take care of the resonance of the tin can that you're putting the speakers into, not to mention the vibration of the speaker enclosures themselves (you've got that down). The speaker makes the sound not the box, so make those map pockets stiff. When I built the speaker pods for the Canuck, I made them all out of 3/4 MDF. the rear pods are very stiff as to get the pitch I wanted for them I basically made a multi layer sandwich of MDF and added a few wedges to get the angle I wanted. They are over an inch thick on the sides.

hahaha, "install a passenger" i love it,

yes i realize that this is not "perfect" imaging, Nor that the lower door pods are 'better' than kickpanels. i understand that. im simply creating these things to be removable, while retaining some sort of map pocket, having fun while trying to make my "tin can" sound just a little better. cant help feel a little hostility here.... ive got this stuff laying around doing nothing. id rather have my equipment in my car where i can use it and enjoy it. if its the tutorial bit in the line, please by all means continue for me, im just sharing my little bit of experiance here with everyone... thats what these things are all about... no?

HEY!!! No hostility from us at all. You asked for feedback, Craig & I supplied it. I only wanted to point out, with only suspecting where you were going, what could disappoint you when you were done. I've done lots of this stuff, and lower door installs are the worst for SQ and versatility, despite their theoretical "advantages" in imaging and phase control.

You've got goals in mind, and that's what counts. Improve SQ by installing bigger/better speakers, check. Build removable, stock-appearing pods, check. Keep it in budget, check.

Keep it up on the tutorial, you're doing fine.

Ya, especially for us tards who don't know nothin about ANY of this stuff!




like me...

You got it...no hostility was meant on my part - I was just giving an opinion. Free for the asking - free to ignore. The only point Matt and I were making was that getting an audiophile listening environment in a car is difficult - it just doesn't work given the dynamics of the environment. I'm sure you know this - we were just noting it.

I've designed several speaker systems for home audio and have spent hours fiddling with passive and active crossovers, enclosure design, material resonance and speaker selection for cars as well. My home speakers have front baffles that are over 1.5" thick and have a double lined enclosure filled with a variety of things like neoprene, carpet, egg crate foam, and various bits of wood placed carefully to ensure that the vent operates correctly. My crossovers for these things cost more than my first car! In other words we have some experience.

I think the project is cool and that's all that matters. If you're goal is good sound then I would list making the doors, roof, trunk and anything else that resonates when struck or that has a speaker mounted to it as vibration free as possible. That's why Dynamat works - it dampens vibration.

For your pockets - just try to make them stiff so that if you knock on them, they don't make a sound. Some internal MDF bracing would be a good idea with holes to allow for air movement. All speakers are designed to operate in a given volume of air (either vented or non vented) and only sound good when optimized. Thus my comment on calculating the volume of the pocket.

Thanks for the update - keep up the good work.

well thanks, i was a little worried.


anyways, the equipment that is going into the car are rockford power t621s, 6.5 components, with the tweeters firing across the windshield from the a-pillars, they are powered by a pheonix gold xenon amp putting a true 100 rms into these speaks.

i had them in a accord with the tweets in the upper door panels, and the mids in the stock location (lower door) and i was seriously blown away. considering that the mids had no sealed compartments.

i may consider putting in some 4in mids to complete the frquency response in the stock location. funny, i saw some mb quart mid bass 4s online for a reasonable price.

here: http://www.woofersetc.com/index.cfm?fus ... ct_ID=5079

or here: http://www.woofersetc.com/index.cfm?fus ... ct_ID=1558

anyhoo, good to see all the volvoers are as cool as i had hoped.

sounds like a neat idea, I was actually toying with a similar idea a while ago as it was hard to find any decent speakers that could replace the ones in the doors. I am terrible at fiberglass work though so it held me back from attempting it. I like the idea of the tweeters on the a pillar as well. are you going to put them in their own pods? If so you should do up a tutorial on making a pillar gauge pods as well , its something i've always wanted to do in my 240.

yes, i will be covering the a-pods as well. now i will be covering subs too... as i just got these for 50 bucks a pop



any sub suggestions, id like to do 2 10s, ill be upgrading to a bigger amp and more powerful subs later, was thinking along the line of these...

http://www.woofersetc.com/index.cfm?fus ... ct_ID=4613

or these

http://www.woofersetc.com/index.cfm?fus ... ct_ID=3171

12w3s are also an option, for about 60 more a pop, for the money the quarts would rock my socks off and sound awesome.

