Finally done. Thanks for everyone's help...
 

I chose to keep the stock HU for many reasons but mostly to keep this looking stock. Half way through the project I added in another source though and got an XM Roady when the prices dropped below $50. The center cubby makes a nice home for these. I cut some plexiglass at work and glued it together to make a bracket that wraps around the top lip of the cubby hole behind the door. Then I took apart the Roady vent mount and screwed part of it to the plexiglass, snapped on the cradle to the Roady and now can remove it whenever I want but it’s firmly in place in the dash. I ran an RCA cable back to the Cadence EQ for direct connection to its AUX input. I purchased a David Navone line converter for converting the HU signal for the EQ.
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The eq ended up behind me. Not my first plan but that’s where it fits. This was very easy to install here by pulling out the cubby and drilling holes in the back wall for RCA cables to pass through. It is also simple to run the cables below to the amp since there are factory holes in the sheet metal.

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I am running a Cadence VA600 4 channel amp in 3 channel mode. Two channels for the CDT components up front and one bridged channel for the 10.5LF Boston sub.

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Got the Bose cover to keep things cooler. The camera flash exposes the amp but normally with the seat back you can take a flash light and look around from outside the car and not detect a thing.

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I got a deal on these CDT CL-61A for half price a few months ago and they sound great. The spacers were hard to get right but I ended up locating the position towards the front of the car vs. stock and the magnet still fits deep into the door right next to the window. Once you make one side the other takes about 30 minutes. However, my experience was that the right side did not work until I added in the CDT trim ring on top of the MDF spacer. Something is not exactly the same! It’s very tight by the window but I guess I have more space between the door panel and the front of the speaker than some of you do. This is good since I now plan to mount the tweeters floating out in front of the woofer driver on a bracket. Temporarily, I had stuffed the tweeters down in the plastic pocket in the door and they sound OK. The left side is pretty much directly aimed at my ear, however the right is not really pointed towards me very much at all plus is blocked somewhat by the door panel (it is actually pointed at the passengers right ear since both sides are the same). Still they sound very good, just not 100% accurate imaging. Vocals are great and the soundstage is very decent and up high in front of me. Pretty much centered in front of me too. The one thing I seem to be lacking is the effect of some recordings that should sound much wider than the car boundaries. I also have not noticed much depth to the soundstage but not much of what I listen to have any of these qualities anyway. I will also have to drag my reference CD player out to the garage and patch it in to the EQ to determine if it is the quality of the stock HU that is holding the sound quality back. I tried to take the pictures to show the path to my ears by turning my head and taking the picture. First is left, second is right.

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I spent a lot of time putting a Boston Acoustics 10.5LF under the floor next to the spare tire in a custom made fiberglass/MDF box. It actually turned out great but I got a little lucky and changed my mind on things as it went to make it fit. Note that I moved the spare tire over to give me more room and that it fits almost flush with the factory false floor. I may show this in more detail on my web site later but ask any questions you want. I can post more pics too. Thanks to Gish and Dissident for the inspiration and all of the advice. Thanks to anyone else that has given me advice along the way, I greatly appreciate it! The center part of the grille sticks up about 1/16” or so above. I could improve it if I had to do it over again but there is no chance that is ever going to happen unless something goes wrong! I hooked it up and tried it out the first day and found out this works much better if the sub is wired out of phase. Makes a big difference!

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The main goal was a simple system with decent sound quality as cheaply as I could do it. The wiring could be neater but no one will ever see it except everybody here ;-) I just have no ambition to do it right now. I’m very happy with how it turned out and just need to look into some sound deadening now and remounting the tweeters.

Excellent setup bjr. Good to see it complete. I love CDT too..have you thought of just putting the tweets in the kicks and stagefront on the dash. It sounds great and lifts the image up nicely.

I ended up with the tweeters in the doors because I tried double stick tape on the kick panels and didn't notice any real difference. The kickpanel install would have been much more involved. I remember seeing some of your posts recommending aiming the tweets up and towards the back of the car. I also drove an Impala rental car this summer and was surprised how the stock stereo was trying to image. I ripped the grille off and found they had mounted the tweeter next to the woofer angled in a little pod toward my head. That's what inspired me to just stuff them in my door for now with tape. I'll wait and see what remounting them with a CDT braxial bracket. I need to call them and get them ordered. I never thought of doing this because I was afraid that if they aimed across the cabin too much that the listening positon would be way too off-axis. I'll keep the stagefront add-on in mind if I can't get it better soon. Is that what finally got things right for you? And was it only for raising the soundstage up or did it correct lots of problems?

