Hey all,

First post, though I've been lurking around for a few years now.

Kind of a newb when it comes to car audio. Biggest mod I've done to my truck so far was putting in an XM recvr for my after market Sony(which Best Buy did for me). Not to say I'm complete stranger to doing my own mods and projects. I know my way around a home theater extremely well and have been building my own computers for years, but Car audio seems to be a completely different kind of monster. Anyway, I got the bug and decided it was time to do an upgrade. On some what of a budget so I was just going to put a sub in to start.

Took some measurements, and built a box to fit under the rear seat. Enough room for a decent 10" and a spot for a mono amp on top of the box.
I ended up going with the following components:
Inifinity Ref611A 600 watt mono class D Amp (refurbished through Harman audio for $70 on their ebay store)
Alpine SWR-1023D 10inch 2ohm sub. (fit the space and volume of the box perfectly and could utilize all the power of the amp)

Harman Audio also had some good deals on some four channel amps and I ended up winning a JBL GTO75.4II 520 Watt amp for $70 as well. I'd been contemplating components for awhile as well and ended up grabbing a pair of Polk db6501's for the front doors.

All said and done I ended up having a total of $360 invested into what I think should be a very substantial upgrade to a, more or less, factory system. Then, after a bit of research on this site and others, I realized I needed to get a wiring kit, and based on the specs of the amps, I needed a fairly good sized one. I looked and looked for a decent 0 gauge dual amp kit for a reasonable price. In the end nothing was completely fitting the bill so I ended up ordering all the components I needed individually from knuconcepts, parts express, and stinger. (kills me that I have more invested in wiring for my amps than I spent on both amps combined!)

Well, enough of my novel... onto my questions.
First, about my wiring, below is what I ordered. Is there anything I'm missing and/or made a mistake on?
18 feet of 0 gauge Kolossus Fleks Kable - Blue
3 feet of 0 gauge Kolossus Fleks Kable - Black
6 feet of 4 gauge Kolossus Fleks Kable - Red
6 feet of 4 gauge Kolossus Fleks Kable - Black
15 feet of 8 gauge Kolossus Fleks Kable - Blue (for remote turn on lead)
2 x Stinger Gold 1 - 0 Gauge / 3 - 4 Gauge Distribution Blocks
2 x 4 gauge waterproof AGU fuse holders (for between amp and distribution block)
P3 Platinum 1/0 AWG ANL Fuse Holder (at battery)
2 x P3 Platinum 1/0 AWG Power Terminal Pair
2 x P3 Platinum 4 AWG Power Terminal Pair
12 VDC Automotive 5-Pin Relay SPDT 30/40A (for remote turn on lead)

and for the speakers I got:
Krystal Kable 4 Channel 6M Twisted Pair RCA Cable
40 feet of Klear Kable Blue 10 Gauge Speaker Wire

Still need to get a single rca cable for the sub, but everything I've seen sold so far is sold in pairs. Any good suggestions?

Second question is on amp placement. I pulled the rear seat back of yesterday to have a look. I've seen many people mount there amps here on newer trucks and supercrews, but it doesn't look like there is much space there on my Supercab. What I'd like to do is mount the JBL, distro blocks, and fuses on a piece of mdf and then attach it to the back wall. Will the seat back fit back in place after doing this? What about attaching to the back wall... how are most people doing it? bolting there? self tapping screws? existing bolts?

Finally (for now anyway) Since I'm going to end up putting polk components in the front and I have a four channel amp, I'm thinking, what the hells another $80-90 to put a pair of speakers in the rear doors while I'm doing everything else? Any good recommendations for a rear pair that would match the db6501's and handle the 104 watts rms from the JBL. I was thinking of going with the db651's or db571's (both are only rated 50-60watts rms... is that a problem?) I'm leaning toward the 651's, but crutchfield says they won't fit. That true or do they just require some creative tweaking? Anything else better I should be considering in the same price range, give or take?

That's about all I got for now, though I'm sure I'll have other questions in the next week or so as I start putting this all together.

 

You will need a 2 channel RCA for the sub amp. You still send left and right to the amp because you don't have a .1 system like in home audio.

I would skip the rear speakers unless you have adult passengers back there often.
I put my money into a good front stage and will just leave the rear unplugged.

 

I had my amps mounted under the front seats, the box absorbs all the space under the back seat (and then some), and I was worried about lack of space behind the rear seat, and drilling through the back wall to mount things. Unfortunately my primary concern was stealth, so fuse replacement should be a snap as they're on the back, but gain adjustments for the sub amp requires passenger seat removal.

 

Dug out the manual for my HU and sure enough, two outs for the sub. Doh! Extra cable on the way.

I understand that the rears tend to get lost in the mix, but my plan down the road is to put in a better HU cable of DVD's and video/multichannel music, etc. So I want a decent pair of rears regardless, especially when the time comes for some surround soundage.

I thought about under the seats but this vehicle does exist in a farm environment so I want to avoid things on the floor as much as I can. Also I don't want to have to pull the entire passenger seat out everytime I need to tweak something. Any advice/how to's on mounting them to the rear wall?

 

Well... On lack of advice I went ahead and bought a pair of db651's for the rear. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll know how they sound.

I've been hard at work since Sunday and just about have everything together. I built and carpeted a custom sub box for under the seat and mounted the sub and amp to it. I built and carpeted a board to mount to the rear wall. I found a couple of holes to bolt to in the lower clips for the seat back with some heavy duty velcro across the top and the seat back pressing slightly on the amp it should be rock solid. Had to cut part of the frame on the seat back so the amp would fit. I mounted the amp fuses and distro blocks to the board and ran power and ground cables through the setup. Ran my main power cable from the battery to the back seat. Ran speaker wire, Rca's, and Remote wire to back.

The Speaker wire was a pain on the left front door. The parking brake was in the way. Well I started thinking and as it happens a year or so ago the actual brake part on the rear axle (or wherever it was installed) broke lose and was free spinning. Took it to the dealer and they said it would be X amount of dollars to fix or they could just remove it... since I never used it I had them remove it. So I start thinking, Since the parking brake doesn't even work, why the Hell do I need the pedal? 3 troublesome bolts, 30 minutes, and cut parking break cable later and I had plenty of room to run my speaker wire through the door.

Anyway Last night I made a couple of brackets for the front speakers, I have to finish installing them and mounting the tweeters (in the door) and crossovers (in the kick panel). I've got to install the rear speakers and then all I have to do is bolt my amp board in, connect the main power, ground, remote wire, speaker wires and rcas, and then hook up the sub and I should be ready to rock. I've got some pictures of how it's going so far that I'll post later tonight for those interested.

In the mean time, about the only question I have is where do most people ground to in 97-03 supercab? I was thinking to one of the seat belt attach points on the floor, but I'm not sure if that's attached to the frame or not. Any thoughts?

 

Most people say no to this, but it works.
I ground mine were the seat attaches to the floor.
It's actually covered in some bed liner or something, but it works.
Or you can make it go through the small vent in the back and go direct to frame..

 

I don't have the same year but I bolted to the seat bolts and my ground seems good. I just got an extra nut the size of thread for that bolt and put my ring terminal under it with a washer.