I recently decided that I wanted to put in my sub that I have lying around in my house. It's a 12" Alpine Type-R. I was wondering if anyone had any luck with replacing the Bose sub with a 12" sub? I hear that the hole that is there is pretty big, but personally, I haven't taken it all apart yet so I might have read something that's not true.

If so, were there any additional comments anyone had?

 

I haven't heard of anyone replacing the Bose sub with a 12". From what I understand, it's a shallow mounting depth that may present problems for the deeper basket of a 12. Most installs that I have seen on here are using a custom box enclosure of some type.

 

The other issue is the fact that your sub won't be free air. Without an enclosure, you're gonna get over excursion and damage the driver. Otherwise it would be easy enough to mount from underneath and get it to play.

 

thanks for the reply guys .. i'll keep what you said in mind Flakman. I think what I'm going to end up doing is just getting my box and then making a mount spot on the left part of the trunk for the amp.

 

That's your best bet for sure. Good luck and post pics when done

 

A 12" Type R will not fit. Actually, I don't think that any 12" will fit. I tried a free air install with a JL 10tw3-d4 shallow mount sub. It did fit (although it was a tight squeeze), and it actually sounded a lot better than I had expected. I loved it because the install was basically stealth apart from the amp. The problem with this install was that the deck couldn't handle the increased bass. Low volume sounded ok, but once I turned it up, it seemed like EVERYTHING back there was rattling & vibrating. Two of the biggest offenders were the seat belt housings. I applied as much dampening as I could to everything, but at the end of the day the deck was just flexing way too much for me to enjoy the sound. I ended up going the box route.



If you really want to try this type of install, I'd recommend reinforcing the rear deck with some MDF, and using a bunch of sound dampening. Will be a lot more work, but worth it so that the noises won't drive you insane.

 

I ended up just using a box that I had lying around instead of doing swapping the Bose sub with the Alpine. Overall I think it was a better choice to save me the pain of having to undo everything whenever I would want to sell the car. Thanks for the suggestions though guys