Ok, not sure if anyone is still reading this, but got my system tuned this morning with a DD-1. The output was amazing. But, it exposed some problems. I now have a turn on/off pop and a white noise hiss coming from my speakers. With the gain settings I had after tuning, these symptoms were awful. So I dialed it back a bit and the symptoms were still present, but not as bad. I now have the gains all the way back to 0. The symptoms are still there but the pop isn't terrible and the hiss is only audible if I stick my ear to the speaker. I disconnected all the RCA's and the symptoms were gone. I replugged in each set of RCA's individually and the symptoms returned to that respective channel. I plugged in a new RCA and symptoms were present, so I assume we can eliminate those as the cause. Just a reminder that I have the stock headunit -> lc7i -> JL 700/5. Any thoughts? Here is a pic of my grounds. Thanks!

 

Just a thought, but you may have your RCAs too close to a power wire. This can sometimes send feedback into the RCAs to the amps. You also may have a bad set of RCA's or they are poorly insulated.

Great job on the install, it is very clean. I am curious though, how do you access the window regulator/motor (if it breaks) now that you have deadened the access hole in the door. I understand that this creates an airtight seal for the front mid-range speaker, and essentially creates a box for them, which would greatly improve the sound quality. I contemplated doing this when I built my last system on my 04' f150, but glad I didn't because I had to change the motor assembly out multiple times on each of the doors.

 

Thanks! My RCA's are only between the 2 components (LC7i and JL Amp) so its a pretty short run. They are 1 meter cables, so I had to loop them a bit since the two devices aren't that far apart. They do get close to the power wire running to the LC7i as its running along the floor panel and part of the loop on the RCA's hits the floor panel as well. I just didn't think small contacts like that would impact much.

A relatively new development is I believe it may have something to do with the Metra Harness. I say this because after doing various troubleshooting that AudioControl suggested for ground issues, I went ahead and just completely disconnected the speaker inputs. As soon as I did that, the turn on/off pop went away and there was no hiss. So that indicates to me that there's no noise innately being produced by either hardware device (the remote and power wires were still connected and the RCA's to the amp, so they were still being powered up). Am I wrong in this assumption? If not, that would seem to indicate something from the end of the speaker wire inputs back to the head unit is where the problem is.

As for the accessing window motors, yeah that will be a bit more labor intensive. But not terrible. Everything is reversible. I used self-tapping screws to secure the cutting board cover to the door panel. So I just have to peel some of the deadener back and unscrew those and I have access again. Hopefully, I don't have to face that issue too often or too soon. Thanks for checking in!

 

Hey Russ,

I haven't been on in awhile but saw this last week. Excellent job on install and equipment. Looks super clean! I've been wanting to redo my system and I think you just motivated me.

When I did my initial install I was having a bad hiss coming from my speakers and went through a few trouble shootings till I decided to change my ground (had them to the seat bolt) to the chassis. I have all my equipment grounded to the same place, soI ran a 0gauge wire from chassis to my distribution block on my amp rack and grounded everything to that even my head unit. This helped tremendously. I'm not sure if this will solve your problem but its something to think about.
Good luck!

 

When I did mine, I used a metra wiring harness and a reverse wire harness as well. This way, I could come out of the factory head unit, and run to the amp behind back seat like you did, and then ran all the wires from the amp back to the front of the truck and into the wiring harness. So I didn't cut any factory wiring at all. I used basic line levelers, and I ran all sound wiring down the drivers side door rails, and all power wires are on the passenger side. This way they stay separate. I never had any hiss or hum, or white noise. It was perfectly quiet when no song was playing. I had two amps running, one was an Alpine and one was an Infinity. Had polks in the doors, and stock head unit. I kept my sync and steering wheel function. Had my distribution blocks on the back wall above my amps. It sounded really good for no more money than I had in it. Sold the truck, and the guy buying it wanted the stereo to stay, so I let it go.

 

Thanks for the input. See my comments below for what I've done.

Getting ready to write up what I've changed, but where did you have your remote wire coming from? Fuse box or head unit?

 

Alright, sorry its been a while since I've been on this thread. Work has kept me pretty busy and unable to really tinker with my stereo stuff. First off, I decided to change my ground location. Instead of guessing if that was it, I decided to just eliminate that concern. Drilled a hole in the rear floor of my cab and grounded to the frame.



That cleaned up the hissing for sure and in general the sound was a bit cleaner. My future plans are to now do the big 3 upgrade just to assist all this. I'm now left with 2 problems:

1. (this one keeps me from being able to adjust my gain at all, because it exacerbates the problem too much) - the On/off pop when pressing the power button on the head unit.
2. I get intermittent cutting out of my front passenger side speaker channel.

