First off, heres what I'm dealing with so far. I have a '91 Celica convertable w/ the System 10 (Actually only 8 though, because of the top arms, the entire backseat is reconfigured with all new interior trim panels and so forth) Anyone who has ever dealt with putting a system in one of these 5th gen Celica's knows they are somewhat of a bear to deal with, but there are possibilites.
I finally diagnosed the problem with the factory 220 w amp underneath the passenger seat, and as far as I can tell, a previous owner must have left the top down in a rain storm (or 12) seeing as the factory amp is completely rusted through. Currently I am running a Sony Explod (crap I know) hu CDX-L510X. StN ratio is 90dB with a Frequency Response of 10-20,000 Hz. Im currently running 6 of the 8 speakers in the car of the hu amp (50Wx4 @ 4 ohms) The front mids (4") and factory tweets I believe are running in series, while the 8" woofers are running off the rear speaker outputs of the hu. Evidently, the crossover unit for the 8" woofers were in the amp itself, and in a matter of 3 weeks, I tore those paper comes to shreds.
Seeing as I had about 2 7/8" mounting depth to work with in finding a replacement for the woofers, I ended up ordering the Kicker RMB8's more specs avaiable here --> https://www.kicker.com/images/manuals/RMB6_RMB8TechnicalManual.pdf
They have a frequency response of 30-500 hz, with a peak power rating of 250, 125 RMS. I figure they should do the job.
So finally to my question, almost. Eventually in the next couple of months, I'm going to be building up this system, purchasing probably a 6 channel amp (something decent enough to run 2 sets of 4", the 2 mid-woofers, and a pair of tweets). I already have an Eclipse 5302 that will be feeding the amp, but seeing as there are no speaker outs on the Eclipse, only pre-amp outs, no use in hooking it up till I have the amp. HERES THE QUESTION! Do I need to worry about throwing in a coil on each mid-woofer to block out the highs from reaching the woofers until I am ready to purchase & install the amp, along with new 4"s, so as not to any damage to them? I know I should probably wait until I am ready to do everything correctly at once, but considering I don't listen to thumpin music much anymore, and that I pretty much only have a pair of 4s and the tweets producing the tunes in my car right now, when the subs get here Tuesday, I would pretty much like to throw them in and fire them up.
I already figured out and found the coils I would use, if it's absolutley necessary. Thanks for any insight and/or input.
Nate
So without the amp the sony HU would be driving the kicker woofers untill you bought an external amp? If this is the case then the high frequencies shouldn't damage the woofer but it may sound like a muffled voice is coming from the back of you the car if you dont add a coil to create a low-pass filter. You really shouldnt be running woofers off of a HU anyway because of its low power. With your HU's amp playing at average volume the woofers would only be getting around 12 to 18 watts at most ,which is not enough to drive a speaker of this size. It might not have sounded that bad driving the factory woofers because of their low power-handling but it will if you try to drive those kickers.