Right, Sub out and wired as above, everything put back in and working.....sort of!
I can feel the sub vibrating but there's no definite improvement in bass in the car. The vibration of the sub is detectable but not substantial. I know the amp works with a 4ohm rear door speaker so I guess the sub is past it's best so it's hand in the pocket time for a new one?
I'd like to mount one on the shelf as OE so as not to take up boot space. I haven't got a massive budget so any suggestions would be appreciated (don't mind a used one as long as it works!).
Yes, I'm not hugely surprised by that. I think MB sometimes get their speakers from a jumble sale and then ask a top audio specialist to do something with them.
Well, at least you've reached a stage where you have tried what you already had and you've lost nothing but a bit of time but gained a fair bit of experience.
Found a Boss Phantom 10" Sub on eBay - any good?
Boss Audio D10F - 10" Shallow Mount Car Subwoofer 800W Max Power
- Slim, compact 10" (25cm) shallow-mount subwoofer
- Maximum output power 800 Watt
- Nominal output power 400 Watt
- Cone Material: Poly Injection
- Magnet Structure: 60Hz
- Frequency response 35Hz-2.2kHz
- Sensitivity (1W/1m) 94 dB
- Impendence: 4-ohm (Single Voice Coil)
- Mounting Depth: 3-3/8"
I wouldn't mind fitting it as you have done yours but would prefer fitting it as the OE one.
Never heard of them but to be honest so I would guess they are at the budget end of the market - so I couldn't comment on whether they are any good or not.
Nothing wrong with that sort of thing and for the money, you may as well take a punt on something like that as the amp is not premium either.
Sometimes budget stuff can produce good results and you've spent bugger all which is nice.
I had some great results with budget 6" x 9" eliptical full range speakers, running from a fairly decent head unit, in a MK4 1986 Escort (my 2nd car back in 1995 on a budget!). So many people thought I had a subwoofer but I couldn't be bothered to install one so that was nice...
Anyway, the key thing here is your amp produces 1 x 180 Watts RMS @ 4 Ohm mono and the subwoofer is rated at 400w RMS @ 4 Ohm impedance.
This, as a general rule of thumb, is a good place to start i.e. amp is about half the power of the maximum of the speaker(s).
It's quite a high sensitivity which is also good as it will be louder than say an 87dB (1w/1m) subwoofer.
The only thing I am not sure about is whether it is suited for an enclosure or not. When you are installing a subwoofer on the parcel shelf with no box but you are mounting it like I did, it is known as "infinite baffle" (the pieces of MDF are the baffle). Subs work best in the setup they were designed for so you want an "infinite baffle" or "open air" subwoofer ideally. "Open air" just means you mount it without the baffle. These terms relate to not having an enclosure (box).
By the way, what I've explained previously about mounting the sub on the parcel shelf is what I had in my W211 E55.
I don't have that car any more and in my current steed I have one of these:
HO112-W6v3
It kicks rse! It's setup so I can remove it should I need the whole boot for anything.
But, if you don't want the hassle of removing something to use your boot, mounting on the shelf is one way of doing it.
This is how I did it previously:
I used 18mm thick MDF.
Measured the diameter cone edge to cone edge (i.e not including the mounting rim of the subwoofer with the holes in it - so if you put the MDF on the sub, all you would see is the cone), drew out the circle on the MDF.
Cut that out with a Jigsaw and then cut out a square around that - maybe with an 1" from the edge of the square to the circle at the 4 thinnest points.
Did the same thing twice and initially created 2 to put together (I discovered the throw of the sub meant it actually hit the parcel shelf so I did a third!). As the sub you are considering is shallow-mount, it should mean the throw of the cone is not as far. Although don't forget, you won't get quite as much bass pound for pound because it's the throw of the cone which creates the sound waves!).
I used a piece of paper and a pencil sideways up underneath the parcel shelf to create a replica of where the holes were - this gives you a template of where you want your bolts to stick out of the top layer. If you look in my earlier picture of the parcel shelf in a W211 E Class, you can see a larger hole which becomes a smaller channel (you can see one clearly and the sub is clearly mounted in one with something black there - you can almost see the second one to the right of that a bit further round albeit obscured by the foam) and there are at least 4 of these all the way around albeit I am not sure they were a uniform distance apart but matters-not.
I used bolts through drilled holes in the top layer of MDF (drill bigger holes to counter-sink the bolt heads into the top layer so it fits flush to the second layer) so they stuck out enough out the top and with a nut on the end.
I didn't mount MDF direct to the parcel shelf - I put something in between which I think was foam to create a more forgiving gasket as the parcel shelf is not flat.
I then bolted each layer to the upper layer but offset the bolt and nut positions each time so they didn't touch existing bolts or nuts.
I then screwed the sub into the bottom layer I think.
I put the whole thing together first and I could lift the whole subwoofer with MDF mounts up into those larger holes, then rotate, then do up the nuts from the top to bring the whole lot up to the parcel shelf.
I put sound deadening all over the parcel shelf. It could have done with more in the boot lid and inside of the outer rear quarter panels of the car. You want to cover up all the holes on the parcel shelf with it as you don't want any sound waves from the front of the sub cancelling-out those from the rear of the sub.
There may well be easier ways of doing it but I found this straight-forward to do.