I have always loved my music loud when I am driving. I also like an audio system that is full and clear. When I got my Mirage the only complaint I has was that the audio system was rubbish. The system did not have any bass below about 100hz and the highs (5k hz) were not there. Something had to be done!
In 2017 my wife traded her 2015 Mirage in on a 2017 Mirage that had the Rockford subwoofer package in it.. That was alot better sounding then my car. I went to the local audio shop and listened to the wall of speakers they had. Upon going into the store I knew that I wanted that "full" sound, I did not want to loose my trunk area, and that I had an mono block amp to drive a sub (a JL Audio XD 500/1). After about an hour of hearing everything in the store from the cheap to the big dollar speakers, I settled on the Kicker CS 6.5's for the doors. These had nice sounding highs and a little bit of bass and could handle 100 watts RMS and 300 watts peak. I will never put that kind of power to them but I wanted something that would handle about 65 watts or so.
I asked the sales person that was helping me "what is the shallowest subwoofer you have here that runs at 2 ohm. I knew that for me to get the most out of my JL Audio amp I would need to run it at 2 ohm. He showed me a few different subs and then I asked which one of these require the lowest amount sealed box volume. We looked it up and the Kicker RT's were the ones that I went with. Now I get asked alot "why didn't you go with a vented (ported) type of enclosure for the subwoofer", because that vented sub box would have been twice the size of a sealed box. Plus with a sealed box you get a tighter kick drum type of bass vs a vented box gives you more of a low bass like an 808 type of bass. I had a box built as per the specs for the Kicker RT.
While I was at the audio store I bought a high-to-low level converter which takes the signal that goes to your speakers and converts it to a signal that an amplifier can use. If your head unit does not have rca type of outputs for an amplifier you will need a high-to-low level converter or you can blow out your gear.
I also bought about 20 feet of 4 gauge wire for my power and ground to my amp. A fuse holder and fuse for my power wire were the next things I bought. I now needed a way to turn on the amp when the car turned on so I got an circuit blade style aps to tap into a switch fuse in the fuse box.
I started at the battery and ran my positive making sure that my fuse holder and fuse was as close to the battery as I could get it. If you are going to do this at home it is a good rule of thumb to get your fuse as close to your battery as you can!!
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I ran the turn on wire and power wire to where the amps location would be. I installed my ground wire to a good grounding spot and installed the amp. At this time I ran some speaker wire to where the sub would be placed.
Next I tapped into the rear speakers at the b-pillar and installed that high-to-low level converter and ran the rca cords to the amp.
I installed the sub box and plugged in the wires from the amp.
At this point I could have stopped and it most likely would have made a major improvement on the sound in the Mirage, but I could not stop there..
Next up was the door speakers. Here is the Mirage's stock speakers from the doors.
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To get these speaker out of the doors you must take the 5 philips screws out of the door panel and unclip the door handle trim piece. Unplug the wires and 2 of the 5 screws can be found under this trim.
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The upper door trim piece was for me the hardest thing to get off. After a few min of messing with it I got this piece off
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I wanted to retain the OEM speaker mounts but they are part of the speakers, so I took a knife and cut the speaker surround. Next I used a jig saw and dremel tool and cut away the plastic until the stock speaker fell out. Then I shaved it down more until the new speakers fit into place. To make the connection to the speaker I used the oem plug and did this.
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I reinstalled the speaker pod with the new speaker. Clipped them into the stock wiring connector and made sure they worked. I reinstalled the door panel and trim pieces..
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The sound now is night and day difference!!
Final thoughts:
The stock Mirage radio output is somewhere around 15 watts. After upgrading everything I did I am going to install a new head unit or maybe a 4 channel amp to push the door speakers a little more. Another thing I would recommend is using a class D amp. It works the best because the stock alternator does not have alot of amperage output. I will soon do the big 3 wiring upgrade and maybe that will help the alternator be more efficient in getting the power where it needs to go.