the amps put out 300rms at 2ohms, so one per sub.

ok, lets carry on.


so once all the fiberglass has set, trim out the map pocket lika dis... and all the excess fiberglass around the outside, you will be very itchy after.



now decide on the speaker position.



cut a baffle out of 5/8ths or 3/4 mdf to fit the back of the plastic, the pre 86 ones are easier to do than the post 86m i had both so i did both, dont think i have pics of each.



fiberglass that in place using the matte



Now cut a ring of mdf to the diameter of the speaker, the rounder you can get it the better it will look. i did mine using a bandsaw and a large industrial sander, but a jigsaw will work too, a little trick to use is to find the centre of the circle and screw it to a workbench hanging half over the edge, simply rotate the wood while holding the jigsaw still, this makes the cutting alot easier. leave about 3/4 of an inch around for the speaker to mount to.



now staple or hot glue these in place using small strips of wood, this frame will hold the shape untill our fiberglass sets.



the next step is to stretch that fleece fabric over the form we just created, if your not happy with the shape underneath, just do a little trimming. secure this on the back with hot glue, you dont need to stretch the crap out of it, just tight enough so the rinkles go away, those will be harder to fix later so get them out now, it might take a couple tries to get this right.



now simply mix more resin, and SATURATE the fabric, dont just coat it, put as much as the fabric will take, thats why i used thicker fleece, so it would take more resin, thus being less prone to flex.

let that cure up, and trim all the extra fabric from the back.

ill get to the a-pods next update.

Fleece - excellent trick.

yes, its hard as hell too now, i coated the inside after to make sure it dosent flex, and believe me it dosent move much at all

Fleece IS a good trick. I haven't fiberglassed very much and I hadn't heard that one.

For the MBQuart 4"ers, keep in mind that they're very deep, even for a 4". I ended up needing to shim them 5/8" off the door panel to get the magnet to clear the window.

With the midrange and the tweeter so far apart, you're going to have a really tremendous separation problem. You really want to keep the tweet & midrange close together if you can. I've fallen down on this detail many times, simply due to available space. I actually have the tweets on the A pillars in my current car, but with the mids partway up the door it's not SO bad. Still noticable since you can still clearly hear the crossover point, but not as bad as some of the sins I've committed.

Going back on what Craig was talking about, enclosing a midrange speaker rarely does good things for it. Most of these are designed to be infinite baffle, so all you should concentrate on is attenuating the sound behind the speaker. If you will be doing this with an enclosure, you should probably use the biggest one you can physically fit, and use lots of dampening material within. Remember, the rear wave can bounce back and influence the motion of the cone if not correctly dealt with...

For your subs, whatever woofer you choose should depend on what music you listen to. If you're an ex-rave DJ, I'm going to go ahead and assume you listen mostly to stuff that'll make my ears bleed, and will want a lot of response in the 60-80 hz range, without trying to reporduce anything really deep. A ported enclosure will maximize your power & response, so long as you don't want to go below about 35-40 hz. I've got a ported 10 in my car right now and hate it, because it's uncontrolled when trying to play "natural" bass frequencies. Granted, I'm trying to make do with only a single 10... that'll teach me!

If I've got you pegged wrong, you'd probably be happiest with a sealed enclosure. You'll get a little bit less output, but a much smoother one and more extreme-deep bass without fear of running the speaker/enclosure below any "tuned" frequency and overextruding the driver. The MBQuart has a pretty low Fs, and would be excellent in a sealed box.

matt,

i forgot to mention that i have a bulk pack of dynamat lying around, the inside of the speaker boxes will be dynamatted especially behind the speaker. in my girlfriends truck we have a lower door location with the tweets in the a-pillars, it sounds amazing and dosent seem seperated, but we will see in the brick about that. ill keep it in mind.

for the sub i like sealed. i like musical subs. my first enclosure was 2 ported 10s, good for hip hop etc, but sucked for jazz, rock, electronic (not techno) etc, so sealed is my def choice, i had 2 10w1s with a 250/1 in my car after that and enjoyed it immensely, minus that it didnt hit hard enough so more power is in order. i would like to try cramming 2 10s in the empty butt cheek in the wagon, ill get back to you on how that goes, looks like it will take a bit of fitting and designing but im up to the challenge, and think i have a good plan for it as is. after i finish these and the write up ill start on that project, as im waiting on a freebie deck from my buddy.