I've bought the Saleen-tagged 12" subwoofer with internal amp which is made by Rockford Fosegate for the Saleen Extreme vehicles. I got the unit for $500 from stage3motorsports, they are running a clearance.

It still seems a bit pricey to me but I figured if I don't like it for some reason, I could put it up on ebay and recover maybe a few hundred on it.

So anyway I decided to install it this past Sat into my sleeping Tang:


Here's some pics of the install and how it went:

This is the unit above. It'll fit nicely in behind the wheel well in the trunk on the passenger side.

The project started by removing a lot of panels. You start with the door sill on driver side, it simply pulls straight up and off from clips and tape holding it down. After that, the driver side kick plate is removed by depressing a release button and removing one trim/upholstery pin. Oh, then pull out those back seats, which is very easy; just depressed the two latches at the seat bottoms and whola the whole thing comes out:




Connected the subwoofer leads into one of the OEM amplifiers. It didn't say which one I should use, so I just chose the easier access. Also, no matter which way I would have chosen the amp, the connector instructions in the Saleen directions seemed to be wrong? I had to swap male for female on each of their written instructions. I then ran the leads along the door sill under the carpet and into the trunk, tying down with tie wraps all the way and into the trunk (some tie wrapping not shown):






It was a simple matter of two nuts and a bolt later that the subwoofer was in there and connected. The bolt was a bear to get tightened, it seemed they coulda given me a longer one. Also it was in a pretty tight space for working an allen wrench. I also decided to leave the trunk carpeting behind the enclosure; I've seen pictures with it removed, but it seemed to fit so I left it jammed back inside there.



I drove the car to listen to what added sound I had; honestly not sure what's been achieved yet. The thing was working 'cause I could see the diagrahm puffin out air, but I'm not overly impressed yet in the 30 minutes of driving. Maybe it filled in some base background is the best I can say for now; does anybody know if there is some kind of break-in period for subwoofers? Saleen web site claims this setup is better quality/sound than the Shacker 1000...

I poked around some more under the dash to find out which amp I tied the signal into, it is in line with the Left-side of the front subs. See below for the layout they showed to use.


Here is the source of the purchase.
http://www.stage3motorsports.com/pro...Clearance.html

Any Saleen guys have this setup already, and can comment on what the quality is for them?

The other thing I learned was how easy taking certain panels and trim off inside this car can be; I have a roll of RAAMaudio BXT sound damping product coming, and I feel more encouraged that it is an achieveable project by Mr Ordinary Man. I've got some clearance Rockford Fosegate Punch 6x8's coming in the mail, too, from another place. So I'll be upgrading all four stock speakers, starting with the rear ones before I add the BXT material. I'd like to do things in stages if I can stand the suspense, so I can grade the effect of each of these audio upgrades. I expect Inifity's response about all this Rockford product; but like I said if it sucks the big one I'll just post it all up on ebay recoupe most of my cash and move on to some sort of Pioneer or Infinity speaker setup, I think.

 

Edit: Nevermind - I needed my coffee.

 

what, what?

 

Looks good.. very compact. I would like one of those myself, but I couldn't find anybody that sold the enclosure by itself - and I also couldn't fit my Alpine Type-X in there.

Regarding you being unimpressed: have you messed with the gain settings yet?

 

No I haven't. I don't see anything on the outside of the enclosure, the amp is inside that; where should I expect the gain adjust to be?

 

for best bass set your shaker 500 to the rear setting, as this maximizes the subwoofers

 

Hi George, thanks for the advice.
Did you notice any "break-in" period with the trunk sub?

 

Ok, you can have my response: It looks good. I can't hear it, so no comment there, but it looks **** nice. I would, however, not worry about the rear speakers. Maybe it would sound better if you tapped the signal from the rear speakers instead of the subwoofer outputs? Not sure. Does the amplifier on the RF have any adjustments?
Does it have a level control or a Punch Bass ****? I can't find that info anywhere.

 

lol. Thanks for posting, I always appreciate input from the experts.
good suggestion to tap a different speaker lead, I'll try that as soon as possible and see if it makes much difference.

I looked over the enclosure and did not see any kind of gain or adjustment **** nor can I see the amp itself. I'd have to open the enclosure to see what the heck is going on inside. I'm thinking maybe this unit isn't meant to be adjusted since it is "tailor-made" for the '05+ Stangs...

Thanks for saying it looks good. I'd like to clean the lines up on my trunk carpeting though where it abutts the enclosure base, to make it look another step closer to stock.

 

Cool, I get to be an expert Everything I can find about this is basically just a plug and play with no adjustments besides the controls on the head unit. The thing I'm bothered most with it is the 150 watt amp rating. Even the Shaker does more than that. It is possible you're expecting too much from it, but I suspect it's in the controls somewhere.
Also, you stated that the instructions seemed "off". I wonder if it is possible that the voice coils or teh signal feeding the amps are out of phase causing them to cancel out. That would allow a lot of cone movement with little to no sound. It isn't likely, but entirely possible.

 

No, I didn't notice any difference. mine sounds nice but its not overpowering. It does not thump like some custom subs, I hope this helps

 

I was about to buy this, but there is absolutely no mention of how many watts it puts out. This leads me to believe there is very little.

 

The amp is 150 watts RMS. That is very low in a car with custom exhaust, but it could be a very efficient woofer.