Joe X

You do two 12s in that vehicle, but anyways post your max dimensions for a box height, wide, depth and what amp you have.

What is your amp brand name and model? What are the specs of your wiring and electrical (battery,alternator)?, do you have a big 3 upgrade?

As long as you have used glue rather abundantly and left the box alone enough time for the glue to dry completely you should be fine, the parts come already cut so caulk or other stuff to patch up holes should not be necessary. EVLs motor is not that powerful or the subs need that much port area so I say that even if the box is prefab it should do fine, 4 cubic feet net and about 50 square inches of port area should be enough. You should leave the 6x8 speaker slots in the rear deck open and open a big hole in the center and hope for the best. Look up proper gain setting procedures for your electronics which involve getting a cheap handheld scope or a SMD DD-1 to do the job correctly. Let us know how it went.

You can overpower a sub without clipping and yo can get a sub blown without any clipping, The thing is that a clipped signal contains significantly more energy than it's undistorted counterpart so you have to avoid clipping at all costs. The amplifier can't tell if you are overpowering a driver, the clipping light just means that the amplifier is generating clipping distortion even if you can't hear it and that has nothing to do with the sub.

A few questions: 1) what vehicle is it 2) what music you listen 3 how much measured space you have for the box HxWxD 4) what sub and box you had in your car you liked the lows if any. Answer those and I should be able to tell you what may work.

The ski hole is not going to be enough for a ported setup and you would need to open up the rear deck, sure enough it's a mercedes and probably you won't be inclined to cut holes on it so you may have to live with whatever you get or do a 4th BP blowthrough which the sub seems not ideal for it.

I am thinking that if they offer that 0.5 ohm warranty and you purchased that warranty then you simply had the awesome luck of getting a dud, as you say it didn't even bother to go into protect, I think you will get a replacement amp tested to work well at 0.5, still I would absolutely pass on using the replacement on the same sub and just sell it or keep it for a one ohm setup of the future. As for the CAB go it should work perfect and cool at 2 ohm.. hopefully, let us know how did you like it besides the annoying size.

One important thing here is that many european cars need the rear deck opened so that sound waves get into the cabin so you may need to do that. You can have port to the side, many SPL designs go that way, digital designs enclosure suggestions use port to the side, you just need abundant clearance for the port to work well. Also bear in mind that WinISD is a basic program and the plots obtained are really coarse representation of what you will get, you need to experiment where to aim sub and port, what location is best for the box, better aesthetics and functionality in car audio many times mean worse performance, my recommendation is setup the way is best for sound, for example fire back the sub and since it is exposed use a grille to protect it if that's better than firing forward.

1) larger enclosure plays peakier with better low end but with a loss of sound quality. You need to watch out for over excursion at lower power levels with a bigger box, you can check that with WinISD, keep maximum excursion below Xmax at all costs. 2) port area is judged by airspeed, lower airspeed is better, for slot ports I would keep around 26 m/s or less, for aero ports if its just round pipe would keep within 30 m/s, if it has professionally designed flares 35 m/s or a little more. If the form factor of the port is high or you have turns in the port its better to go for lower airspeed. 3) with WinISD add a linkwitz transform filter to simulate cabin gain frequency response, bear in mind that you need to disable it when looking at all the other plots.

Try to turn on just one single amp and do it with the car running this time, see how that goes.

Port area needs not to be an exact value, just needs to be large enough for air not to rush in and out too fast which hurts your output and produces noises. Generally a 16 times net volume of the box in square feet should be a safe bet but evaluating the physics of the situation (driver, box, power) you can figure a much more adequate number as I did in my last post, if you give some more port area than needed your box becomes larger and heavier than needed to virtually no gain in performance. The only thing you need to bear in mind is that the resulting port is not too long like more than 40 inches

Yes but the sub needs to placed in a way that is away from the inner end of the port.

Do the box so you can fire the subs and port to the rear to avoid rattling and open up that rear deck and hopefully enough output reach the cabin, that is actually THE problem with those VIcs, lots of space but then sound gets trapped in there, build a custom rear deck or as you say get some grilles so that it looks nice. Also go for a larger box with generous port area so that the box is efficient even if it plays a bit peaky, you will need every bit of possible output so that you can still get a decent experience at the front seats, let us know how it went.

The sub will easily play below 35Hz, it is no sundown X but it will still do pretty good, take good care of it setting your subsonic filter properly and not letting it see too much power, place the box near the rear end of your vehicle to play louder.

Newer subs taking less space is pretty common these days and the way of the future, you can see space wasting brands like DD audio and SoundQubed now have many models working in fairly compact enclosures.

So here is a suggestion, power: to sub rated, amp subsonic filter to 28Hz, minimum port clearance 1 1/2", figure is just an assembly guide: NOTE: If building outside you need to build a cardboard dummy box to test fit in it's way inside. NOTE: your subwoofer looks beat up and poorly repaired don't push it hard at all.

Is a single reflex bandpass box ported directly to the cabin, easier said than done: It's an advanced project that you can get done wrong in a million ways. In fact I don't know if it can even be done properly.

I believe that you can place a single 15" in that trunk size instead of a single 12", doing that would make you as loud as if you were powering 10000W RMS due to the increased cone area.

What is the vehicle?

I would recommend the skar audio VXF 15 which are $280 each for a few minutes more at their site, they are 1500WW RMS and are very well reviewed. I would do a ported box BUT you need to open up the rear deck in that car for sound pressure to pass to the cabin effectively. Some people have done a 4th BP blowthrough to minimize loses but is very complex project that I would only recommend to very experienced people.

Can you post your design 2.1 cubes or pics of the box? 2.1 is to little for that sub so that it plays the low lows best, Id say 2.6,2.7 is where is at and ported, making a hole in a box is not ported, it's a little worse than a nail on your tyre.

Your amp is just not 0.5 ohm stable, don't keep trying as you may damage it. Also no need to wire at 0.5 the sub is 2000W and the amp can source 3000W at 2 ohm. If you are not getting a lot from the sub try getting better electrical and a better enclosure design and set your gains correctly.

If you have t/s parameters for the new version you could list them here or picture them, still, 2.5 net or something like that is too much for most 10" subs as it too much for some 12s. In fact most manufacturers try over time to design subs that work in smaller boxes.

This sub plats very peaky even in average sized boxes so for a single XFL-10 you should keep 1.0-1.5 cubic feet net and about 20 square inches of port area at 35Hz and 1500W. I would really like to know what people are recommending 2.5 cubic feet specially if overpowering 50% above rated.

There are some bass knob replacements that just work as a signal processor would BEFORE the amp but results would not be the same, I would just talk to NVX and they will tell you what will work or source you the component. IDK, you could also contact the buyer of the car, maybe he still has it, who knows.