Well I managed to get the new sub and amp finally fully installed and tested today. I ended up building a 1.054 cubic foot box for it so that after the 10" sub displacement, I ended up with exactly 1.0 cubic feet, which is what I wanted. My carpeting job turned out pretty good too and it was a nice little project. The biggest delays were the shipping of the gear and the box parts from partsexpress.com and then getting enough free time to wire it all up. The signal wires were fairly easy, but still took over an hour to run them do to a couple of hard to remove interior trim pieces for routing of the wires. The power was a HUGE hassle for a while. trying to find where to run it through the firewall took me FOREVER because I kept trying what ended up being "dead-ends"... In the end, it was actually pretty simple, but just took a bit of trial and error to find a workable spot.
Overall I am pretty happy. I don't have it cranked up all of the way at the amp or at the head unit, but I am getting some really nice sounding bass and have some control right from the front seat. So far, with it turned up louder that I would ever listen to it, and with some bass loaded music playing, I get no rattle noises outside of the vehicle. Again, I was looking for quality bass and not quantity bass.
While I didn't go top end by any means, my dumb little car still has (with the upgraded speakers, aftermarket head unit, amp, and sub) a stereo system work over $1000. Not bad for a car with a dealer book value of $2800.
I am only hanging on to this car because it is fun to drive and my oldest daughter starts driving in 2 months. My plans are to make this her car and I get something newer. Seems silly to trade up now just to need a cheap car in a year for her. Of course, I guess all of this fun audio really just ends up going to her, but that is OK.
