Can someone explain this odd subwoofer design?

[leeman]

So last night I was finishing up my sound deadening project on the car and only had inside the rear quarter panels left to do. After removing the right side loadspace trim panel, I found the very cheap looking 6x9 paper cone woofer in a very small plastic enclosure just large enough to hold the speaker. I needed to remove it to get to the area behind so I could apply the dynamat and dynaliner back in the quarter panel and wheel well. After removing the subwoofer I found it was ported. Here is the issue and question. It is ported to the OUTSIDE of the vehicle. There is a rectangular opening in the wheel well and the subwoofer port attaches to it. On the other side of the port is the fiber liner that you see when you look up inside your wheels well opening.

I have worked on many car audio systems for over 50 years and have never seen a one where the subwoofer was ported to the exterior of the car. If anyone else has seen this or has a good explanation as to why Ford has designed it this way, I certainly would like to know. Do they want people to hear the bass from this car on the outside? That cheap paper cone certainly is not doing much to produce deep bass inside the car especially when it's ported outside. I am satisfied with the basic sound of the system in this car especially the placement of the tweeters that are in the sounder in the dash that face the driver and passenger instead of being side firing in the doors or A pillar but the deep base in this car is sadly lacking. Looks like one of my next projects will be to add a JLAudio sub and separate amp like I have done in the last three cars I've owned. Below is a photo of the subwoofer in it's enclosure, the hole in the wheel well the enclosure port attaches to and the huge (sarcasm) B&O amp which sits right above the sub.

Well, proper forwarding can do a lot of interesting things to sound and maybe they found it putting it that way and gave you a better response

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[My-mache]

So last night I was finishing up my sound deadening project on the car and only had inside the rear quarter panels left to do. After removing the right side loadspace trim panel, I found the very cheap looking 6x9 paper cone woofer in a very small plastic enclosure just large enough to hold the speaker. I needed to remove it to get to the area behind so I could apply the dynamat and dynaliner back in the quarter panel and wheel well. After removing the subwoofer I found it was ported. Here is the issue and question. It is ported to the OUTSIDE of the vehicle. There is a rectangular opening in the wheel well and the subwoofer port attaches to it. On the other side of the port is the fiber liner that you see when you look up inside your wheels well opening.

I have worked on many car audio systems for over 50 years and have never seen a one where the subwoofer was ported to the exterior of the car. If anyone else has seen this or has a good explanation as to why Ford has designed it this way, I certainly would like to know. Do they want people to hear the bass from this car on the outside? That cheap paper cone certainly is not doing much to produce deep bass inside the car especially when it's ported outside. I am satisfied with the basic sound of the system in this car especially the placement of the tweeters that are in the sounder in the dash that face the driver and passenger instead of being side firing in the doors or A pillar but the deep base in this car is sadly lacking. Looks like one of my next projects will be to add a JLAudio sub and separate amp like I have done in the last three cars I've owned. Below is a photo of the subwoofer in it's enclosure, the hole in the wheel well the enclosure port attaches to and the huge (sarcasm) B&O amp which sits right above the sub.

Is there much of an increase in battery draw with the upgraded sub and amp? Wondering if it would be worthwhile to have a switch to completely turn it off if I ever need to save power for a longer drive?

 

[markboris]

Is there much of an increase in battery draw with the upgraded sub and amp? Wondering if it would be worthwhile to have a switch to completely turn it off if I ever need to save power for a longer drive?

If you have the JL audio sub with built in amp and you are not using the audio system, the sub shuts down. It will only be active if it sees an audio signal. If you have the audio system on but have the volume of the sub turned all the way down, it will pull about 500 mA idling which would not be anything I would be concerned with on a long drive.

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