Well.
Its in.
And its fitted in quite nicely, thought i say it myself *chuffed*.
Basically, I had to think this one through quite carefully, since the car is a company car, and I cant make any permanent modificatons - so this means no drilling holes, or adding flux capacitors, Mr Fusion fuel systems, y'know.
I did take loads of pictures of what I did (so If anyones interested - now or in the far distant future from now - just drop me a line on aristonowl[at]hotmail[dot]com and I'll provide pictures where I can. I dont have a webserver I can post things onto - and I cant be botherd with flickr and stuff.. so rather than post pictures that will resut in broken links in a few weeks, if you want the pictures (even if youre reading this in 2019AD.. just let me know).
So - how was a sub (in this case, a Pioneer TS-WX77A 200W [100W RMS] ) subwoofer installed?
If you are reading this and this is your first time ever attempting this (like it was for me) - then prepare yourself - I found installation fiddly.. do-able - but fiddly. You are going to need a complete Saturday - or a decent chunk of the weekend anyway.
1) If you dont have a amp/sub wiring kit - you are going to need to get one first before you even begin. (The TS-WX77A comes with one).
Wiring kits are basically the positive power line, the negative return cable (usually a lot shorter than the postive supply line), and the audio cables to supply the amp/sub/whatever with the audio signal.
2) Dont get the amp/sub (from now on - going to refer to this as the sub... its what I was putting in) out of its box yet - your mission at this point is to muck about with cables - this will be the majority of the install effort - once the cables are in the back of the car - youre 80% done.
3) Look inside your engine - and try to see where the cable can go through the wall/bulkhead/firewall/whatever-it's-called that separates the engine compartment from the interior cabin. With most cars (I did my installation on a 2006 VW Polo 9N3 1.4 TDi) there are little portals for cables to go through to the cabin from the engine bay - "Grommets" (well, actually grommets are the rubber covers that plug them up.. but you know what i mean). Most of these will already be used - not all of them though. More grommet points are available than needed because different grommets are used depending on whether the car is Left Hand Drive or Right Hand Drive. You are looking for a grommet that is hopefully completely clear, or has a small cable going through it.
Polo 9N3: As you may have read in this thread (and others) there seems to be 3 approaches here for STEP 3:
a) Go via the grommet located near the ABS Pump. (The ABS pump looks a little like a large SLR camera - do a google image search to see what i mean)
b) Go via the grommet located near the top right of the engine bay (as you stand in front of the car) , near the bottom right corner of the windscreen - a little rubber bung that can be easily pulled out revealing a hole.
c) Go via the grommet located in a similar position to (b) - but on the drivers side.
(b) and (c) are on the very edge of the engine bay.
(a) means that the cable that you put through there will arrive in the front passenger footwell
(b) means that the cable will arrive somewhere behind the stuff thats behind the front passenger glovebox
(c) means that the cable will arrive somewhere near the engine bonnet release lever.
(a) is tricky and you'll end up faffing around for ages
(b) means removal of the glove box (for noobs like me - this was a 90min hassle)
(c) is so insanely hard, i wouldnt even consider it.
The problem you'll have with (b) and .. well lets not even really consider (c).. the problem you'll have with (b) is that getting the power cable in the grommet isnt a problem, (its the easiest to get to from the engine bay) but getting the cable into the cabin is really hard because you will have to remove the glove box (which requires a Torx T20 screwdriver bit) in order to even have a hope of getting the thing out. And its an awkward bugger, because if you try it, you'll find that not only do you have to undo the T20s that you can see, theres a few hidden underneath the flat panel-thing on the front passenger footwell, directly underneath the glovebox. Youll end up with 1,000,000 T20 screws.. and then you'll realise that trying to get the power cable from the engine to behind the glovebox is effing hard. After about 60-120mins, if youre still unsuccessful - you'll end up just going for (a) .. which is what I did.
Ok.
