Well my friend and i have decided to get into custom fiberglass speaker enclosures starting with the sub box replacing the old one in my 92 volvo wagon.



We didn't have a camera for the first part we did but once i got back to my house i took some shots of what is done so far.

At first we removed the floor and side panels. then we used painters tape to tape the entire area (plus some) that the base of the box is going to sit in. This has to be completely taped and i suggest at least 2 layers to be safe. This is to keep the resin from seeping out of your intended area, thusly ruining the box/anything it touches. IT WILL HARDEN PERMANENTLY TO ANYTHING IT TOUCHES. This is an extreme warning and it is highly recommended to take many precautions because as you will learn after trying this, that after 2 hours of sitting, resin will become physically impossible to remove.

After taping the entire area you must tape down your drop cloth around the area, cuz like i said if resin hits a surface, its there forever. Tape as much area as you feel comfortable doing. in my case my whole window and half the carpet.

After taping everything down you're ready to actually fiberglass. Here you're going to rip pieces of your fiber cloth into no bigger than about 10x10 inch sections to allow for a complete filling of the area. You then take your resin and pour it into a smaller contain, in our case a Styrofoam cup. You want to do this because once you add your reacting agent its going to be 2 hours before you have a brick, and so with a small amount you aren't wasting resin, which is decently expensive for as much of it that you're going to go through.

So after you pour your resin into the cup and mix the reactant, your going to take your fiber cloth pieces and paint a light coating on one side, a light coating on your intended surface and then a light coating once its been placed. When i say light coating i mean like one decent brush full of resin. Then repeat as long as it take to cover your entire surface. In our case it took use about an hour and a half up to this point.

After this you simply wait for about 2 hours for the resin to harden. In this time your cheap-o brushes will also harden, but they can be used even when totally stiff. Once it has completely hardened then you repeat the previous process covering the whole surface with more fiberglass. This took me alone about half an hour. From here one its just letting it harden again and re-applying more fiberglass. It is recommended to do about 3-4 layers because whats going to happen once this bottom layer is finished you have to pop out the mold to continue the box outside of the car. This is why masking/painters tape is best because unlike ductape it isn't very sticky and can be pulled of easily.

Here are a few shots of how things are looking so far.







Tomorow ill be applying more layers and hopefully removing the mold. More pictures and a product list soon to come!

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No offense, but i think you should get a "easier on the eyes" type of car before you do any sort of upgrades to it.

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i admit its not the greatest looking car but the whole point of DIY is that i can put anything i want in my car without paying anything close to what it would be to have all this done by some one else. And why the hell not put a sound system ina bad looking car, its not like im putting a body kit and wing on it, me and anyone who gets in my car will enjoy it a hell of a lot better with good audio, so i dont understand your reasoning whatsoever.

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that's true w/e

but if you do start getting good at building custom boxes you should start charging other people for them and make the paper.

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thats the overall goal.

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