Another audio upgrade

[ballyn]

So I'm standing at the very top of my slippery slope with this '84 Targa, and the only rule I have about big projects is that they must have a soundtrack. The stereo is always the last thing to move out, first thing to move in. Can't do nothing without tunes.

When I bought the car I found out it had a McIntosh MC427 in the trunk... Not being big into car audio in that era (mid 90s? I was driving an '84 Cherokee in Boulder...), I had to look it up, but now I'm anxious to hear what kind of sound it can actually produce with the Targa top off. Someone loved this car a lot at some point.

So I pulled the Alpine deck (from the same era) with a broken volume knob and put in a new, fairly basic Alpine deck (CDE-133BT) with a single out for the amp's 2x100 and 1 input.

Of course, then I find that the cone has come unglued from the Boston 5.25 in the driver's door, and the C700 Series II in the back is also unglued and full of grit bouncing on the woofer. The fronts are fairly nice components, but I think the car was outside a bit and they sound, well, like 20 year old speakers. Slippery slope indeed.

Obligatory before photos... The rear deck with the C700 looks like this:



And the cutout is so:



I can't find anything with a grill that will fit back there without drilling more holes, etc. I obviously can't go back to 4x6 without a fair amount of work. I could just replace the 5.25 in the current enclosure, but I just don't like the depth of 5.25 speakers. I don't want to replace the parcel shelf or cut into the original mounts right now.

So at this point I'm leaning towards just unhooking the C700s in the rear (we'll call them "passive dampeners") and putting 6.5s in the doors. I like the Boston SR60. I just don't think putting anything smaller than that in the rear makes any sense, though I did look at the Boston SR80 5x7 plate speaker but couldn't find any grills for them.

I'm not sure how the amp is wired today, but it appears to be parallel on each side to the speakers. The fader in the console actually functions, but that's as far as I've gotten to tracing it after it leaves the amp. The SR60 is 4 ohm, 2-85 RMS 250 peak, so I think the 2x100 from the MC427 should be fine into just that pair.

I'm also looking at the Sound Ordnance B-8PT sub to put under the passenger seat... I can take the mono out from the MC427 and cut it at 80 or 200 I think.

All this just so I can have music while I replace all the Targa seals.

So should I do the sub over the parcel shelf speakers? Or just do the 6.5s and see what it sounds like? Or should I really be looking at the amp first, make sure it's going to keep running for a bit?

Oh, and this switch confuses me... It's a 3-position which rocks forward and has what appears to be a little red light. Doesn't appear to do a thing. I haven't gotten into the housing to trace the wiring yet, but I did pull a strand of coax from under the passenger seat when I rewired the deck... I'm telling people it's the rear oil slick and the arm missiles switch for now.