I learned a lot the hard way so I figured I could make a post and possibly help someone out.
I originally wanted to upgrade my door speakers and tweeters, hoping that’s all I would need to do. Wrong.
Doing so made the sound much worse even though the speakers are much better.
The fix was buy an amplifier. I figured since I’m buying an amplifier I might as well buy a single sub but nothing too crazy. I’m 47 but I’m a 90’s kid at heart.
Anyways, I did some research and found the company Cruthchfield. I was able to get everything I needed all at once and they even had a T-harness I could use so I wouldn’t have to cut into the factory wire harness.
I originally installed the amp behind the rear seat but ended up moving it to under the bench of the rear seat. I moved it because the foam of the back seat touched and it ended up not fitting like I wanted and after messing with the controls so much I realized it would be a huge pain in the ass trying to make an adjustment if it stayed behind the seat.
After getting everything installed and many days of trial and error.. the sound just didn’t sound right. There’s lots of wrong information about what it could be online.
Everything pointed to the head unit. Or radio.
Basically the factory radio nerfs the sound so the factory speakers don’t blow. The way around that is another device to compensate for that. I was told by crutchfield tech support that it wasn’t necessary for me to have one because the amplifier I picked. They were wrong. There’s many types but I picked the Audio Control LC7i. This takes the input signal from the radio- converts and outputs correctly to the amp. The amp can now send it out to the speakers correctly.
Here’s some key mistakes I made and some time consuming processes,
- not installing the crossover kit that came with the door speakers.
- locating the factory speaker harness to integrate the T-harness.
- not buying the LC7i originally
4)not measuring the back seat foam gap for amp placement.
5)ripping out a headliner speaker because i listened to bad information. - lots of soldering even though the T-harness is plug and play, the other end is not.
Good luck to whomever finds this useful.