With my '86 F-250 extended cab I have good sound on the outside since I put the headers and Cherry Bomb Turbo muffs on it, but I want a decent sounding stereo. Truck came with a 1000+W stearea amp that is driving two 3-way 6x9 speakers I have sitting on the floor behind the frot seat. They are in small enclosures. Sounds pretty good but the speakers are showing their age and the foamy/rubbery insulation around the speaker is starting to dry rot, distorting the sound a little.

One thought is to get a decent pair of 6x9 speakers to replace them and it'll probably sound really nice. I'd prefer to do something that would fit nicely in the truck though, and not take up floor space in the back. For the occasion when I do have a person back there, or if I want to fold down the back seat without the hassle of moving speakers around. I prefer not to cut panels, at least door panels, as I think it looks trashy. Maybe some way to mount the speakers in the back part of the cab? Doesn't look like any room on kick panels as my truck has the floor vents. Anyone else upgrade the sound in your Ford truck? Ideas?

My girlfriend got me an Alpine head unit that plays MP3 so I figure I'll put that in the truck to replace the AM/FM/casette that's currently in there. Should make an improvement in quality and also nice to play CD's. So that's what's brought all this about. Not sure when in the world I'll do all this. I gotta do wheen bearings in the front after playing in deep water last weekend, they've started making some noise. So I guess that comes first. Just toying with ideas though.

You'll love the Alpine unit, especially if you make your own Mp3's. I would buy replacement door speakers, something nice, & add a 10" box under the seat. This is about what out '05 has

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You don't quit playing because you get old; you get old because you quit playing!

Hey that alpine should do ya fine to run most any stock location speakers..
new, replacement, or stock.. the newer sytle stereo units are pretty nice as far as that goes.. so unless ya wanna really wake the people where your goin .. an amplifier is not needed.. id just wire the alpine unit right to any speakers in your truck.. unless they are woofers/subwoofers or the likes..

I don't know if the older trucks had them as an option but my 96 has the rear speakers in the rear corners of the cab along with door speakers in the front..It actually sounds very good with the factory speakers and my pioneer head unit...

I have quite a bit of experience in setting up really good sound in those body style trucks. The first one was my own 85 F-250, and then later on I did a 93 for a customer which went on to win several shows in the NE Texas/SE Oklahoma area. It was rather fancy & high end, but my personal setup was far more simple & sounded just as good.

First off I would never.. EVER.. run speakers behind you UNLESS you're gonna do a surround sound type setup. Think about it.. if you're at a concert.. where are the speakers?? They're in front of you or maybe to the side. Very rarely will you see a rack of speakers behind you with the exception of maybe in a very large stadium setup.

If you really want a good soundstage in those trucks, use the factory door location. You can fit a good 5 - 1/4 speaker set in there. The key to making it sound good is to deaden the door. Lay in a layer of mat on the inside, and add another layer to the area behind the door panel. It will make all the difference in the world. What I did on my personal truck instead of using asphalt based mat is to use a rubberized coating that I could spray or brush on. I capped off the holes in the bottom of the door & put a good 1/4 inch layer of coating in there. After it dried I opened the holes back up.

Don't go cheap on the speakers you put in there. You really do get what you pay for. I'd go for something along the lines of Alpine, Kicker, Pioneer, Rockford Fosgate, and so on. Don't put Sony in there, no matter how good the deal is. While they were really good 10 - 15 years ago, the quality really sucks nowadays.

Also, to get the absolute best sound put a small amplifier on them. Yes, you can run them off the head unit, but no it's not going to sound anywhere near as good. No matter what you decide here, you'll want to make sure that the speakers have some sort of crossover on them so that they don't get the lower frequencies sent to them. A lot of the good head units (Pioneer, Alpine, etc ) have internal electronic crossovers. Set the high pass to somewhere around 80 - 100 hertz. Most good speakers will play down to 80, and if you've deadened those doors it'll really bring out the midbass.

For a subwoofer I'd go with a single 10, a pair of 8s, or maybe even a single 12 inch. You really don't need a lot of sub in one of these trucks unless you want serious bass. In my truck (a regular cab) I ran a single 8 inch Kicker sub in a custom built 4th order bandpass that fit behind the seat. Yes, I won several sound quality shows with it. In an extended cab truck I'd run a downward firing box that fits under the rear seat, and put a good sized amp on there. Make sure that you run some sort of low pass crossover on there (most amps have them built in) and set it around 80 - 100 hertz.

