New Sound System!!

[dlo73]

I have already done a system in my 2000 Ls. This Saturday I am going to be redoing the trunk half. I am pulling out my 2 mtx amps as I now have a Polk Audio PA1100.5 5ch amp. I am going to be facing the 12" Tma subs toward the rear seat to get a tighter bass response and mounting the amp on the back half of the box. I Already got my 3/4 inch lexan all etched out and will be drilling in the holes for the led lights to light it up. I will take some pics of the before and after to post later on. when I am done I will give a rundown of what is installed in the car. My brother in law installs custom car stereos for a living and has been doing this for over 10 years. As it sits now the system slams I just want it to be neat and have alittle more trunk space.

 

[1LoudLS]

hey guys. the system is almost done. It was a LOT more complicated than we had envisioned.

most major systems usually are

but it turns out the double din receiver we put in looked like sh*t so i just took it out today.

what about it didn't look good

So I went out and bought another one. a Kenwood KVT514. It's a single din with a flipout monitor. All you single din guys out there happy?

i'm not really sure how a flip out monitor is going to look better than a double din, and flip out owners are always happy until the motor wears out of the guide brackets break!

Now i just have to find another kit cause it obviously won't fit.

well you could just mount the flip out in at the top of the kit and use a universal 1din iso pocket to fill the space, but the single din kits usually look a little better

Yes, the metra kit was great. It fit in perfectly and the finish was basically the same as the factory.

then why does the DD look like sh!t? and how is a monitor that stick out of the dash gonna look better?

 

[djrudebwoy]

Especially when you load up the rear shelf with 8" subs.

It's not subs going in there, just mid bass. Doing from about 80-90 to about 200-300 hz.


Here you can see the new wiring I ran to each door. Overkill, yes. Horns and mids will be amped seperately

Here's what the inside of an LS door looks like for those who are afraid to pull off thier panels.

Door panel being glassed

Door panel prep'd for vynl (was going to paint it, but I'm not putting it in any shows this year so I'll just do it next year and save the money for something else.

First thing I changed a while back was the deck, I don't think single DINs look good at all in this car.

More pics of the doors when they're loaded and re-installed to come...

 

[pektel]

lol +1 on all that.

I've never been a fan of the flip out screens. I do like the motorized faceplate double din, until one of the operator arms falls out of alignment. Like My Kenwood ddx7015 did. I sort of fixed it, but I have to help it open/close every time.

Next time, I'm getting a double din with the dvd slot on the top.

 

[1LoudLS]

wow, i'm sure the sound wont be affected by the lack of an adapter to make the speaker fit and seal properly! no mid or higher bass there!

and i dont agree with the placement for the speakers, the highs are gonna be way to far toward the rear of the car for proper imaging, you want the sound to come from in front of you, not beside you or behind you. not to mention that the drivers body will block the path of the sound for any passengers and if there are any passengers their body will block the sound for the driver, leaving all the highs you hear to come from scattered reflections, very bad for staging and time alignment. well at least it looks cool, right?

 

[Mr. STL]

Okay. so...to answer all of those questions...the double din receiver was way too big. We had to sand down the kit and it stuck out a lot farther than the kit so you could see bare metal. So it was just really bad. And i do like how double din's look, but here in STL there's some pretty bad areas and i'm usually all over for work so it would be a good thing to have something that looks a little lower profile cause a lincoln with a big dvd screen usually screams BREAK INTO ME!!! And i am just ordering a single din kit that's gonna be here tomorrow.

 

[pektel]

5% tint fixes that issue

 

[Mr. STL]

haha. that's a good point. I just don't want to have to deal with the constant threat of tickets cause legal limit is 35 here in missouri.

 

[Mr. STL]

Before:

 

[Mr. STL]

During: (aka, the fun part!)

So for anyone who doesn't know how to do this or is too afraid to rip off their door panels there's two or three phillips screws in the bottom of the panel, and one on both of the sides. (I might have been missing some, so correct me if i'm wrong). So pop out of the window controls and the ashtray and make sure you unscrew those screws or the panel will snap. Then you've just gotta find somewhere you can get a good grip and PULL. Try your hardest not to break any of the clips, but hey. it happens! It looks like this...

