Had been contemplating a stereo upgrade. Had read all the threads. Wanted something that would require minimal disturbance from stock and be unobtrusive

Had already committed to a period correct Blau Frankfurt with the digital conversion. I knew that the Infinity Kappas were a good solution in the original speaker housings so went with those. In looking for a small powered sub I found the Pioneer TS WX010A. Chose it because it is about the smallest one out there and is a small 50 watt amp that requires no heavy wiring

Figured it’s small size would provide a variety of mounting options without have to cut up any interior stuff. What I did not know was how well it would fit. After taking out the foam filler block, I found that This thing fits in the recess in the passenger footwell like it was designed to be there. See pix below

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I held it into place using the double face tape provided with the sub. This tape also nicely isolates the speaker so it does not rattle against the firewall/floor structure. Once the foam block is trimmed and put back into place the carpet covers it all and it essentially is undetectable.

The thing has great adjustability in gain and frequency. Both are turned way down and provides all the bass you could ever want in our small cabin. Paired with the Kappas it sounds great

Overall a very sanitary installation and a pleasing ( to me anyway) solution.

Is it just me

Working on it! There you go.

Can’t get spaces between pix but I hope you get the idea

Appears this footwell cavity is the same in later cars. I know the foam block in later cars is bigger, so this thing would fit fully within the block in a later car. In this 70 it only protrudes about 3/4” past the foam which is not noticeable behind the carpet.

I got one for mine and my brother’s cars, I plan on mounting on the backside of my engman passenger footboard (with rubber isolators).

Nathan, pull the foam block and you will be amazed how the thing fits. Gotta mount it so it is isolated or it will rattle against the steel structure.

Care to share more on this? ^^^



Definitely like the way that sub fits in the foam. If you have more pictures please share. not sure I fully understand how this comes together.

Thanks!

There are several people that convert vintage radios to solid state amps and tuners. They integrate all the classic knob and button tuner functions and can even add Bluetooth. I used Vintage Blau. http://www.vintageblau.com/ Ingo is great to work with and is dedicated to classic radio restoration. They massage the tuning mechanism, looks and works like new. Not cheap but fidelity is pretty good, tuning is sharp and the power is impressive. All fits in the original case.

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Not sure how to better show the install and these are all the pix I took. I’ll repeat these two pix as I think they best show how it goes together.

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This sub is advertised as designed for mounting in footwells. It is designed to mount with sound outlet projecting into the floor. It fits better in the footwell recess projecting out. I tried it both ways and could not discern a difference in sound quality so went with the better fit.

Thank you, I will look at my car/foam.

Very nice elegant & simple solution indeed. Are the power & signal grounds isolated at the input? Can you reverse the phase at the loudspeaker itself? You might get more bass that way. BTDT on several installations.

Thanks. Looks great! But are you saying that you didn't need to bring a new power lead from the battery for this? It seems to be recommended by everyone. I've looked into it but can't figure out how to get into the "snorkel" and through the tunnel without a massive amount of hassle. Any solid advice would be appreciated!

Wonder if the built in amp is the class D? I installed one in my Bug which doesn't require the heavy gauge wire to the battery. The amp is limited of course, but sounds good.

You can select phase right on the amp with a simple switch

The unit comes with an 8' plug in harness that includes the power and ground lead that are only 18 gage wire. The amp only pulls 4.5 amps with a 10amp fuse recommended. I just ran the power wire to the "ignition on" switched side of a relay on the stock relay panel. No special wire.

Even with this low power consumption I barely have the gain set at maybe 25% and that is plenty!! On music with any sort of hard bass line it will bounce a screwdriver sitting on the passenger floor.

I hooked the radio rear speaker leads to the amp via a line converter that converts the speaker wire leads to RCA jacks. The amp does have a switch to optimize for speaker wire input or RCA input. I assumed RCA probably provides better fidelity.

Trust me, this thing rocks way more base than you can stand in our little cars. You can easily modulate the amount of base using the tone switch on the radio. My digitized radio also provides a blue line out switch that turns the amp on when the radio is on. There are line converters available that sense when power is going to the speakers and provides this same "accessory on" function if your older radio does not provide this function.

Thanks man. Gonna give it a shot. Love hearing my (1.8) motor roar...but love my tunes just as much!. Will keep you posted.

Easily done with the engine out when you can pull the snorkel kind of straight to fish a wire through and then pull the cable. Might be possible to get an actual fish tape with the loop on the end so it doesn't poke through the snorkel to make the bend with the engine in place, but will obviously be more work. I was surprised how much room there was in the snorkel to pull the amp cable through. I was prepared for a long fight and was done in about 10 minutes.. again... with the engine out though.

Tonight I added blue tooth to the system using the aux in RCA jacks that I got on the radio when I had it converted to digital. I used a generic blue tooth receiver.

Oh baby! Sirius XM streaming through my phone blue toothed to what appears to be a stock 1969 Blaupunkt Frankfurt. Much better fidelity than FM and no commercials. Ain’t technology wonderful!

Thanks...but the engine ain't comin' out anytime soon. My 53K mile 1.8 runs like a champ!

No need for a dedicated direct heavy wire with the Pioneer TS WX010A

@gereed75
where did you buy the subwoofer? when i search that model number the item looks different in the pictures.

Phil

Crutchfield. In my pictures you are seeing the underside. Fits best in the firewall recess turned this way. I couldn't discern any difference in sound turned either way.

I see it amazon and Walmart for only $174 vice the $280 i paid at Crutchfield.

Easy to tune the way you mounted...good work,

Specifically designed for passenger footwell location. See video on Crutchfield site. Amazing!

@ gereed75

Thanks for sharing. This is pretty cool. Reminds me of Things Fitting Perfectly Into Other Things, which I find perversely satisfying.

@gereed75 thanks for sharing this solution last August.

I ordered this sub online from Walmart for $180 and received it in the mail today. I have a bluetooth receiver hidden under my dash and it's wired to the two speakers in the stock location.

It sounds like when you upgraded/converted your Blaupunkt to digital, you also added 2 add'l speaker outputs? So you ran 2 outputs to the speakers in the stock location and then you ran the other 2 outputs to an RCA converter which you plugged into your sub?

I'm trying to figure out how would I run my only two speaker outputs on my bluetooth receiver under the dash to my 2 speakers AND the sub. Do I need to put a fork in right speaker line so that line would feed the passenger speaker AND the sub?

TIA

Yea. My digital amp installed into the Blaupunkt had regular wire outputs for “ rear” speakers. Ran them through an RCA converter then into the sub. From memory I believe you can run the wires directly to the sub without an RCA converter. There is actually a switch on the sub that sets it up for RCA input or wire inputs

Also from memory I think that you can “T” the speaker wires to feed the sub. I think you can see the manual with wire diagrams showing various hook up options on the Pioneer web site.

How about a schematic for us visual learners ?

Here you go. Link to Pioneer manual

https://www.pioneerelectronics.com/StaticFi.../01E91B1323.pdf

There's no example shown in the Pioneer manual for how to hook this sub up to a stereo that has just 2 speaker outputs (like my hidden under dash blue tooth receiver/amp). I'll guess I'll splice off of one of speaker outputs to feed the sub its signal.

This is the bluetooth receiver/amp unit I'm using.

I suspect that teeing the regular wire outputs to the speakers will work. Caveat -not an audio expert. Might want to combine both outputs so that you get the bass input from both channels of the stereo output.

Let us know how it works. I think you will really like the sub.