Hey guys, I need some help/advice with the 'other car'. We have put a third seat in the back, now the one who sits there is complaining she can't hear the music, to get it to the point where she can hear it, its too loud for us to hear the two in the back seat and would be too loud for the baby as well.

I thought a solution would be to flush mount some speakers into the rear cargo area, above the wheel arches on the side walls if you will, then patch them into the rear speakers in the doors. They don't need to be that loud, at the end of the day it is just to get extra noise down the back of the wagon.

Being a total audio n00b, I was hoping some kind soul here would be able to help me out, firstly by telling me if this is even possible using the stock head unit, will there be enough clearance behind the panel, will it be easy to run the wires etc. I am reluctant to run an amp in this sort of thing, at the end of the day this is just the 'family mobile' so all I am looking for is something simple so if the only solution is an amp then I might look at giving her an ipod or the like :).

One of the SA guys suggested mounting them in the rear door panel, with the back rest of the extra seat almost touching the roof, it may impede the sound, also we would then need to worry about what we put in what is left of the cargo area hitting speaker grills etc.

You cant splice extra speakers into existing speaker wiring.

Impendance changes, and you will fry the headunit amplifier.

Wherever you mount them is up to you, but you need an amplifier for them.

bugger, not the answer I was looking for :tired: oh well, guess it is plan b then :)

thanks for the response though, appreciate it.

Well that is not entirely correct. If you where to splice into the rear speaker outputs you would just need to make sure you hook them up in series to give your amp an 8 ohm load if you have 2x 4ohm speakers. Just get some smallish speakers with high efficiency.

Commodore is an easy car to take apart, you would just need to run a set of speaker wires up one side and hook them up.

What series is it?

its an 06 VZ wagon, so the existing rear speakers are in the front leading edges of the doors. I'm not looking for great stonking 'moar power' speakers for the cargo area, just big enough so the poor child in the back gets to listen to the music as we driving. As I said, this is the family bus, so the day the volume knob goes over half is a rare one.

Yeah I'm sure some efficient 4inch 2way in the rear cargo area will suffice. If you mount them under the window next to the occupant you get get a decent result.

As I said, it is important how you wire it though :D

Yeah I'm sure some efficient 4inch 2way in the rear cargo area will suffice. If you mount them under the window next to the occupant you get get a decent result.

As I said, it is important how you wire it though :D

cool, thanks for that. sounds to me like rather than try to get this sorted myself, I might get an audio guy on to it

Well that is not entirely correct. If you where to splice into the rear speaker outputs you would just need to make sure you hook them up in series to give your amp an 8 ohm load if you have 2x 4ohm speakers.

Will a factory headunit be able to provide an 8ohm load?

Will a factory headunit be able to provide an 8ohm load?

Yeah any aftermarket unit will be able to provide a 2-8ohm load without any problems. Being a factory unit it would run very hot running the rears @ 2 ohm but could probably do it. An 8 ohm load would make life a little easier on the internal amp and since he is adding to the rears, halving the total power and then dividing it over the 2 speakers wont hurt it. They just wont play loud but as SA TFer said, it is only fill :D

cool, thanks for that. sounds to me like rather than try to get this sorted myself, I might get an audio guy on to it

It's not that hard. All you need to do is pull the factory unit out,get a 9V battery and test for the rear speaker outputs. Working on both the rear left and the cargo left speakers, you connect the +ive of one speaker to the +ive output of the deck and the -ive of the other speaker to the -ive output on the unit. Lastly you connect the remaining +ive terminal for speaker 1 to the remaining -ive terminal of speaker 2. Then you do the same for both the speakers on the right side. There you have wired them in series :happy:

Just run the wires down the driver side of the car and presto hook up to the required new cargo speakers :D