Passenger Door:

Driver Door:

Rear Passenger Door:

So when you do that just unscrew the speakers and voila. I chose to leave the factory harnesses for the speakers in there cause they weren't really doing any harm. So...onto the rear panel.

Basically, there's four screws that you've got to take out. So you'll need to appropriate sized socket to get them out. And they're far up in there. So make sure you've got an extension.

So that's what the rear panel looks like when it's out. It's incredibly large and bulky. More so than necessary, but whatever. (The factory amplifier is on the other side of that panel.)

Now to take out the dash...
Start by popping out those ac vents. They're not very difficult.

Then move onto taking the ashtray out and popping out the wood trim that surrounds it.

Then just unscrew those two exposed screws under the trim and then move onto the screws by where the AC vents were. After that pull out the whole center and there will be four phillips screws that you need to remove to free the climate controls from the actual head unit. (SAVE THOSE!!!) After you do that, you're left with...

and as if that wasn't scary enough......

you're left with that! =)

and these of course...

now, it's time for a break!
so you order something like...

now let's sit and eat for a bit before continuing. we're all pretty exhausted and in need of a good break! Am i right?

 

[Mr. STL]

So now onto putting in all the speakers! This is the part we've been waiting for!!!

So, you're gonna need an Amp kit, unless you're not putting in an amp which i strongly advise you to do. As would probably anyone else who knows their way around a car sound system...
and that looks a little something like....

So now just start running those wires from the battery to the amp. We are fortunate enough to have a car that has the battery in the rear, so if you're just mounting the amps on the backseat you're gonna have a really easy job.

Now put those amps where you want them to be and just start connecting. Battery wire to battery spot. And ground spot to ground. (By the way, we grounded the wires to the wheel well cause there's a whole lot of exposed metal there. so that might be your best bet honestly.

important note about this though. Do NOT mount those amplifiers yet. It's not a good idea because you may need to move them around. Although, it would be smart to know exactly where they're going to go so you can have the cleanest install possible.

Now, i put 5x7's in all of the rear factory openings and i put 5 1/4 components in the front doors. And contrary to what i've heard some people say the rear deck IS 6x8. Not 6x9. If you don't believe me then head over the crutchfield and they'll tell you.
For those who don't know this, 5x7 speakers fit into the same holes at 6x8's. So i just opted for 5x7 because i've heard JL audio is great.

So for the rear deck, just start tearing out all those wires and speakers and everything. And you'll end up with...

And then just take your terminals or if you prefer to solder that's probably better and just connect the wire to those speakers and you're all set to put it back in.

Now onto the rear doors. It's pretty much the same, although running the wire isn't the most fun process in the world. But in the end it's worth the hassle.

and that's what it's going to look like with the new speaker in the rear door. Connect them and screw them back in and you're set! That wasn't that hard, was it?

Now moving on to the front doors. Since there are factory 6x8 openings i had to get an adapter plate to fit my focal components. Not a big deal.

So just do the same thing that you did with the rear speakers and just screw those front speakers in. (By this time, my camera had died. So i didn't get a chance to get any pictures of my Focal woofers in the door. But if you want to see them just let me know and i can take my panels off and take a picture or two.

So, initially since i was planning on putting a double din in, this is the metra kit, which by the way the model number is 95-5000B.

I've always been a big fan of metra and would recommend them over schosche.
If you can see the texture in that picture it basically matches the texture of the factory trim which is good.

So after this, you've just got to put your kit on and screw the climate control back onto the bracket with the head unit. And now you'll just have a big hole. So start connecting your head unit and just put it in there!

Now to all your guys that were asking what happened with the double din, here you go.

If you can see how uneven that trim looks on the side it's cause we were sanding it and that just looked really bad. and on top of that that's as far as the receiver would go in. So it just wouldn't have been a good fit. Most people haven't had any problems with Alpines or Pioneer or other more reputable brands, but for some reason I had a HUGE problem with this one.

