I laid out the amps outside the truck to make sure I got them perfectly level. Once I had the rough set, they were screwed in.
Next step was to put them in their new home. The rack fit like a glove.
The Clark Griswold birds nest of wires had to be rough set to get my general layout, but once that was established it wasnt too bad.
In the end I used the seat belt bracket next to the jack as my grounding point. I used the Dremel to sand down the paint to bare metal.
The end result:
The tweeters were placed in the factory Limited sail panels. I used a 1 3/4" hole saw bit to make the hole as required for these particular tweeters.
The tweeters were placed in and secured in from the rear with the included fasteners.
And the install. The gap on the bottom is from me not having pushed it in all the way at the time I took the picture, but the fit is perfect.
In go the stars of the show, the Boston Pro 60's. I made the brackets out of 3/4" and 1/2" MDF.
Off with the JBL logos.
And on with the Boston's.
For the time being, the Nav. antenna was placed in the center speaker hole since its no longer in use for now. I used some more metal strap and held it in place with double sided 3M tape. Reception is about 100 % in this location.
Also installed was the Pac-SWI-JACK steering wheel interface. Just like Rage did, I had to install a 560 ohm resistor in series with wires 7 and 8 going to the white wire on the PAC. Install of the unit was fairly simple.
By the end of Monday night I was exhausted and just anxious to get the Kenwood in and make sure everything was working. A quick connection to the battery, and a turn of the key and the system took its first breath.
Sound quality right out of the gate was less than expected. All the default settings on the Kenwood are set to "flat", and the instruction book is like a small phone book. The amp gains need to be set properly and tuned to the right Hz, and the speakers all need to be adjusted in the headunit itself. There is a ton of tuning left to do but the system has HUGE potential and unfortunately I had to work the next day so I had to get to bed. I read alot of the manual today and just as I suspected I havent even scratched the surface of what the 8120 can do.
My new Sirius cable showed up today so I'll pull the 8120 back out this weekend, hook it up and program the PAC steering wheel adapter.
By the way, I remember reading that a few people with the Metra kit had some problem with it not fitting tight on the right corner. its not too bad, but a little off. Somebody had a mod for it but I cant remember who or what it was.
Mark