Just finished a full system re-wire today. Finally decided to bite the bullet and yank the rear seat and mount the amps there. Turned out pretty good.



Anyone know what that 2-pin connector is for? (The one shown at the upper right corner of the left-hand amp.) The lead runs about 1/2 way across the cab and stops.







To those that are still a little squeamish about the whole rear seat pull - Trust me, it was a piece of cake. After looking at the galleries of a few folks here, the entire removal was about 5 minutes tops.

The best part of the whole project is that I finally have my jack back in the cab!!

Note to the powers to be at Ford: Would it have killed you to put some type of rust preventative coating on the main seat bar assembly back there?? I realize it's never seen, but c'mon, after 5 months that's just ridiculous. Guess I'll have to pull it someday and have it blasted and sprayed.

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Eric, Nice pictures, I just finished mine two weeks ago in the same fashion(behind the seat). One question that I have for you is in your decision to mount your circuit breaker directly to the battery. This may cause you some problems down the road. Im my opinion, you should have mounted it to the sheetmetal in the engine bay. Additionally, better quality RCA cables will make a difference. Other than that, it looks great. What kind of enclosure did you go with? Do you have any pictures of it that you can post?

 

I don't have any shots of the enclosure, but it's a single 10" Rockford Punch Stage 2 in a home made job covered in black cloth. Nothing special.

I couldn't think of an easier place to mount the breaker. Two phillips screws hold it to the battery cover so it's easily removable. Where did you mount your fuse/breaker?

Thoses RCAs are actually the ends of two ground loop isolators. They're a temp fix until I figure out why I'm getting interference when the dome light fades on/off. It's really strange - Without the isolators, I have no noise in the system whatsoever, but I still get a really annoying buzz when the dome fades on or off. I may try running a ground from the HU chassis to the amps and see what happens.

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Looks pretty nice.

I still need to get off my **** and do mine right, its just kind of thrown in there now.

 

Nice install! Just wondering--do you notoce if you have increased cabin noise with the rear insulation cut open? I've been driving with mine removed while I'm in the process of installing my mess, and there's noticeably more road noise with the radio off :-|

Ya got me curious on that dimmer noise. I bet there's some PWM circuit running the light dimming, and when it's pulse-width modulating, maybe it's the switching noise you're hearing off the 12V supply line, not ground. Or it's being induced elsewhere.

If you're up to it, try placing a .01uF and .1uF ceramic cap across your big cap and see if that helps (assuming you have some handy). I'm interested to see if that does anything since I'll probably have the same problem..

 

Yep - The cab vents let in a ton of road noise with the insulation removed. I could even hear my leafs creaking at slow speeds!

Once I put it back in, even with the cutout, it was much better. I think once I get the seat back in, it'll be as it was before. (I hope! ) I'll find out on the way to work tomorrow as I plan to re-install the seat this evening.

As for the buzz - The ground loop isolators completely remove it, so my guess it that it's coming in through ground, but I'm far from an electrical engineer, so I could be wrong. My signal lines run along the outer edge of the drivers side of the cab, so I may be picking up noise from the main harness that runs along the floor. (Although that wouldn't make sense because the rear speaker wires are in that channel.) I payed very close attention to where the power wires came in to make sure they never came close to or crossed signal lines, etc. (Which leads me to a side complaint - Why do amp manufacturers insist on having the signal, speaker, and power lines come into the amp on the same side? Spread that s**t out dammit! )

I don't have any ceramic caps to test your theory, but if you get "the buzz", and that works for you, let me know!

 

Hey man sweet install! Try adding a chassis ground from your battery to your firewall equal to the size of your main power wire, looks like 4guage. There is a chassis ground on the firewall to the rear of the battery just tie into that, this may solve your problems and wil definately increase your voltage output, remember you can only draw as much current as your ground wire will allow to complete the circuit. In short if your power wire is 4 guage and your ground is 8 then you may as well make your power 8 guage. I second that on the rust pretty sorry if your ask me, com'on Ford 34,000 ought to get you at least a little rust protection huh?

 

Hmmm - Interesting. Never thought of that one. Thanks!

Scary part about the rust is I found more today. Pulled the center "20" section of the front seat to start a console swap, and under the bottom seat cushion is just as bad as that bar assembly in the back. Pretty sorry indeed...

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Good thing you haven't looked up far behind the dash like behind the stock radio! Same tubular frame setup as the rear seats. Mine's starting to show some surface rust also, and I live in an area where humidity isn't something one ever thinks about :-(