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Rav4
I bought a 2008 Toyota RAV4 as a daily for work. Of course the audio system was pretty lacking and I tried to ignore it, telling myself over and over...it's just a work vehicle. The more I listened to music tooling around in it, the more the short comings showed themselves. Couldn't fight it anymore...
Started looking at head units. The Pioneer DMH-2000NEX had the feature set I wanted at a very affordable price. Picked that up off eBay refurbished for $250 shipped. Also nabbed an install kit and harness. I still wanted the steering wheel controls to work so the PAC SWI-CP2 was purchased from Amazon.
The installation went fairly well. Had to modify the mounting brackets to get the radio at the right angle to match the opening. I'd have to say it came out really clean, pretty much looking factory.
I chose the radio because it allows the front and rear powered outputs to be configured as tweeter and midbass. It also has time alignment.
and 3 others.
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The doors were next. They had a crappy 6.5" down low and an even crappier standard ol mylar tweet up top. I got a set of old school 6" Soundstream Exact mids from a buddy and have a bunch of these 3/4" Bose soft dome tweeters.
Cut out an adapter for the weirdo Toyota OE mounting hole. The speaker was riveted in, so drilled those out and installed rivnuts (nutserts) to bolt the adapter in. I was able to adapt the factory tweeter mount to accept the Bose unit.
I used the factory wire to connect the tweeter and ran a separate wire in for the midbass. Luckily it was easy to get through the door boot, sometimes that can be a nightmare.
Looks great! I have an older version of that head unit and really like it.
Now for some bass! I ran all the wires to under the drivers seat. It's great how small all the new class D amplifiers are now. I picked up an NVX BDA7501 off eBay. This is the third NVX amp I've used. I first became aware of them when I watched an amp dyno on Williston Audio's YouTube channel. Impressive power for the size and price. Basically I paid $80 for a 2ohm stable 750W amp. It has a subsonic filter/crossover/bass EQ and optional volume control. Really impressed so far with this brand.
I installed the amp under the seat and ran a speaker wire to the trunk.
I've been waiting to put my Soundstream SS12R back in action for a long time. It's time was now. Being an old school sub, it likes big boxes. Back in 1995 (30yrs old!!!) I had it in a ported box of 3cf @30Hz, used it like that for 5-6yrs, then it ended up in my house in 4cf @25Hz.
After a few years of that it ended up back in it's original box and sat on a shelf till now.
The Rav4 has a compartment below the trunk floor, perfect for a subwoofer. It had right at 2cf, perfect for the sealed alignment, so I made some sawdust. Threw a coat of Exohide on it and dropped it in the trunk.
Still wearing it's fancy paint and stickers from it's first life in the trunk of my Caviler.