All,

First, this is my first post on EvoM.net. I've been following occasionally since I purchased my Lancer in 2011. I decided to finally join because I'm just now getting to do some things with it, and I saw it has been a while since anyone posted a new thread in here. (btw, those outdated stickied threads need to be unstuck)

After getting tired of the amount of road noise heard in my car (I first noticed it during my test drive just before purchase), I decided I wanted to do something about it. After enough searching online, I think the specific direction anyone would head would be Don's Sound Deadener Showdown. I tooled around his website for a while, found some other people who had positive reviews of his work/merchandise, and contacted him to see how much it would cost to deaden my car.

**A brief pause for an aside.**

In 2009, I purchased a 2002 Honda Accord to use as an "island beater" while I was living on Oahu, HI. On a particular rainy weekend, I forgot to roll the back windows up and the carpet got soaked to the point of replacment. While I was tooling around looking for replacement carpet, I got the bug to replace the factory stereo as well. I did that and was impressed with the service Crutchfield offered.

**Main story continues.**

So, I start disassembling my car (will post pictures after the story), and got the stereo bug AGAIN. Once more, Crutchfield is where I ended up, and I purchased what you see in my signature. It arrives on Tuesday, and I couldn't be more excited!

During my infection, I also decided I finally wanted a K&N Air Intake upgrade. This is something I had been wanting since initial purchase, but work and life got in the way (that is to say, I got distracted and forgot!). I ordered a Typhoon and will be installing it this week.

Okay...that lays out the basis for this thread.

It isn't just MY thread, though. I figured I would inject some fresh life into the Vanilla Lancer section, to see where it goes.

 

Okay, so the first thing I did was begin disassembling the interior (the trunk, rear seats, passenger seat, and paneling). It wasn't very daunting, and I managed to only break two small black clips when taking some of the paneling off.

Trunk w/spare tire well:


Passenger Quarter Panel:


Rear View w/Carpet and Driver Seat Installed:


After that was done, I removed the roof paneling. I was a little worried that it wouldn't fit out of the car, but it was okay.

Once there, I decided it was time to remove the driver seat and carpet. The driver seat was no problem, but the carpet had me snagged for an hour. There is a small strip of carpet (about one inch by six inches) that is under the center console that, for some reason, I could not figure out how to remove. After enough searching, I found a thread (here or somewhere else) that explained that, right near the two accessory pockets (where you would keep your change or the RCA plugs for the AUX connection) there is a small plastic piece that is covering two screws that have to be removed in order to take the console out. After that, it was a breeze.

Passenger Side View:


Driver Side View:


Console View:


Because I plan on having to drive the car to work Monday (yeah, Memorial Day...bleh), I had to put the driver seat back in.

 

Now for the audio.

I got the JL Audio PowerWedge Max from CarToys for about 40% less than what Crutchfield was charging, so that's sitting in my garage eagerly awaiting its supporting equipment to come (Tuesday!!).

I wanted a way to control the subwoofer from cab in case the wife and kids need to use the car. I ordered the RBC-1 from JL Audio, and it got here before anything. So, with the console removed, I installed it into the cupholder panel. There is a small 2" x 2" insert that you can pop in and out of the panel with a small plastic brace behind it. My thoughts were that I could remove that insert, use my Dremel to get rid of the brace, and install the RBC-1. Perfect!




Okay...remote was done. Now for the power to the Subwoofer. On the Accord (mentioned in OP), there was a convenient firewall grommet on the passenger side through which I routed the power cable.

No so much on the Lancer. I searched and searched both on the internet, in the engine bay, and in the interior on both the passenger side and driver side and I couldn't find ANY grommet to help.

Totally frustrated, I ran across someone's thread about using the driver side fender. It seemed easy enough, until I got to routing the power cable into the cab. My idea was to go through the door wire run, so I had to cut a small hole into the rubber and carefully thread the cable into the cab. It worked better to go from the cab to the door, so that's what I did.

The door wire run:


Into the engine bay:


The wire ways work great for routing the power cable:

 

Awesome thread! Keep it going with the updates and pics!

 

Man this stalled out quick. I simply have not had time to work on the car. Last week I spend six hours in the car and finished the driver and passenger parts of the front, so I could put the carpet and passenger seat back in. The stereo is installed, but the speakers aren't yet mounted into the doors. I'm playing with two ways to do it: 1) Use the adapters that Crutchfield sent (but I'm having trouble figuring them out) or, 2) Rip the stock speakers out of the stock mounts and rig the new speakers to them (avoids having to drill holes in the doors...but I'm having problems figuring out how to keep the speakers to the mounts).

And I still haven't finished dampening the doors. It is a definite difference in sound from the driver's perspective, but not having it complete, I can't get a full sense of the difference. Hopefully I will be able to work on it some maybe a little tonight (doubtful) and then Sunday (work on Saturday).