The soundstage rerouted all freq's above 8.5k up to the ambient tweeters on the dash. The kick install put the main tweeters as far away from the ear as possible and as equal a distance from each ear as possible. I like the brazial design you are thinking of as it puts the tweeter on an exact axis path with the mid, but for me I liked the kick soundstage better. The Stagefront raises the stage up as if the highs are coming from above dash..very nice sound and if you get the 3/4" the whole upgrade is under $100.

Oh, that sounds like something to keep in mind for that price. Do you have any pics of the dash install? :icon38:

wow very stealthy...how does it sound under the carpet?? any vibrations from the carpet at all?

great and unique idea :)

I can't tell you for sure yet but I don't think I am having any problems with the carpet or plastic false floor. I have some buzzing and rattling going on because I have not put all of the panels back on yet and the ones on the strut brace are just laying there loose to make it look like I haven't been working on my car all summer :icon17: It definately does not seem to effect the sound at all. I'll have to wait and see if the floor causes problems and trim it where I have it marked with the black marker once I commit to what I want to try with sound deadening and get the panels locked down.
Of course keep in mind that a 10.5LF does not have 2 or 3" of excursion. I think it only has about 1.5" and I am only driving it with 150W so I am not moving as much air as others around here. Definately loud enough for me though. I am taking an SPL meter home this weekend to play around with tuning the EQ with some test tone CD's so I'll let you know what I am hitting with my volume turned up.

You gotta pump at least 300 to that BA! j/k ;-) Will take some pics of my dash for you but FYI I only bought CDT HD mids and 200US crossovers. I am using my original Diamond Audio 1" Tweets in the kicks and 3/4" Audiobahns on the dash..so really all you see when you look at my dash is 3/4" tweets in the manuf mounting cups pointing at the windshield..no custom mounts yet :-(

you should try mounting the Roady in the ashtray spot. Thats where i have mine and i love. Here's a few pics.
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That's a pretty convenient place to have it. What do you have it hooked up to and what are you doing for volume control? Like I said I didn't start out with this in mind and added it on. I ended up setting the audio out all the way up to 9 and then had to get a 6" long inline volume control from radio shack to act as my volume control. The EQ has a master volume control which is what I would have used I guess if I could reach it. Still separate from the HU though. I don't mind so far because of the much improved sound vs. the built in FM modulator.
Looks nice...

Looks great. I would keep the roady in the console and just make a plastic mount to cover all the wires and make it look stock.

I had not thought of covering them up really. I think that's exactly what it needs though. It turned out a little messier than I had pictured in my mind and most of it is because of the wires everywhere.

spent some time with a SPL meter
 

When I left from work Saturday I grabbed the SPL meter from the lab and headed home. The parking lot was empty, the excavating company next door had gone home, and the traffic from the highway around the corner was not bad. I placed the meter on the passenger seat and closed the doors.
60dB
Started the engine and it hovered beteween 80-90dB
Pulled out onto the first country road, 55mph speed limit. Asphalt, slightly bumpy. Averaged around 105dB. This car is as noisy as I thought it was! A couple of times I held the meter up pointing towards the hatch and got 113dB readings. (The meter has a max. hold function.) I have always felt like most noise was coming from behind me and I guess this confirms it. At WOT from stop signs it peaks at 115dB on the front seat. During this time I turned on the new stereo and cranked it up until it was as loud as I have had it plus 2 more notches. It was starting to sound a little strained but not really distorted. I don't know what it is capable of if it was set up ideally but it peaked out at 127dB! Not bad.

Next road is an old asphalt highway (55mph) that just got repaved completely. I noticed that oncoming traffic creates peaks in the readings. Without cars coming at me, this road averaged around 95-100dB.

Next came the bypass. This is a concrete 70mph highway that averaged 105-110dB. It has lots of expansion joints for the stock rubber to smack against and one very noisy bridge. The bridge only reads about 2dB higher despite the terrible increase in tire howl across the bridge.

Another asphalt 55mph highway got 105dB average but has lots of seams for the tires to slap against. Holding peaks again, some of those bumps in the road created 118dB peaks!

Last major road. Asphalt major 4 lane road into town. Pulled out into the construction zone right away, 40mph 96-100dB. Increased to 100-104dB after construction and speed went back to 50mph. After a few miles it chages to concrete and there is no real difference in dB even though there is a dramatic increase in tire howl. Not sure why.

cool use of the meter! Exactly why I believe Sound proofing (not just dampening) is so important. Unless you want to enjoy your music only at extreme volumes, the road noise creates too high of a noise ceiling stock.