So.. we have selected (a) as our way in to the cabin of the car.
Get the power cable out of the wiring kit (it should have a fuse attached to it - something like a 50A or higher fuse). The fuse is there to make sure that your audio kit doesnt end up causing a problem for the car (ie: electrical short that might start a fire, etc), not necessarily protecting your audio kit. Start threading the cable, the-end-that-will-eventually-connect-to-the-sub first (because the fuse wont fit through the grommet so you cant start inside the car and push the cable into the engine bay).
I found that the end of the cable had this female plastic/metal-end thing, which actually made that part of the cable slightly too fat to get through the grommet - but persevere - it will eventually go through. The ABS-Grommet (Grommet A, above) already had a cable running through it, so i just pulled back the rubber shielding on the cable (ie: the grommet itself), and by wiggling and rocking my new power cable and the existing cable, i managed to get the power cable to be sort of wedged inside the grommet hole, but i couldnt push it in any further.
A quick peek inside the car showed the cable was starting to poke through (you will need to pull back about 30cm of passenger-footwell carpet to reveal the cabin-side of the grommet), grab a pair of pliers and pull the cable through. Once the fat plasticy bit of your new power cable is through, the rest of the cable will glide through really easily.
Pull most of the cable inside the car, but leave about 100cm of cable in the engine so you can continue to work with it. You need to :
1) Securely fasten the engine-end of the power cable to the positive terminal of the battery
2) Use cable-ties to secure the cable away from the engine - especially anything majorly mechanical that moves.
3) allow enough slack in the cable so that the cable has a "U" in its shape - but the U should be LOWER than the grommet hole. This is a drip-loop - stops water running down your cable and into the cabin. Doesnt need to be massive - say - the U should be about 3-5cm lower than the grommet hole.
4) check your power cable is secure and has no chance getting wrapped around the engine
5) check your power cable terminal has no chance at all of ever touching the negative pole of the battery, or touching bare metal of the car (this would make a short circuit ... = bad thing)
At this point, this should be all your work pretty much done in the engine bay (aside from any tidying up tweaks later at the end maybe) and all further work should now be in the cabin or the boot.
At this point, its probably worth pointing out that in my case, I did a semi-permanent install (ie: I made sure I could easily rip the kit out again and leave the car exactly as I found it, as its a company car so I cant make any permanent modifications, drill holes, etc). Normally, it is convention to have the power cable go down one side of the car under the door sill trims, and the audio lines go along the other side of the car. This prevents interference being generated in the audio lines by the power line. This happens if the cables run alongside each other for a while, so technically, the less this happens, the less likely you are to hear huming or buzzing. As mine was a semi-permanent install, i ran the power cable along the side of the gearbox and along to the handbrake - hiding the cable under the plastic trim there. Did the same thing with the audio lines, but on the other side. This did mean that the cables were running parallel, and separated by only 15cm - but I havent picked up any hum/buzz whatsoever in my sub (dont know if this would apply with normal speakers though..probably would).
The wiring kit that came with the TS-WX77A was comprehensive - blue remote-control lines (this was the electronic on/off switch for the sub. When the headunit is swtiched on, a signal is sent down the remote-control line to turn the sub on, and when its switched off, another signal is sent to turn the sub off) audio lines , and a gain/variable-crossover remote control cable. So theres quite a few cables to deal with. Using cable-tidies really does save the day and makes for a much better job than a tangled mess of cables everywhere. Also makes routing the cabling easier, as you only have 1 collection-of-cables and 1 power cable to handle. (I found it works well if you use cable-tidies every hand-span distance, so every 5cm or so).
In order to keep everything tidy and secure, ive got some heavy duty velcro strips, the 50mm-wide stuff. This way, i could velcro the cables to the car carpet, stopping them from going everywhere - which also makes things dead easy to remove again when the time comes. These velcro strips are also a brilliant and really effective way of securing the sub unit itself inside the boot. Pioneer supplied some bolts and straps which i didnt like the look of, so I just ran 2 loops of velcro around each end of the sub, and velcroed that to the boot floor. Its rock solid, it aint going anywhere, and it doesnt look rubbish either.
