1989 Chevy S10 Pioneer Subwoofer Box Install - Big Boom, Little Room

  |   1989 Chevy S10 Pioneer Subwoofers And Premade Boxes pioneer Sub As cool as a standard-cab truck looks with its small cab and uncluttered lines, the interior room leaves something to be desired. No back-seat area usually means that you have to give up the dream of having thumping bass unless you build some huge sub-filled center console. Not anymore. The audio junkies at Pioneer have come up with a line of subwoofers and premade boxes to feed the need for low notes that should fit into the tightest of confines. A box is just a box until it has a speaker installed, but what do you put in this small of a box? How about a 10-inch subwoofer? Most normal subs won't even come close to fitting in this box, but Pioneer has built a 10-inch shallow-mount woofer that will. The TS-SW2541D sub only needs 2 7/8 inches of mounting depth and a little less than 0.7 cubic feet of air space to function properly. Add the small installation parameters with features like a composite double cone and 1,000-watts max power input, and you have one impressive setup. Keeping with the big-performance-in-smaller-spaces theme, I picked up a Pioneer GM-D4700M Class-D mono amplifier with 800-watts max power. This little amp will have plenty of juice to drive the sub without taking up a huge amount of area. To wire all of these new goodies, I picked up an 8-gauge single-amp wiring kit from Scosche Industries. This wiring kit has everything in one package, so there will be no guesswork on what wire to use and so on. To have all of the stuff installed, and to get a professional opinion on this new stuff, I went to Al & Ed's Autosound of Ontario, California, and enlisted the help of installer Darren Sprayberry. Darren installed everything in a flash and was impressed by the system, considering how small the setup is. One thing I did find out on my drive home from Al & Ed's was that the new audio components really taxed the charging system of my '89 S-10. My headlights acted more like flashers, dimming every time the sub hit hard. To cure that issue, I picked up a high-output alternator from Powermaster. It's a good thing I did because my stock alternator had seen better days and was about to lose the rear bearing. Now that everything is copasetic, I really enjoy turning up the volume and shaking the mirrors on my standard-cab truck.

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  |   1989 Chevy S10 Pioneer Subwoofers And Premade Boxes amp Alternator Tech Tip

Keepin' It Charged

The new amp and sub really rounded out the system in the truck, but it was putting a high load on the charging system. The dimming headlights when the bass hit was a definite clue. To cure this issue, I contacted Powermaster and ordered a 140-amp alternator.

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  |   1989 Chevy S10 Pioneer Subwoofers And Premade Boxes sub And Box The Final Word
With everything hooked up, Darren fired it up to see how it sounded. Initially the sub sounded great, adding much- needed depth to the system. When Darren tweaked the settings, things really started to shake. He turned on the high-pass filter function on the head unit to cut the bass frequencies from the dash and side pillar speakers and cranked up the levels on the amp. We were both impressed by how much punch this little package has.