Nice MDF crap brother. Horrible stuff Medium Density Fibreboard is huh? Don't breath the dust in mate, * I SERIOUSLY DO NOT KID ON THIS *... Should be wearing a mask (at minimum when working with the crap. I don't care how nice it smells --- That is formaldehyde mixed within the resin used during manufacture. These chemicals take years to leech out... I find it truly amazing that you can buy "properly" made cabinets where they've only finished (laminated, painted or formica'd) the outside of the unit.

The other thing --- Have you seen the stuff when wet? Well... Weetbix springs to mind. And just how water tight are the EF boot lid areas?.............


Would suggest rounding off all the edges with a 120 or 180 grit, hanging the whole thing in your garage and purchasing some "mdf paint" in spray can (Mitre 10 Mega / Bunnings) or just using a "sealer primer" and roller it nice all over before covering in oil or a spray enamel of some description.

(Please ignore all this advice if you're going to wrap the whole thing in a big plastic bag)

Looks like a good little design matey.... You can even buy spray cans of "velour" paint nowdays that leave a furry finish... Alternatively go to the local fabric shop. Last time I was in Dorkland I went to Spotlight North Shore someplace and spent less than $20 on heap of real nice material to cover an old stand up table I was using to try and sell $60,000 boats. Didn't sell a boat mind you.


Good work - This sort of thing makes me want a sedan. I'd need a trailer mind you, but at least the boot would be tidy.

Fiend mate, you are a life saver. I didn't have a clue about the MDF dust, first time i have ever really got this involved with working with MDF, so i'm glad you brought that to my attention - i'll definitely be wearing some form of mask to prevent breathing in that dreadful stuff


Yep, MDF + water = Weetbix alright .. I'll be spraying it with something before the carpet goes on for sure. The bootlid seals pretty well on the Fairmont, but when you open the boot after it has rained or been washed, the water tends to drip down into the boot so will need to weatherproof the MDF somehow just to be safe.


Cheers dude

The dust is small - It will sit in your skin pores and up your nose etc etc etc. The only good thing about it is that it is toxic and the body will try and expel it from your lungs in mucus. This is not 100% efficient however, and you'll end up with preserved lungs sitting in your coffin well after the rest has rotted.....

If you ever forgot what you were doing the day before you could always tell by the colour of snot and mucus coming out... White was gib board, gray was concrete, larger painful solid snot was a lot of wood, tingly fingers was pest control, blurry eyes and itchy tear ducts was taking rust off.... List goes on and on...

If you look at all the safety recommendations you'd never do anything.

But you have to know which ones to be aware of. DUST MASK with concrete and MDF work is *very* suitable. Concrete, when cut, is horrible. Never leaves the bottom of your lungs and looks under a microscope like road gravel.

May as well just take up smoking. It's better for you than building.


Ford supply a un finished MDF liner in the back of their cars admittedly. My wagon has one too. A few spills have made it through the carpet and... Well... I wouldn't be showing it off to anyone I cared about. It's quite amazing how the oil seeps in and destroys the bonding of the MDF.

All good, I'm butting out again now. MDF should come with a warning label. All that dust and dodgy as chemicals being inhaled and absorbed through every open skin pore (or eye sockets, etc) isn't going to kill you over night, but that's no reason to go swimming in the s**t either.


Good work matey --- Bling it up like Rallykattys install?!

Think I'm going to do something similar with my boot install + a board to hide the LPG tank. Watching with interest!

Went out and came back with these today



A set of 6" Precision Response Kevlar splits from Jaycar - CS2327. Gave them a call yesterday and they said this was there last set. Asked them if they could hold it for me till Thursday (payday) but they said it was too long so i parted with the last $80 in my wallet . Jaycar have some good deals on this month as i think they are clearing out all their Response gear. Have heard nothing but good things about these kevlar splits so i couldn't pass them up at the price they offered me, got these for $80, down from $189 rrp

All i need now is a decent amp to power them

wow should make some nice noise when its all done !!......... what kind of music do you listen to anyway? Please dont tell me its doof doof

downside to a nice stereo is dead weight......just say your car has 140rwkw and the total weight of your car plus driver is 1675kg.

Means every 9kg of weight you remove, you will feel the effect of an extra 1hp gain at the wheels. But the other way around is, every 9kg you add to the car you feel the effect of 1hp loss at the wheels

Meh, power is overrated anyway!

