C.J. Hitt
Ms. Mydosh
Comp I
March 11, 2014
Stereo Cooler It was the time of year again, summer time! It was time for everybody to make our trip down to noel, Missouri for our float trip our friends have planned for the past year. The trip last year was fun but when you go on the river you had nothing to do. So I came up with this idea to make a stereo cooler to take with us on the river to have something to listen to on the river. It was pretty tricky to make this cooler but I am here to explain exactly how to make it in detail so anybody could make this and it is not very expensive to make one. First you have to gather all of the supplies for making this cooler and this could get a bit of a tidies task. Everything that you need to build a basic stereo cooler can be found in Walmart and radio shack but some of the stuff you may have to order online. The supplies you need are a 3’x 1 ½’ cooler, (2) 5 ¾” 100 watt marine speakers, a 10”x 6” 300 watt amp, around 10’ of 16 or 18 gauge speaker wire, a 3 pronged toggle switch, an audio jack that plug into the amp, and finally a small 6”x 3” 12 volt battery nothing too big for weight purposes. These are the all of the components that go into making a stereo cooler and most are pretty common things to find in stores around town. I headed out to Walmart to find most of these supplies and you can find a majority of the things there. The cooler you can get at Walmart for around $30 or depending if they have a sale even cheaper than that. The 16 gauge speaker wire I picked up at Walmart for around $10 depending on how much wire you want it could be more. The small 12 volt battery I picked up at Walmart as well but these can be a bit of task to get at Walmart so I would recommend ordering one online for around $15 to $20 on amazon.com. The speakers unfortunately cannot be found at Walmart so I used crutchfield.com to find these along with the amp too. The speakers are what can make your cooler expensive but I decided to stay cheap on this and get 2 boss marine speakers for around $20. The amp is also one of those thing that can make it expensive but once again I chose the cheap route and picked up a boss 300 watt amp for around $25. The audio jack and the toggle switch can both be found at radio shack, the toggle switch has to have 3 prongs and say positive, negative, and ground on each of the prongs this cost around $5. The audio jack has to have the red and white jacks leading in to an auxiliary end for this to work and this cost around $5 as well. Now that we got our supplies lets craft this thing. Grab your cooler and speakers and place the speakers down on top of the cooler to find out exactly where you need to place them and then draw the outline of the speaker on top of the cooler so you know how big to cut your hole. Now you got your outlines grab around a 1” drill bit and drill directly in the center of each of your outlines. Now you got your holes drilled out grab 1 of these 3 tools, a jig saw, a reciprocating saw, or a router I personally used a jig saw. Now cut straight lines towards the end of the outline and stop right before you get to the end of the outline on both sides. The next step you will need a box knife, then you start cutting the chunks of plastic out that you have cut with the jig saw. Keep on cutting the plastic with the box knife until you have cut to the traced line and make a complete round circle. Now that you have completed the cutting for the speakers it is time to install the amp. You want to sit the amp and battery inside of the cooler together so you know exactly where you want to place them so that you will have enough room for everything to fit inside of the cooler. Now that you have placed everything where you want it to be you will take the 4 screws that come with the amp and screw all four of the corners into the cooler so that when you carry the cooler around it will not slide everywhere inside of the cooler. Now you want to take some of
