99 civic hatch trunk

picked up a 99 civic hatch for winter, and it's already wired for a sub and amp, so I figured I minus well put some of my excess car audio to use.

Nothing fancy. Want the Amp hidden and protected as I plan on throwing things in the hatch such as hockey equipment, etc.

Sub box is approx. 1.1 - 1.3 cubic ft, depending on finished internals.

It's done out of fiberglass and mdf.

pics so far:

Removed the spare tire cover, and aluminum foiled everything to make sure the carpet, etc didn't get ruined. I then coated the foil in a mold release wax on the flat areas, and mothers car wax where curves were to avoid riping the foil. Let it dry, and then coated the desired area with my resin apply mat as I went along. You can see my space heater in the 2nd pic that I used to add a bit of heat to the hatch due to the low temperatures outside. I also up'd the hardner percentage slightly. (pic)

The mold dry'd and was removed both from the hatch and the foil without a problem. The mold follow's the shape of the spare tire adding volume to the box, as I wanted it to take up as little room as posible. The tire also has to be undone and moved to the side to put it in and out (add's a little extra security).

With the amp cover in place, I then positioned the sub ring: (pics)

I then glued everything into place with supports (didnt' get a pic) and streched my fleece overtop. The next pic is of the sub box removed from the car as I'm adding layers of glass to it.  I like to use a 10oz chop mat/woven mat for strenght. From previous projects I've found that it always works the best for me, as it has 5oz of chop mat and 5oz of woven mat combined in one easy step.

I'll post a few pics of the sub and amp/rack/cover installed in the hatch once I've completed it.

constructive comments are always welcome. thanks.

here's a few other projects I've done:

Dash for my 77 Austin Mini:

The instrument frame:

The dash fiberglassed sitting in position:

Waiting to be covered to batch my seats black with white pipeing:

maliboom wrote:

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nice job. can't wait to see both projects finished. are you painting or carpeting the box in civic. by the way how do you plan to keep the amp cool? do you have fans and enough space for the heat to escape?

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Thanks for the comments.

I'm going to run it as is for the winter, as there is 1" of air space above it, but come summer I'm thinking of rigging a few PC fans up from princess auto, one blowing air over the amp, and one blowing air out of the amp area.  The amp will be running probably at 50% most of the time also.

Where in Canada are you located. Princess auto is in Southern Ontario isn't it.

beautiful job on the dash.

we have a princess auto in BC, so it could probly be anywhere.

maliboom wrote:

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Where in Canada are you located. Princess auto is in Southern Ontario isn't it.

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I'm in the GTA (greater toronto area).

update:

I put the enclosure in the trunk with a sony explode that I had laying around being run by a md300 alpine amp.

It pounds, and has a really tight sound. Not looking for an overwhelming amount of base, so I've adjusted the amp to suit my needs.

I'm gonna put a light layer of filler on it this week, and sand it to almost perfect. I'm going to cover it in some sort of fabric, but have not yet decided. Gonna stay away from vinyl as I want something a little more durrable with things being piled on it here and there. Possibly to match the hatch carpet, but it also has to be strechy.

will post pics soon.

Sounds tight

I had the box in the car for a week just testing it out for fit and sound, and everything was great.

Pic: Just removed from car.

I had the amp sitting on top so I could tune it, etc, hence the velcro strip which was holding it in place.

I then added a light layer of bodyfiler to the box and sanded it smooth.

Pic: box sanded with bodyfiler

I wanted to cover the box in suede as I've seen some really nice projects on here, but when I visited the fabric store all the suede had Zero strech to it. Not good. I had tons of vinyl at my house so I just decided to use it. For future reference, no matter how bad you want to get it done, just wait if it's 4 degrees out, as it's a biatch for the glue to dry and a pain streching the vinyl. So in the end the vinyl job is about a 6/10 which I'm not happy with but it will do until I find a material that exactly matches the interior.

Pic: Box in car FINISHED!!!

Thanks for looking.