I recently decided to put an amplifier in my VW bug. What started it was that I was having issues with my head unit (the radio in the car) cutting in and out while driving at random times. The music would keep playing, but nothing would come out of the speakers. It was very odd. I spent a lot of time checking for bad wiring with the radio and could never find an issue. I finally decided that the head unit must be bad. I didn’t want to put a new one since they are rather expensive, and besides, I wasn’t really listening to the radio much it was mostly for my phone to Bluetooth to and play music.
A friend of my dad’s, Glen, is a bit of a audio guy. So, I called him up and asked him his opinion on the situation. He said he happened to have an amp that I could buy from him for cost and install in my car. I was up for that since it was pretty cheap. So, I went over to his place and when I got there he looked at my car and was like, “Well, I think we should add a sub-woofer and change your speaker setup in the back as well.” So, the 25 year old box I had in the back was to be removed and a platform was going to go in its place. That would allow the sub to sit under that shelf. I went back to his place a few weeks later and he helped cut out the shelf and the speaker holes for the 6×9’s that were going in the back.
Oh I forgot to mention that he had setup a VW test sitting with 4 speakers and the sub in his house so I could hear that it would be like with the amp and the sub. He had owned VW bugs in the past and was very into getting it just right. Back to the build.
We got the shelf made after a couple hours of fitting in and out of the car, and then I took it home to finish it up with the speakers. That was pretty easy. I bought some speaker cloth online and covered the board and stapled it all down. It looked pretty good.
Then I had to figure out what to do with the amp. It was all exposed and I wasn’t sure where to mount it. Glen had mentioned putting it in an old cigar box, but I wasn’t to sure about that. Then he mentioned he could design a box for it and then 3D print it on his printer. I was totally a go for that. So, he proceeded to design the perfect box to hold the amp and a 24V step-up to drive the amp and speakers.
So, I got that from him once I got back from my overseas trip (the one you may have been reading out recently) and I got home and ran wires from the sub to the front of the car (where the trunk is) and then I had to decide where to mount the amp. Glen had suggested under the “dashboard” of the car. I liked the look of it at first, but then I decided I really didn’t want to drill more holes in the car to mount it. So it ended up in the truck in the front. I think it looks pretty good there. I know I can’t access it while driving, but the truth is that once I got it all set there is no more need for the knobs. I can control everything from my phone or the head unit.
Oh yeah the head unit. Well, a funny thing happened while wiring things. I determined that one of the front speakers had a rattle (20+ year old speaker had worn out), so I decided to replace them. While taking the other front speaker out (not the one I knew was bad) I found out that one of the speaker wire connectors on the speaker had broken off. Well, this meant that sometimes that wire would make contact with the body of the car. This in turn would ground out the speaker and the head unit was turning off the current feed to the speakers to protect the head unit from breaking. So, the head unit wasn’t broken after all. It was a front speaker that was causing the issue. I still had the amp and so I installed it, but now I have it wired to the head unit as well. So, I run the amp straight from my phone via Bluetooth or I can have the head unit go through the amp. The nice part about the head unit method is that I can control the volume with the knobs on the radio easily while driving, rather than trying to futz with my phone while driving. I haven’t determined which method I like sound wise more. I think the straight Bluetooth has a bit more quality of sound. BUT we are talking about a 65 year old car so the sound isn’t going to be great no matter what.
