jikhead

So I cut out all the rings today. You may notice that most of my cuts are not perfect circles again! So shoot me! I must admit it's not easy using this circular tool with the Rotozip. On several occasions, the tool widened itself as I'm applying pressure to it and the RZ; causing my circles to get out of wack or entirely ******. My top piece somehow got screwed when I was making the speaker cutout, and had to make a new top piece.

Once I make all the rings, I stacked them up so I could try and calculate the cubic feet. My measurements were 12.75" x 12.75" x 3". This came out to only 0.282 cu. ft. Oh snap! The recommended was 0.45 & the MIN was 0.35. After some serious thinking, I decided to take the bottom piece and cut it into a ring to give me an additional 3/4" in height. I calculated this into the equation and it gave me 0.353 cu. ft....just enough for the MIN. I then went to Home Depot and picked up a small precut piece of 1/2" MDF to cut my bottom piece for the box. The reason I didn't use any existing 3/4" MDF is because I was trying to keep the box recessed so the speaker w/speaker grille would sit flush with the large foam piece in the hatch area. Thus, keeping everything as stock. Using another 3/4" would raise the box up and above the foam piece by a 1/4" (even higher w/top part of speaker height). Using the 1/2" piece of MDF makes the box sit flush with the foam. Now, I must decide what to do about the top part of the speaker being raised up. The plastic piece and carpet mats won't sit flat anymore because of the speaker height. My only thought right now, is to possibly take some high density foam of some sort...glue or velcro several pieces throughout the flat plastic floormap piece...thus raising the surface level of the hatch space up a 1/2" or 1". This would also prevent anything in the storage area from damaging the speaker cone. NOTE***I debated at HD whether to buy 1/2" or .25" MDF. The .25" would've made the box overall height better, but I was concerned with that thickness the overall sound quality and box integrity would be affected. The .25" was a little flimsy where as the .5" you could bend or flex. The box may rattle more if the bottom piece was .25". Anyway, if someone happens to build one and use .25" let me know how it works out.

Please give me any feedback ideas that might help me.

Also, I'd like to point out two major things should anyone be thinking of doing this themselves:

1. My whole idea of tapering/staggering the rings was a waste of time as I did not factor certain things originally. The shortest sheetrock screws I saw & bought were 1.5". If you have shorter screws, it is possible to make this idea more worthwhile and to get some slightly more cubic air space. But to do it with shorter screws, you need to continue to taper the rings as you move up, but also ensure they are thick enough for the screw. I personally think this takes too much extra time to try and get this just right. My inner diameter is the same for each ring, but since I tapered them, each one was slightly bigger and hence took extra time. Since the inner diameter is the same, then there really was no point to taper them. Make sense? If I build another one, I will make the bottom piece and all the rings the same outer diameter and the same inner diameters. This will take much less time because you can just copy the first circle to cut the other; and then copy the first ring for the others as well. However, I would still leave the top piece bigger to make it look more flush with the tire. Just my thoughts so far after today.
2. There's no way anyone is going to get a 12" sub and make it sound effecient according to specs. This 10" is barely going to work as is. I would recommend to everyone to go with a 8" sub if they want to do this box. The Pioneer 8" mounting depth is 2.5" and the recommended cu. ft. is 0.4, MIN is 0.15. So the 8" would probably sound better overall in this box. Plus, the original box design would meet these specs without adding the additional ring layer and would sit lower in the space as I originally intended.