Problem 1

I think I conceptually have this one figured out. Not sure how I will resolve it yet. Here's my thinking: it has to do with the fact that my remote turn on wire is tapped into the fuse box. Everyone who has done this method has done so to mimic the behavior of the stereo where everything remains on until the doors are open after turning off the vehicle. The problem is, it works independently of the actual head unit. What I mean by this, my LC7i and then amp turn on as soon as power is turned on to the vehicle. So these two components are always on until the doors have been opened. The stereo on the other hand can be turned off. So what I believe happens is when you press the stereo power button, that pulse is sent through the components and then to the speakers as a "pop". This theory is validated to me by the fact that there is no on/off pop if I simply leave the head unit on when turning off the vehicle. Upon restarting, there's no pop either. I only get the pop when pressing the power button on the head unit. The best solution to this would be if there is actually a remote wire behind the factory head unit. It seems everyone else who has done this install, says one doesn't exist. Anyone say otherwise? The other solution I intend to try is using the LC7i's built in wireless on technology. This uses the main speaker channel to sense a speaker level signal and turns on the LC7 (which would then turn on the amp). I feel confident this would eliminate the on pop because the lc7 couldn't be activated until after the head unit was powered on. I'm not sure how the off pop would work though, since I'm not quite sure how quickly this wireless method will power things off. Not sure if there's a built in "cache" if you will for when you pause or just between tracks and there's no signal. Anyone have any thoughts?

Problem 2.

This one honestly sucks more, just because its a connection problem somewhere. Unfortunately, I think its in my connections behind the dash. This means tearing into the dash again. The reason, I have concluded this location is because I simply switched left and right channels outputs at my amp and now the driver side front speaker cuts out. The weird thing is if I turn it up, the extra power eventually pops it back on. But flipping the channels lets me know its not the crossovers or the speakers. I've already confirmed my input connections on the LC7i, so that leaves the connections I made when I spliced the speedwire into the metra harness. The Polk tech said it could be cold solder thats interfering with the signal. I'm debating just eliminating the metra harness all together just to remove one more x-factor. Just splice into the stock wiring. I obviously was against that at first for preservation and reversibility, but then realized, I've cut holes in the door panels, so there's really no reversing out of this setup anyway. And I typically keep my trucks for 8-10 years, so at that point, the new buyer probably won't care. Any thoughts on this one?

Thats the update so far. Actually have a weekend at home this week, so might work on it a bit.

 

Well, I have great news. Hopefully, this will help everyone else experiencing the on/off pop. My assumption was correct. It is absolutely tied to the use of the fuse panel for the remote wire. I have the AudioControl LC7i which has the GTO (wireless) technology. It turns on when it recognizes a speaker level signal coming from the head unit. Tested it out tonight. Just unplugged the remote in to the LC7i, moved the jumper inside the LC7i over to "GTO on" and worked like a champ! No more pop! I watched it all work and everything powers up and down like its supposed to. It is all tied into the power of the head unit now. Turn the head unit on, LC7i turns on, then powers up the JL amp. Turn the head unit off, all components turn off. So much happier. Now just have to tackle my connections behind the dash to solve my speaker cut out problem and then I'll be all set! Hope that helps.

 

Excellent post Russ. I am looking to do almost the exact mod to my 2012 f150 as well. Quick question, i see that the speakers you installed in the front are 6.5". According to crutchfield they will not fit. Besides making the mounting plate,did you have to cut the door at all to make them fit? Im assuming not and they worked because of the smaller magnet size. Thanks in advance for your help. New member, first post, Lane

 

Thanks for the comment Lane. Great to have you. And you're correct. With this particular speaker, the magnet size makes it an easy fit. I actually test fit it without the mounting plate and it still cleared my window in the down position, which was good news. Meant I didn't have to go with a thicker mounting plate to make space. That always causes problems getting the panels to fit back on. Not sure if you're a Polk fan, but these speakers are tremendous. I had them in my old truck and installed them again in this one.

And as a general follow-up to this thread. Doesn't seem anyone was too concerned at the time I wrote the post, so not sure they are now, haha, but I solved my "problem #2" as well. The speaker cutout was a bad RCA. Rechecked all my wiring behind the dash and it was all square. Then did some testing by switching the RCA's and that was the culprit. Had a bad one.