Apart from tidying everything up (which i'll leave out) , it was then a matter of finding a decent earth point in the back of the car. Any structural bare metal of the car's is connected to the negative terminal of the car battery. So - by touching metal - youre connected to the negative terminal and completing the circuit. This saves having to run 2 cables everywhere in the car, you only need to supply one (the positive link).
In the 2006 Polo 9N3, there are 4 metal luggage/stowage rings. I suppose I could have used those, but they look painted, and I remember reading somewhere that painted metal isnt really the best way to do things as it might result in a scruffy connection, and either to sand painted bits down (not an option for me) or find a non-painted thing to connect to.
Found one. In the boot, I pulled back the wall-carpeting behind the nearside rear tail-light. There is what looks like a fire extinguisher holder thing with a rubber strap. It is secured to the body of the car with Torx T20 screws. Theres 2 of them. So i took that off, which revealed a bolt i could put my earth terminal on (it was a metal Y-shaped-"ring" on the end of the negative wire from the sub, so it needed to be screwed onto a bolt) then i screwed the fire-extinguisher stuff back in place, stuffed the wall-carpet back in place, hooked up the audio lines to the sub and the head unit, hooked up the sub remote cable to the back of the head unit (otherwise the sub never hears the signal to turn on) and finally, finally FINALLY played some audio through it.
Even though i havent changed the basic component speakers in the Polo, the sub takes over most of the heavy lifting, leaving the VW OEM speakers to handle everything over 125Hz, so they are now mid range and tweeters in effect, leaving the sub to do the difficult low stuff. If your head unit has an Graphic Equalizer Auto EQ system, i really recommend using it so that the tonal settings are just right - made a massive difference to the sound.
Sub-wise, it really does sound amazing. Considering the sub is "Only" 100W RMS (advertised as 200W PMPO, but we ignore those..
) it doesnt half shunt some bass.
Some tracks really show it off better than others, depending on how they were mixed I suppose, but here are the ones that gave me a smug grin:
Cascada - Evacuate the Dance Floor
Metallica - Whiskey in the Jar
Guillemots - Kriss Kross
Manic Street Preachers - Little Baby Nothing
U2 - Magnificent
I really cant see what a higher powered sub could have possibly delivered that this 100W little monster isnt. The volume of a car cabin isnt that much - a few cubic metres of air at the most - so a 100W sub is going to be more than competent at dealing with that - you can really feel the power of the sub right in your chest - and even feel a definite kick in the back of the chair.
Couldnt recommend this sub enough. Small, well powered, convincing and still leaves boot space. Sounds good
and practical
Expensive though - but worth it. It'll last for years and years.
So.. feeling a little bit inspired now. Maybe in a few weeks, I might just attack the head unit again, but this time cable in another speaker, wired up to generate a Hafler-effect (outputting the difference between left and right speakers by connecting the speaker to Left+ and Right+ speaker terminals - if you havent done this - i recommend it, done this loads of times)
Well, think thats the end of this Epic.
Just a quick thank you to everyone who has replied to my posts and helped me out - really appreciated - it would have been a lot harder and taken me a lot longer without the advice in these forums and also the help in my threads - so thanks again everyone. Ive written this up as a reference point for anyone else like me who is putting this in for the first time, hopefully it might help them out!
As a final note - if anyone out there is thinking about getting one of these flat subs, or even this particular Pioneer one I got - theyre quite expensive - so if you want to see what theyre like before splashing about - drop me a line aristonowl[at]hotmail[dot]com and if youre near Leicester, Id be quite happy to demo it. Same applies if anyone wants to see the wiring, and what I did , etc etc.
Thanks again everyone!
-Si
