I have the Lariat 502a package with the "premium" stereo. Honestly for a factory system it is not bad but the bass, or lack of bass, from the Sony sub I could not live with.

The Kicker 40CWRT81 is a 8" 1 ohm dvc shallow sub. Crutchfield had one in their outlet for a decent price so I decided to give it a try.

After folding the back seat down the sub box is held on by three bolts and the wiring harness just unclips. There is one more bolt on the back that screws into the magnet of the factory sub. I removed the factory sub and test fitted the Kicker. The magnet on the Kicker is larger and was hitting the bottom inside ledge of the box.

not sure why but all my pics uploaded sideways?

I honestly have no idea why Ford put the ledge in the box. It just leaves open space between it and the back wall when mounted. They easly could have had a larger box.

The clearance I need was not much so I used a bottle propane torch to slowly heat up the plastic ledge. I would heat and then use a small sledge hammer (not to hit I just needed something metal and heavy) to press on the heated area. Be careful not to completely melt the plastic. Just as it started to turn shiney I would stop and press firmly. It took 3 or 4 times and I had enough clearance for the new sub.



I had to fill the bolt hole in the back of the box so I put a piece of duct tape on the back and shot the inside with flex seal.

After that I filled the box with some poly fill to help out and wired the new sub to the old sub's harness. The screw holes did not match up on the subs but the box plastic is soft enough the self tapping screws do the trick.



I reinstalled everything and turned on the radio. At first I thought it was only a slight improvement 25-30%. But apparently it takes the sub a day or two to "break in". After a couple of days the sub seemed to improve more. I would say it is about 75% better than stock. Probably with an amp added in it would be excellent but I was just trying to keep it simple and for now it will be just fine.

 

I have that same sub but on a 400 watt rms kicker amp and it definitely sounds good for how little room it takes up. Mine took a couple weeks to fully break in, but I only drive about an hour each day as well.

 

Do you know what ohm the factory sub is?

 

I had found online where someone had measured it at around 1.5 ohm but I cannot confirm that even though I do suspect it is pretty close.

 

Do you by chance have a picture that shows the sub from a broader perspective? I wanted to see how the enclosure was put in there.
Thanks.

 

The rear seat back folds down with just a pull of a latch behind it. Pretty simple if you want to look for yourself.

 

I don't have the factory sub setup, so I was wanting to see how they did it.
Thanks.

 

Here ya go.

 

Thank you.

 

Did you remove the baffling material from the enclosure? I did this mod and kept the baffling in and the bass doesn't hit as hard as the factory.

 

Yes. They had something in there that resembled carpet padding. I ditched it and used poly fill.

 

Ok. I have removed the filler in the enclosure and the sound still it not anywhere near as good or even better than the factory sub. Can you tell me how you have you wires connected? What colors to positive and negative? Thanks. I'm really disappointed so far in the sound.

 

I wired it it exactly as it came off the factory sub. I am not sure about the color now. All wires were white with two of them having stripes (to the best of my memory those are the negative).

Do you have the Sony system in your truck?

 

Yes I have the Sony system. Just not sure why it's not sounding right. It is giving decent bass, but not as good as the Sony factory sub.

 

I had heard that the non Sony sub actually sounds a little better and thought maybe you had that one.

I did adjust the bass setting to the max but I did that on the factory Sony sub and this one is still better by far. You did plug the hole in the back of the box?