 

Ok Russ, I'm on my way. I have started my build and will be following your thread closely. So I just received my first shipment and I'm starting with the wiring harness. You said:

I was running all new speaker wire, so I just spliced the Stinger Speedwire into the speaker outputs on the harness. They were all color-coded nicely:

White - Left Front
Grey - Right Front
Green - Left Rear
Purple - Right Rear

These colors were consistent with the speedwire so it was easy. I cut the Metra Wires on the longer side which is the side that plugs into the headunit. You could strip a small section and just splice the speedwire in. I wasn't that patient, so I clipped them and then soldered the three wires together with shrink wrap over the top.

So if I am understanding you correctly, you purchased the Metra harness to be a go between so you didn't have to modify the original wiring. So my first question is this. If you were running all new speaker wire, and not modifying any of the stock wiring, why did you solder the wires clipped that went to the old speaker wires (the third wire) with the speedwire. Couldn't you have just cut the speaker wires in the Metra harness, soldered them onto the speedwire, and did nothing with the other side? The connection goes no where and if you ever took out the Metra harness, the speaker connections would be back. I'm wondering if I am missing something here that should be obvious, so I'm asking before I cut.

I have read many posting by people who have described their power wiring and yours is the only one I've see so far were the wiring is run under the truck. I like this idea because the power wire will not be close to any of the speaker wire if I choose to use the door sills to run my speaker wire. After the fact, are you still happy with running the power outside the cab?

Lastly (for today, lol) I have purchased all of my equipment with the exception of the sub and it's amp (I'm using 2 amps in my installation). I have considered purchasing the JL Audio CP108LG-W3v3 for the same reason you made your custom box, because I have a car seat above it and want to maintain the floor space under the other seat. You may not be able to answer this but, do you know how your JL 10W1v2-4 hits in comparison to the ported 8 I'm considering? I have heard nothing but good about the bass in the ported 8", but I don't know if it's as good as your setup. Your opinion would be appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help.
Lane

 

Thats a great question and I think you picked up on a solution. You're correct that those speaker wires are just terminating into the stock wiring harness, which is no longer connected to any speakers. So yes, you could just make the cut, solder the speedwire to the speaker wires in the metra kit coming from the head unit and you'd be all set. Just cap the other wires that are left unconnected.

Yep, I'm quite happy with it. Much easier run and with as much as everyone makes a big deal about the power wire running along side or intersecting your signal or speaker wires, there was nowhere else to run it since I was running all new speaker wire. I've had no problem with it at all. Put it all in a loom and in addition to the loctite double-sided tape, I also assisted that with some zip ties.

I really have no information to give you on this. I'm pretty happy with my sub but not real familiar with the 8" ported. I will say I read that plenty of people get plenty of pop out of a good quality 8". Just have to make sure the space is correct and the tuning.

Glad to help! If you want a bit quicker response, feel free to shoot me a text. I'll PM you with my phone number. Good luck!

 

Wow, I checked out the pictures before reading through everything and I was expecting the work to have been done by a pro shop. Congrats on a clean and thorough install! My buddy has a 2001 Crew Cab and he's looking to upgrade things, so I figured I would hop on here and see what you guys are up to. I couldn't help but notice you made your own speaker adapters, is that a common thing with these trucks? It seems like a lot of guys convert from the 6x8s to a 6.5.

 

I've been on forums for 10+ years, so I think I know my way around, but is there no edit button for posts?

I meant to ask a question in my previous post, but I don't see a way to edit it, so I'll ask here. In looking at the pics of how you have your sub set up, I don't see much clearance on top of it. Aren't you worried about the sub hitting the bottom of the seat?

 

Thanks for the compliments! And yeah I feel like most guys who dive into the full upgrade opt for the components in the front. There's plenty of room in there, just have to make the adapter since the cutout is for the 6x8. There are plenty of guys who do a direct swap as well. I think its fairly common though even with those applications to fabricate their own adapter out of better material than the plastic most speakers come with.

And yeah, I was and am worried. The good thing is the sub I have doesn't have a ton of movement up and down (drawing a blank on that term). So the amount of contact it has now is really the worst it will be. And the contact it is making is against cloth and not the actual frame of the seat. Its still not ideal and there's part of me that would like to change it, but I haven't decided to go that route yet. We'll see. I really wanted to try that Alpine thin-10. Heard great things, but needed a bigger amp and it was a more expensive "experiment" if I didn't like it. This sub wasn't a wallet buster. So I figured if I didn't like it, I could always sell it and try again and there wasn't a huge investment lost.

Edit: and to answer your second question here, the edit button is right next to the quote button on the bottom right of your post.