Vibe Subwoofer and Amp Box Fitted

I'd been after a subwoofer for a while when an excellent opportunity presented itself.

A friend of mine needed some cash and wanted to sell his Vibe CBR12 Evo II subwoofer and amp combo. It had much more power than I wanted at 600W RMS and 1600W peak. I'd previously been looking at building my own enclosure and sticking a 150-200W sub in there.

To make sure I got the most out of the thing I needed a pretty hefty wiring kit.

I checked around and finally decided on a 4 gauge Autoleads 1200W kit from eBay at £25 posted, pretty good deal in my opinion.

I decided I wanted to position the fuse within the fuse box of the car, this meant a little tweaking but would be much neater job than attaching it to the engine bay somewhere.

I offered up the fuse to check it would fit and found a nice spot to locate it.

There was already a slot for one end of the cable to exit but the other end would need it's own slot creating. Luckily there was a tab exactly the right size that could be removed for cable to slot into. Using a hand saw I soon sorted that out, to finish I used a round file to get a nice shape.

With the fuse in place it was time to start routing all the wiring through the cabin, First up was the RCA and remote cable, shown below poking out of the headunit aperture.

All wires were run along the sides of the car underneath the carpet, the RCA and remote on one side and the power the other side to avoid interference. The wires then came together under the rear seat bench carpet, I used a little Gaffa tape to secure them neatly. From there I fed them up into the boot where the sub would be situated.

Another bonus to this subwoofer was an accessory my mate had included, a Vibe Fast Plug. This invaluable little gadget meant the subwoofer could be removed at any time quickly and easily. This was crucial to my install as I do sometimes make use of the whole boot, and removing the sub would be necessary.

Wiring it in was simple; all of the wires from the headunit and battery go into one side of the plug, then using off cuts join the other side up to the sub from the other half of the plug.

Due to the radius of the connector supplied on the positive cable, I couldn't just attach it to the terminal. I managed to source a bolt that fit the threaded hole in the top of the connector. This actually worked out neater and a better connection anyway.

Finally, to neaten up the engine bay, I added the plastic OE looking covers provided with the wiring kit. As the car's red and the leads were blue they stuck out like a sore thumb so I was keen to cover them up. Both cables were covered, however only one is shown in the pictures.

The sub box originally comes ported, I would have preferred it not to be due to the type of sound I was after. Helpfully, my mate came up trumps again with the Vibe Port Plug. Another simple solution, just a foam plug that fits snug in the port. Surprisingly it makes a lot of difference, it can be heard clearly just by pulling it out when the sub is working.

Everything in, time to enjoy the music. Needless to say it makes a huge difference to the sound quality of the system. Wound right up this sub shakes the car, making the rear view mirrors a waste of time...excellent.

De-tango'd front indicators

Just a subtle mod to freshen up and finish off the front, got some silver indicator bulbs off fleabay for £3.99 delivered, cant grumble really, set the car off nice too.


Silver Bulbs




Before and After

Rear Drum Brakes Painted

Now the majority of the major modifications are done, for now, I'm moving onto freshening up the motor getting it show standard as it were.

First job, paint the drums.

Used some engine lacquer - matt black, gave more of a satin effect though which is ideal. Looks smart and a nice improvement.


Cleaned up with a wire brush and some halfrauds brake cleaner.






Drums Painted




Comparison

Front Door Speaker Upgrade

The standard speakers in the Rover 25 don't exactly give Focal anything to worry about, so out came the wallet (after having cleared the cobwebs). I searched around, comparing brands within the same price point, then settled on the Vibe SE K-series 60 (ironic name).

A few tech specs for those interested:

• 6.5" component speakers, 1" tweeter + crossover
• Peak: 660 watts per set / 330 watts each side
• RMS: 230 watts per set / 115 watts each side
• 4 Ohms impedance
• Sensitivity: 90 dB

Following some head scratching over wire colours and their polarity, determining that the pink trace was positive and the black trace negative, I cracked on.

First job is to get the door cards off, it's worthwhile checking out my Door Cards - Removal and Refitting guide if you're tackling this job yourself.

Turns out it's a bit of a game, but doesn't take long once you get the hang of it.

With the door card off it was pretty clear why I wasn't hearing any sound coming from the 'tweeters', there weren't any... Rover chose just to fit a tweeter grille with no speaker behind it.

New car parts!

They are quite a bit more meaty than the factory woofers.

Starting small, I fitted the tweeters first. With no factory fixing method to piggy back, and nothing supplied with the speakers, the thinking cap had to come out.

My Dad came up with the winning design, a beautifully simple bit of engineering. He made a metal ring from some sheet metal that would be clamped tight when the two sides of the tweeter housing are screwed together. You fit the visible bit of the tweeter from the visible side of the door card, and the other half from the back. This alone left the tweeter a bit loose in the door, leaving just enough room for the pictured rubber o ring to squeeze in and keep it solid.

Now, you might have noted that the original woofers had a moulded in bracket with three fixing locations, the Vibes have a number of fixing arrays but none were suitable.

Enter Dad.

We traced the original speakers, marking the hole positions and cut some new adapter brackets from 9mm ply wood. The added thickness of wood also helped stand the speakers further off the door metal work, giving clearance for the deeper magnets.

To ensure a good seal against the metal, he attached some foam to both sides of the adapters. He's not just a pretty face...

 

Next up was mounting the crossover, handily there was a space just big enough right below the tweeter, made to measure in fact. I attached it with some industrial double sided sticky foam, pretty sure the things not going to budge any time soon...

And finally, wiring everything up. I wanted to make life easier for any future jobs, so made the door card plug and play. Crimped and soldered spades on each of the wires, then put those into some plastic clips, made for a much neater install, almost like a proper job.

Overall I dead chuffed with the new speakers and install, much clearer sound and a far improved wiring solution than standard, well worth the £49.99 paid for the speakers and the time taken to install.