Now, this part is optional, but i HIGHLY recommend it.
SUBS!!
The subs I have are a good example of quality subs that you don't have to spend 600 dollars on cause some people would rather spend that 600 on some quality speakers or maybe you just don't have 600 to spend!

For subs, the bigger wire you have the better. So i'm very glad i got that 12 gauge even though some people may say it's overkill.

Tired yet? I am, and all i'm doing is typing!

So just stick those subs in the trunk and wire them up!

Now, we tried to be smart and wire the remote wire (which, by the way, is the wire that tells the amp when to turn on) to the fuse box in the rear. Little did we realize that there's ALWAYS power to the rear. Yes, we're that smart. So after a few minutes of contemplating we just decided to get over it and wire the remote wire to the head unit like we were supposed to!

And voila, we had ourselves a new sound system. Well, almost.
We also had to wire up those tweeters because we had a component system.
Thank lord for FOCAL because they included tweeter pods in the package! So we were going to drill holes and mount them, but we just decided to take the lazy way out (which is never the way to do things) and use automotive grade super glue to mount them to the A-pillars. I don't have pictures of this yet because I still have to put in my new head unit cause obviously that old one looked terrible.

So i'll put up some more pictures of all of that later.

And by the way, don't forget that you shouldn't put your door panels on until you have absolutely everything wired up to the amps and you test out your system and personally see that every single speaker is working.

Now you just need to set the gain on your amps and if you have subs then you may want to use a high pass filter. It dramatically improves the quality of your sound because your speakers are not trying to do too many things at once. They can just focus on leaving those lower notes to the subs in the trunk!

And NOW...voila, you've got yourself a new system.

I would recommend using zip ties to tie all your wires together to make it look as clean as possible. And that's basically the gist of it all!

Hope you enjoyed my write up and if you ever have any questions feel free to message me and i'll do my very best to help you out, as i'm sure anyone on this forum would.

I will have After pics up by tomorrow when everything is cleaned up and the new head unit is installed.

Sincerely,
S

 

[Andrizzle]

Nice write up on this. looks great. How does it sound?

 

[Mr. STL]

sounds absolutely awesome. thank god for Focal.

Here's the final pics of the head unit and everything cleaned up all nicely.

enjoy. and let me know what you think.

 

[djrudebwoy]

Imaging is fine, the horns are above the occupants body when installed on the door. I arranged them like that because 1 it looks good, 2 when I open the doors it projects farther then any component set. My system is a little more advanced then just component sets and adapter plates. Not all cars you see have a 5-way dedicated driver system. It's built for show and competition. The hole you see in the door now is temporary for me to have sound while the system is being built (why spend money and time building a plate that's only going to be thrown out?)... I thought you would have figured that out... Hope that clears things up.

 

[RollinLS]

Looks good. Looking forward to hearing it.

 

[1LoudLS]

Now to all your guys that were asking what happened with the double din, here you go.

If you can see how uneven that trim looks on the side it's cause we were sanding it and that just looked really bad. and on top of that that's as far as the receiver would go in. So it just wouldn't have been a good fit. Most people haven't had any problems with Alpines or Pioneer or other more reputable brands, but for some reason I had a HUGE problem with this one.

you shouldn't be sanding any of the dash kit, the radio is not supposed to stick through the opening at all, the radio should fit BEHIND the dash kit and just the face should stick through. to get it to be able to go back together, you really need to carefully tuck all the wires off to the sides while you are putting it back into the dash cavity as there is very little extra room behind the radio. as long as you tuck every thing out of the way, you should have no problem getting any DD to fit.

 

[1LoudLS]

the horns are above the occupants body when installed on the door.

thats funny, because my body it much taller than my door itself.

