Hey guys,

I know alot of you mounted your amps on the back of your rear passenger seats. Though convenient, if you lay down the seats, it gets in the way of efficient loading of "stuff".

Has anyone thought of hollowing out the back of the seat and create some sort of depression so that you could flush mount an amp? Is it even possible?

Anyone who has tried it, please lemme know

Thanks,
Bob

 

I doubt it, there are all sorts of metal crossbars and supports and stuff that the cardboard connects to... I'll take the back off and take some pics tomorrow then post them back up here for ya

 

I haven't done it on my 4Runner, but I did do it on my Eclipse. Space was at an extreme premium in the little coupe, and since I had AWD, my trunk was even smaller than other Eclipses.

Be warned that it can be very time consuming, A LOT of unexpected problems can crop up, and you may not like the final result anyway.

Your first considerations need to be the size of the amp and the amount of space the seats take up. Most back seats aren't very thick, while most amps go about 2 to 2 1/2 inches in thickness. Your seats may taper too (they did in the Eclipse) so you may have to mount them low, rather than in the center.

Your next consideration needs to be ventilation. While you don't want to hollow out too much space, you also don't want to hollow out the same size as the amps. If you do, they'll have poor airflow, and overheat. Since the amp is being mounted in a vertical plane rather than a horizontal, you need to remember that instead of the heat rising and disipating evenly, the heat from the bottom of the amp is going to rise and heat up the top of the amp. You don't want that heat trapped in there (and it could make for an uncomfortable ride for the passengers!).

The next consideration is what is actually in the back of the seat. In my eclipse, the actual hollowing out was a PITA. The back of the seat was metal underneath the carpet, and it was a royal pain to cut through that. I *THINK that behind the metal plate was only foam, but I know that some seats have metal springs in them that you'd have to cut. These springs are VERY THICK and you probably won't be able to cut through them with a normal pair of diagonal cutting pliers. Even if you don't have the springs, the foam is still not the easiest thing in the world to cut through (it cuts easily enough, but cutting it evenly was a pain).

Another consideration is mounting. I'd recommend fabbing a box of some sort, and mounting that in place. This does a couple of things - one, the 'feel' on the back of the seat is more consistent. Two, after I ripped out foam I could stuff it back in on the sides of the box and didn't have to worry about it encroaching on the amp. Three, it looks a LOT cleaner.

Make sure that the cables you run to whatever you put back there has enough slack to raise and lower the seats easily.

Finally, after you've removed all of this cushioning, your backseats will not be as comfortable as they once were. While this wasn't a consideration in my Eclipse (I was younger, and wasn't too concerned with rear-seat passenger comfort), it certainly may be a consideration if you have children and like to take long trips.

That being said, what I did was hollow out a section in both of the folding rear seats. I joined the two seats together, so they could only be raised or lowered as a unit. I put an amp square in the middle of the two seats in a sheet metal box painted white, covered it with plexi, and drilled a bunch of small holes (1/8" I think) on the bottom and top for ventilation. I put a couple of small (60mm) fans on either side of the amp, near the top of the box to help force ventilation. The plexi cover was mounted in the middle of a piece of sheet metal that I tucked the excess carpet under. All in all, it turned out pretty sweet, and was very functional - I had my music, with no loss of the limited cargo area.

If you have any specific questions, ask away, I'll try to answer as best I can. Unfortunately, it was back in '97 when I did this, so some of the finer details may be lost. I don't have any pictures either - the internet and DIY articles weren't really that big back then, so I didn't have any reason to take any.

~Bill

 

Hey Bill,

Thanks for the very thorough answer---much appreciated. After reading halfway through your explanation, this mod just went right out the window!

Bob

 

yeah, i cant find my freakin digicam otherwise i'd take pics of how i got mine set up

 

i was toying with this idea myself to mount 2 of my 4 zapco 9.0s.....flush mounting woulldn't present a cooling problem at all from the 2 fans each amp has, but......

 

I've seen it done... I think it I saw it on someone's 4runner on Sounddomain. I am actually going hollow mine out a little bit and flush mount one amp in there..

 

I think this is it...

http://www.sounddomain.com/memberpage/213338/9

 

Awwwm shoot - I didn't mean to discourage you. It's just a lot of work, but I'm sure that doing your sound deadening project without a guide was also a lot of work. And everyone who saw the final result loved it.

For the 4Runner, I'm thinking about either doing something similar, or mounting the amps to the roof. I'm worried about the roof mount raising the center of gravity, though - but it doesn't look like it will have any impact on the view through the rear view mirror. I have to get some serious wife approval first, though, and since I was recently laid off, have to find myself some work.

~Bill

 

Mine looked a lot better than that. I think the guy made a huge mistake by using wood to mount the components on - it'd have to be at least 1/4" thick (if not 1/2") in order to be stiff enough to mount anything to it. That's a lot of depth to lose in such a limited space.

~Bill

 

PICS?

 

Whoops, I quoted the wrong message...

Anyways, I have seen someone mount their amps on their roof too... again it was in sounddomain..