Roxy's Rebirth, Part I: Slowly But Surely

Kicker 12" L5 Subwoofer

Roxy will be undergoing a slow transformation.  Since I've decided not to sell her, I'll do all I can to get her in tip-top form.  Slowly but surely, she'll reach show car quality.  As a baby step to her upgrade/transformation, I've enlisted the help of my good friend, King and installed a kick-ass Kicker subwoofer.  12" of bass goodness!  I drove over to King's house Monday night and we got to installing eh subwoofer straightaway.  When King saw the sorry state of my previous wiring though, we decided on rewiring the power supply, routing the beefier cable from the battery, through the firewall, down into the driver's side kick-panel, along the scuff plates, under the rear seat, and into the trunk.  We also installed a fuse near the battery for safety.  It took us around 2 hours for the install, and we were excited to hear the low frequencies from the speaker.  I turned on the engine, switched on the head unit, and KRRKK KRRRRKKKK KRRRRK... something was WRONG!!!  We thought we had the RCA cables installed wrong, but when we checked, it was perfect.  We had to retrace all the steps and were stumped.  We tried every which way and setting on the radio, to no avail.  After around an hour of adjusting and experimenting, King (with his sheer genius) finally found the culprit.  My head unit's RCA out was grounded!  He did something (I've no idea what he did), and THUMP, THUMP, BOOOOM!  I had bass!!!  We finished around 11:30 pm and I headed home happy and thumping. 

On the way home, I noticed that my speakers inside (a mishmash of different speakers accumulated and swapped in over the years) were busted.  They still played, but they were garbly and were nearing death.  So Tuesday night, the night after installing the subs, I was back at King's place, installing a hand-me-down set of midrange speakers in the front doors of my ride.  I got there at around 8pm, and we set to work.  I took out both the door panels and we proceeded to take out the old speakers.  The new speakers were about to go in when... they didn't fit!!!  Argh!!!  We tried many different configurations and after around 2 hours of fiddling, we were finally able to coax in the speakers and reinstall the door panels.  I turned on the radio and... voila!  Subs, midbass, and voice!  It actually sounded halfway decent!  And it was LOUD.  King and I were both amazed that the stock speakers off of a Toyota Revo could sound so good! 

So after 2 consecutive nights of getting our hands dirty, our creativity flowing, and our backs hurting, Roxy's initial phase of rebirth was complete.  I'll have a better system professionally installed eventually, but for now, this do-it-yourself install is definitely worlds better than my previous sound system!  There's something about setting up your ride with your own hands that really feels awesome.  And there's nothing like seeing your car having that little extra something above the rest.  I can just imagine the feeling of owning a show-quality car.  Slowly but surely, Roxy will get there.