truck subwoofer box design/placement

i recently put ports into a buddy of mine's sealed box, he wanted ports. box was 1.25 cu ft so its tuned really high to about 47hz i believe. he likes them because they are louder but they dont have any low end bass to them. so im going to build him a box for his ford ranger. what is the best way to face to ports/ subwoofers to make it the loudest. right now he has two rockford p2 12" faced to the rear with the ports facing the sides of the truck. they are loudest with the doors open. any ideas would be great, thanks

I can't really see any harm in firing the port to the rear as long as it is not blocked or firing to close to something..like the back wall.

All else considered and being equal a port is just a tube that air moves through so as long as the air entrance or exit is enough to allow max volume of airflow, it would make no major difference...simply put the port doesn't really care where it is, it works in tandom with the driver at resonant frequency. Tuning and proper volume should be your paramount concern if looking for the best performance.

Now a piece of info I heard years ago from a teah at Bazooka Tubes is that by them placing the port on the same plane and close to the woofer, as well as firing the tube as far back into a corner as possible would give a "loading" effect...which basically meant an increased bass output. They claimed this would let a smaller speaker perform as if it were larger. However, I don't think this would work in a truck cab as it would in lets say a hatchback or trunk vehicle...so you may want to experiment with placements to see what gives the most bass.

Hope I helped.

There is a chance of course they would sound as loud as all heck if right behind the listeners head...but..will it sound good?? That should really be the question.

I have had excellent results in ext. cab pickups using ported enclosures and firing them down (subs and ports). I build the enclosure so the subs are raised off the floor and the ports have plenty of room to "breath". As a side benefit you gain added room on the front and/or top of the enclosure to flush mount other system components. This in my experience has yielded the best results, other then doing a bed-cut...which is my specialty and just about my favorite thing to do as far as audio installation.

Unfortunatly too many customers won't let me cut..I guess they think thier trucks are some kind of collector items that will lose value..but no..these are not 1970 4-speed hemi cudas...just beaters..I say cut it. Then you can get tons of bass and lose no room in the cab as well. But if not try my suggestion and you'll be happy with it.

He may like watching the subs but I bet he'd rather have good sound and improved low bass.

As an option offer to custom mount mirrored plexi under the box and light it up with some neon or LED's. Then he can watch em in style. If you experiment with multiple mirrors and angles you can even give the illusion of lots more subs has you look under the box. That can't be a bad thing, right?

Best of luck with it.

I built a box for a truck last week with subs firing up (if you have the room) and port up. 4-10's and a single port in the center with baffles inside directing the air flow toward the center. Sort of like putting funnels on the back side of each sub in the box. Then two large baffles send ing that to the center. The port for a 3 cube box was made at 12" tall by 3.25" wide by 8" deep.

Hope this helps.

David