I have another GT in the shop here for a couple of weeks where the owner has asked me to do a few mods for him. This was a MAC-equipped car and he elected to replace the large subwoofer/amp enclosure with the smaller, non-mac center trim piece. I suspect that there may a growing number of owners contemplating this same mod. One of the problems associated with this change is that the amp is still needed to power the speakers. Relocating it is a must if you want to kep the same head unit. Shadowman and ACRJoe have made some outstanding posts with their amp relocation/subwoofer box creation project. My friend prefers not to have a subwoofer in the car so he was just interested in the amp relocation. For those who may be interested in this alternative, I've attached some pictures of the project. I am very happy with the results.
This first pic is of the brackets I fabricated for the install. They are simply 1" x 3/16 pieces of steel. I drilled, tapped, and placed some M6 x 1.0 studs in the strips. I then tac welded the back side of the strips and ground them off flush. The studs are not permanent. The bottom bracket locates the amp using the two M10 x 1.5 child safety seat bolts. The top bracket will be attached to the bulkhead using 3M double stick tape. For those that are familiar with the gray 3M double stik tape, you know that it simply won't come off. The only "trick" of the install is that the bulkhead is recessed approx. 1" in comparison to the plane the safety seat bolts are on. So, the top bracket M6 studs are longer and act as stand-offs. Some pictures are worth a 1000 words...
My paint booth cleverly disguised as a basketball court...
Here the brackets are temporarily attached to the amp so that the top bracket can be properly located and fixed into position.
Here is the tempoary mounting without the trim panels. You can notice the recess of the back bulkhead where the padded trim piece is placed.
Now the top bracket is "permanately" attached in the right position with the 3M tape.
The padded trim piece is re-installed hiding the bracket and leaving only the amp mounting studs visible.
The amp is mounted and the pocket is attached to the original mounts.
The seat is in the rear-most position and the car has tunes once again. (Note that the bass will be supplied by the Heffner exhaust which should arrive next week.)
This first pic is of the brackets I fabricated for the install. They are simply 1" x 3/16 pieces of steel. I drilled, tapped, and placed some M6 x 1.0 studs in the strips. I then tac welded the back side of the strips and ground them off flush. The studs are not permanent. The bottom bracket locates the amp using the two M10 x 1.5 child safety seat bolts. The top bracket will be attached to the bulkhead using 3M double stick tape. For those that are familiar with the gray 3M double stik tape, you know that it simply won't come off. The only "trick" of the install is that the bulkhead is recessed approx. 1" in comparison to the plane the safety seat bolts are on. So, the top bracket M6 studs are longer and act as stand-offs. Some pictures are worth a 1000 words...
My paint booth cleverly disguised as a basketball court...
Here the brackets are temporarily attached to the amp so that the top bracket can be properly located and fixed into position.
Here is the tempoary mounting without the trim panels. You can notice the recess of the back bulkhead where the padded trim piece is placed.
Now the top bracket is "permanately" attached in the right position with the 3M tape.
The padded trim piece is re-installed hiding the bracket and leaving only the amp mounting studs visible.
The amp is mounted and the pocket is attached to the original mounts.
The seat is in the rear-most position and the car has tunes once again. (Note that the bass will be supplied by the Heffner exhaust which should arrive next week.)
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