Yeah definitely, should sound a bit better than before. The box i had the sub in before is a bit undersize and is just made of normal hardwood so although it still sounded okay it was no where near as good as it will sound in a MDF box built with the right volume as per manufacturers specs. I mostly listen to rap, r&b, reggae as i have basically grown up around that type of music and also listen to a bit of rock now and then - but none of this techno s**t lol, i can't stand that stuff so, no i don't listen to that kind of doof doof

Mate, you are spot on about the dead weight. It's bad enough just driving around with a full car load of people and a boot packed full of s**t, it almost feels embarrassing when you give it some gas to get up a hill or something and the car just wants to bog down and drone, especially with a cam that isn't entirely designed for low end grunt . MDF does weigh quite a bit indeed, would be interesting to see how much extra weight it adds alone. I have thought about doing a boot install for a long time and tried to work out ways of countering the added weight, so far the only thing i have done is remove the towbar assembly lol but it has removed a fair bit of weight from the a** end.

Worst comes to worst, if this boot install makes too much of an impact on the way the car drives, i'll start saving and talk to Snort about a M112 blower kit for the Fairmont


Mate, you can never have too much power

Well going from hardwood to MDF you should notice a huge difference in sound quality

and yeah you can defintely feel the difference when weight is removed, especially handling wise

i remember ages ago the first time i went to the drags, i removed as much interior & boot stuff from the car to get the best possible time. This meant seats, stereo, door cards even spare wheel

Driving through town afterwards i nearly over steered the Fairmont into every corner up the gutter because it need so much less effort to turn, felt like a different car !!!

Yeah it gets annoying when you fit a sub and everyone thinks you listen to doof doof. Brings out a side of Lars Ulrich that I had never been able to feel before.

Have you encountered any boot rattling since you installed yours kwik?

My boot rattles like crazy when im standing outside and listening to it.

thats because nearly everyone listens to doof doof

the radio is full of the s**t after 9pm every night to cater for the masses

I know what you mean, when i first had mine in you could here the rattles over the bass thumping even from inside the car

Soon took care of that though and went on an all out attack on the bootlid. Found out that 90% of the rattling was from the bootlid alone vibrating against the bracing underneath it and the expander foam type sealer that was used from factory that had broken away and rattled inside the bracing. The other 10% were loose license plate screws letting the plate rattle a bit which got tightened up quick smart. So i ripped off the bootlid lining, removed as much of the expander foam as possible, ran a s**t load of sikaflex gap filler between the bracing and the bootlid, filled every little hole in the bootlid bracing with bits of foam, then covered the entire bootlid with Dynamat Xtreme. Then threw the original bootlid lining back on and problem solved. That soon shut up all the rattling and made the boot feel 5x more solid and 5x heavier at the same time

cars looking better and better every time i get on here.
howd you go about making the templates for the boot?
did you measure it right to the edge to fit snug or is there a bit of a gap? i can sort of see a bit of a gap.
just wanna know cause im interested in doing this with my car although LPG limits me a bit with the whole sub installation side of things.

Thanks man, appreciate the comments

I guess i'm lucky i don't have and don't plan on using LPG . With the tank in the way you are limited with what you can do with the boot install. It can be done, but you may have to think about using slimline subwoofers to try and maximize boot space and minimize your enclosure sizes. Jaycar have a few good slimline subs (Venom range i think?) that would be perfect for this kind of situation

Yep, with my measuring i did leave a bit of a gap all around the edges to be safe. I was limited to the width of MDF sheets i could get and this one in particular was just wide enough to reach from wall to wall with a comfortable gap to easily remove and replace in the boot while working on it so it worked out well. If you remove the boot carpeting in your EF you'll see how the boot floor is recessed and has a raised edge all the way around it - this edge is what i have the MDF floor board sitting on so i have made up little stands that sit in the recessed part of the boot floor which support the MDF floor and hold it up level. This is the area i guestimated/measured before making any cuts. There is a bit of a gap between the walls and the edges of the MDF, but the MDF board holds in place very well and doesn't move around too easily which is good. Besides the gaps will not be seen as i plan on boxing off the walls if that makes sense - you'll see what i mean when i get it all done. With this kind of work its all really trial and error. It's very hard to measure things because of the awkward shape. I ended up using the boot carpet as the main template for cutting the corners and it worked, amazingly . Best bet would be to use some cardboard as templates to do your measuring as you can muck around with it to get the shape perfect

alright sounds pretty good aye, you make it sound reasonably easy to do lol
i got a few large boxes out the back that i can cut up and turn into a proper template and then just trace it onto the MDF so that it fits well
i know what you mean bout boxing the walls, seen it before looks awesome though
think a car on here had had it done to it and had a small window with an amp in it looked sick.
i think ill do the same thing youve done with the carpet but might just go pick my self up a boot carpet or 2 from the wreckers so that the carpet is basicly identical.
howd you go with pricing on the sound dedening? pretty expensive?
and yeh ill most definately have to go with slim line subs because anything larger takes up too much room which i dont have much of already.
im thinking going 2 12" subs and a nice amp or 2. that should pump some bass through the tank because it basicly just acts as a sound dedener. doesnt help that the factory sub was removed when the LPG was installed.