Imaging is fine

if you are building the system, to sound "better" from the outside, then is simply not "fine" on the inside

The hole you see in the door now is temporary for me to have sound while the system is being built (why spend money and time building a plate that's only going to be thrown out?)...

because if your doing it long enough to have a "until the real sh!ts done" then that means you have to listen to it for some time then why have to listen to poor sound quality for any time, take the 5 mins and spend the $2 to cut out adapters out of ABS, or wood

I thought you would have figured that out... Hope that clears things up.

oh i did but, that doesn't make it any less bushleague, if your gonna show pictures online showing people how to do stuff, then its a good ideal to not show the pictures that show off the short cuts you made.

 

[pektel]

you shouldn't be sanding any of the dash kit, the radio is not supposed to stick through the opening at all, the radio should fit BEHIND the dash kit and just the face should stick through. to get it to be able to go back together, you really need to carefully tuck all the wires off to the sides while you are putting it back into the dash cavity as there is very little extra room behind the radio. as long as you tuck every thing out of the way, you should have no problem getting any DD to fit.

+1. I've removed/reinstalled the double din unit in my LS close to a dozen times. I'm getting pretty good at fitting the wires properly.

I've also always assembled everything (faceplate, climate controls, head unit) as one assembly, and slid that whole thing into the opening in the dash. It does fit nicely:

 

[1LoudLS]

and let me know what you think.

fist off, if you are going to mount the tweeters like that, then you should have mounted them further down, so that you cant see the wires, OR drill the hole through that panel so that the wires are hidden

and second off, if you cant run the wires through the door boot, then you have no business running fresh wire into the door, other than it looking like sh!t, it really is one of the most bootleg things you can do, and every body that see it is just going to wonder how many other corners you cut!

 

[pektel]

I do agree about hiding the wires. I try to make everything seem as "factory" as possible if I can. It really is a simple job to hide wires. Just takes a little time/ingenuity sometimes.

 

[1LoudLS]

enjoy. and let me know what you think.

and i would definitly keep the factory sub enclosure out of the car, this will increase the height of the trunk allowing you to push the subs back further into the trunk, eliminating the waste of trunk space you have now since your sub box wont fit under the factory sub box, then if you really want speakers back there (there is really no reason to have four rear speakers) then you could make adapter plates for real cheap to just bolt those speaker right to the rear shelf (just like how all the newer LS's are) then move the sub amp to the back of the box and slide the box back and regain a lot more of your trunk! also with the trunk lid closed, there will not be much room for air to flow around the amp(not to mention that hot air rises and that amp is at the top of the trunk) placing the amp on the back of the box will allow it to cool much more efficiently by allow the heated air to rise away from the amp and be replaced by cooler air. hot non moving air = premature amp death!

 

[1LoudLS]

+1. I've removed/reinstalled the double din unit in my LS close to a dozen times. I'm getting pretty good at fitting the wires properly.

I've also always assembled everything (faceplate, climate controls, head unit) as one assembly, and slid that whole thing into the opening in the dash. It does fit nicely:

the seceret is to have as little stuff back there as possible, dont have wires longer than they need to be, cut off as much of the wiring between the deck harness and the car-matching harness, and just tuck every thing else of to BOTH sides, i usually have to put it in a little bit, then tuck the wires, then push it back further then tuck more of the wires... until its all the way in.

also keep the stuff that doesn't need to be there out of there: my SWI-PS is off under the steering column, and the XM tuner is above the glove box along with relays and all the extra cables: IP-Bus for the XM, all the wires for the GPS antenna, mic, and Ipod!

 

[pektel]

My secret is to pull the glove box. Then I can reach my hand up and guide most of the wires to the side.

 

[1LoudLS]

My secret is to pull the glove box. Then I can reach my hand up and guide most of the wires to the side.

that will only work for 1st gens, they changed the design for the 2nd gens, the container is no longer part of the door that drops down, its just the door to the compartment. however this does make a nice big flat shelf to mount stuff to (above the glove box, getting stuff there isn't quite so easy )

 

[rainjacks]

that will only work for 1st gens, they changed the design for the 2nd gens, the container is no longer part of the door that drops down, its just the door to the compartment.

On my first gen the container isn't part of the door. Don't know about anyone else's though. I know it was a pain in the a$$ trying to get my Ipod adapter tucked back behind my factory head unit. Time and patience are all it takes.