The Chronicles of my 95 Cobra OCD Machine

[95riosnake]

Spent a couple very dusty, messy days in the garage... but made a lot of progress!

Ran out to Lowe's and was reminded why a hatchback is the next best thing to a truck :rockon: , brought home a 4x8 sheet each of 3/4" and 1/2" MDF



Side note, my new trunk side panels came in and they're in great shape. I'll come back to trimming those to fit nice and tight around the shock tower brace brackets later.



Quick test fit in the trunk to make sure the tub sits all the way down in... good to go!



Laid the tub face down on the piece of 3/4" MDF and traced the outline, then cut it out.



Made a cardboard template for the center divider to reduce the enclosure volume to a bit less than 1 cubic foot, takes a bit of trial and error but this is pretty much the only way to make it happen.



Sanded the interior to give the Liquid Nails something to adhere to



Cut a divider from 3/4" MDF, mocked up in place and everything looked good



Laid down a nice thick bead of Liquid Nails, better to have a lot than not enough.



Divider in place, then let it sit over night to cure.



Marked and cut the hole for the speaker terminal cup (after a wild goose chase around town for almost an hour trying to find one, ended up finding out there actually is a Radio Shack near me, which is cool because I always thought there were none)





Looking good



Sat the top back on and marked out the hole for the sub cutout, it may look off center but this location actually locates it right in the center of the trunk. The spare tire well in our cars is off center in the trunk to the driver's side.







Now I had been basing my needed depth for my sub off the numbers I found online from Boston because I hadn't yet taken it out of the old box. No idea where they got the dimension of it being 6-11/16" deep, it's a lot deeper sub than that for sure... (it's been a couple years since I put it in the old box so I forgot how big the magnet is on this *******)



So my idea was to space it up with a piece of 3/4" MDF, cut to the shape drawn out here:



Buuuut, even after the 3/4" spacer, the magnet was still hitting the bottom of the tub, so I cut an additional layer of 1/2"



Screwed the spacer layers together and mocked it in place, good to go!



Before I attached the top, I took a minute to install the terminal cup. It had just been sitting in the cutout. Sanded the back of the cup's flange, then applied a bit of liquid nails inside the cut out, then screws to tighten it in place...then a bit more liquid nails around the edge from the inside. No leaks to worry about from here, lol.





Time to attach the top panel, once again a nice thick bead of Liquid nails was run around the edge and on the center divider.



Laid the panel on top and used countersunk screws to attach the top panel to the divider, this also serves to draw the top panel down tight against the edges of the tub.



Added a layer of Bondo Hair over the countersunk screw holes and all the way around the edge where the top panel meets the tub. This is just further reinforcement, even though the Liquid Nails alone is probably plenty. Also, I sealed all the internal edges of the subwoofer side of the interior with caulking, unfortunately I couldn't really get a picture of that.



Sanded down the top while I allowed the sides a bit more time to cure (it was a bit thicker on the sides so it wasn't ready for sanding yet), then screwed the spacers in place, once again with countersunk screws. The stock trunk carpet makes a great sanding pad FYI haha