has created a custom subwoofer box for a much larger and more powerful woofer that fits into his spare tire well.

Well, sort of like that... My car (a Taurus station wagon) has the spare wheel (a 14" Space Saver type) mounted standing upright in the left rear corner of the cargo compartment. The spare wheel is covered by a large plastic trim panel. We mounted the 10" subwoofer (a dual voice coil cobalt series Orion) onto the plastic trim panel (with suitable reinforcement on the inside of the panel with 3/4" MDF and fiberglas) and turned the spare wheel around backwards so the magnet portion of the speaker nestled right inside the dish of the wheel with about 1/4" clearance all around. In the trim panel we cut a treble clef design about 10" tall, backed with carpeting (on the inside of the panel) that matches the carpeting in the rest of the car. You have to look carefully to find the treble clef, it's a totally stealth installation.

Note that this installation precludes any kind of sealed enclosure unless you want to get very elaborate, and even then I doubt you could seal it and still have reasonable access to the spare tire. So I am running my subwoofer free air (it was not designed to do so) but apparently due more to luck and great acoustics of a station wagon than cleverness, it sounds very good.

I am currently building a new competition car, another Taurus wagon but later model, and the spare tire on that one is like ther Forester, under the rear floor. I'm not going to do the same trick of putting the subwoofer inside the spare tire in this car. I have seen that done in another Taurus wagon, and the sound quality wasn't there, with the speaker firing straight up at the roof of the car. Also, I don't want to give up that much utility -- virtually any time I put anything in the back of the car, I'd be covering the speaker. So with the new car, we are building a custom sub enclosure that will extend the right-side wheel well intrusion all the way back to the tailgate and will hold a pair of 10" subs.. This will eat up a 5 inch by 18 inch section of my floor space, but the enclosure will be shaped and vinyl covered to be a perfect match for the interior, and will again be totally stealth. Unless you knew just what the interior of a late model Taurus wagon was supposed to look like, you'd never know it was there. I did replace the full size spare under the floor with a space saver, and the room I gained was enough to install two amplifiers and a thermostatically controlled cooling fan, and still leave the wheel dish free for tools, jumper cables, tow strap, tiedowns, oil, first aid kit, flares, etc.

Anyway, the net result is this: there is room inside the dish of a 14 or 15 inch spare wheel to place a 10" subwoofer. How you do the physical mounting of the speaker... well, that will vary from car to car.

Good luck.

tanstaafl.


"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"