Subwoofer enclosure for e36

When I got my e36 coupe quite recently. I set myself few goals. One trying to keep it looking factory as much as possible, when looking from outside. This also concerns the audio system upgrade. Specially the subwoofer which is known to be hard to place in a way that it wouldn´t be visible or take too much trunk space.

My solution for this was to sacrafice the spare tire in the trunk and make a enclosure to fit in its place. This restricted many of my design prinsibles from box and subwoofer size to the size of amplifiers and its placement.

I used thin cardboard with some ducktape to make out the rough shape of enclosures floor, then transferred that shape on to some 19mm thick mdf with little help from spray can of black paint. Next up was to cut the shape out, this was done by just a regular handsaw. Yeah with jigsaw and mitersaw I could have done more round box, but as a student I couldn´t afford them so hand tools was the way to go for me. Might redo it in the future tho.

If you know 90`s BMW´s there is a hold down for the spare wheel which is been welded on to the tub itself. I wanted to keep this feature as intact as possibly so box got a cut out to accomodate this. Only thing I might need to cut is the threaded rod since it might be too long as it is.

I had a friend help me out building the enclosure which helped a lot with making the sides. Subwoofer for this enclosure will be a 12" MDS Predator with dual voice coils, port is 8" aeroport and amplifier is MDS XTR 1000w which is suprisingly small for its power level.

Amp itself will be fixed to the subwoofer enclosure with vibration dampners since space limitations won´t allow it to be installed anywhere else.

Will keep you posted on this project as we get the "roof" of the box fitted with the holes in it and carpet laid over it to make it look nice. Also might need to make new fake floor for the trunk.