Lastly, don't make the newbie mistake on setting amplifier gains. I always see people install their system & have the amp gain set so that at like volume 10 on the stereo it's maxed out due to the amp gain being set so high. What that does is make a clipped signal which will eventually tear something up. To properly set it up, make sure your bass & treble settings are FLAT, I.E. set to 0, and turn your amp(s) gains all the way down. Take your head unit volume & turn it to around 3/4 of the way up, and slowly bring your amp gains up to the MAXIMUM loudest you would ever want to listen to it. Make sure that you aren't getting a clipped, distorted sound from anything. When you're happy with everything there then you can start playing with bass/treble settings on your head unit or the EQ settings if your unit has them.

P.S. Make sure you run a fuse on everything. Run your main power feed for your amp(s) directly from the battery, and fuse it within 6 inches of the post. Make sure your fuse is close to the rated fusing on your amp(s) combined. If you've got one amp that has a 40 amp fuse, and a second that has a 20 amp fuse, then you want a 60 - 80 amp one under the hood. Also, make sure that your ground wires are the same gauge as your power wire. You don't know how many times I've seen a 4 gauge power wire and something like a 16 gauge ground with a loop made around a sheet metal and it shot into the sheet metal. Use ring terminals on all your connections, and pick a good ground location & use a good bolt/nut to secure it. And whatever you do.. don't ever.. EVER.. run your power wire into the cab through the door jam. That's a good way to start a fire and/or burn a truck to the ground. Yes, I've seen it several times.

Good luck!

One of the most intelligent treatises on car stereo installs I've seen. Nice work! Simple really is better.

Jeremy is dead on in his recommendations.

Let me emphasize - buy the highest quality speakers you can afford. Within reason - a lower quality head unit or amp can be made up for by excellent speakers, but if the speakers are of poor quality - well - you can't polish a turd.

Thanks Jeremy, sounds like you really know what you're doing. I will be putting your advice to good use. One question though, is how to fit a sub under the rear seat? It's very tight under there, not much room to work with. Any thoughts?

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what that all about

Cory,

I just checked a couple of my old suppliers, and it seems like the under seat boxes have been discontinued for your bodystyle truck. However, you can run a standard style wedge box behind that seat & it'll be fine. The only advantage to the downfire design is the loading effect of the speaker firing downward.

If you're handy with tools & woodwork I could design a box that'd fit in there. All I'd need is measurements behind there & what speaker you choose, or you can pick up a prefab box from somewhere local. I generally prefer to run ported boxes to get the best performance out of the sub(s).


Here's my current (and unfinished still) setup. A pair of Kicker L7 12's, two original SoundStream Class A amplifiers, an Eclipse head unit, and a Phoenix Gold Bass Cube. I still need to finish my facade piece for the top of the box & cover everything in leather/vinyl.





As you can see, I sacrificed the back seat (it was useless any way) and all the hatch area. It sounds awesome, especially on something like the live version of "Hotel California". I've got a really strong front Stage consisting of a pair of 6.5 in components. The midbass is in the door, and the tweeter is in the dash. I've got them bi-amped (each speaker has it's own amp channel) and my CD Player has time alignment so everything sounds perfect even though the midbass & tweeter on each side are so far apart from each other.


I really wish I had pictures of the 93 Ford I did. We did a cut through on it (cut out the front of the bed & back of the cab) and put 4 - 12 inch Rockford Fosgate subs in a LARGE ported box in the bed. Each sub had it's own BD 1000 amp, and then there was a 5th BD amp running a pair of A/D/S 320 speakers in the doors. Sadly that truck got totaled out a couple years ago.

Now see, I love music, and now I am jealous. Jeremy, is it ok if I covet your components????

My '86 Bronco takes 6.5" speakers in the doors, and the rear location is 5x7s... I think every Ford truck I've worked on uses the same two sizes. Personally (and a lot of people will argue with me), I think you can't go wrong with Pioneer speakers. Sound quality is good, and they are durable as hell. I've had the same 6x9s and 6.5s in the Bronco for close to 10 years now, the whole time running off a 50x4 Pioneer amp (probably puts out more power than most of those generic "1000w" amps), and they still sound as good as the day I got them, and don't show any real signs of age.

I found that with the door speakers hiding behind that cheezy rectangular grille in the door panel, you really loose a lot of imaging and clarity. So I took the grille out, cut some round edges on the hole, and mounted my 6.5" component driver to the door panel instead. If you don't like to 'see' speakers then this might not be the best option for you, but I think I gained quite a bit of sound quality from doing this.

As the others said, you'd probably be fine to run your mids from the head unit... and definitely set it to have a "highpass" filter so you don't kill them with bass. You do get a lot better sound quality at higher volume with a dedicated amp, but at normal listening levels there isn't much to gian. Adding a subwoofer like a single 10 or 12 will probably net you the biggest gain in sound quality. It's funny, but I swear that having a sub makes your mids sound 100% better. If you just go for a single 10, you can get a pretty small box and just have it on one side of the rear seat all the time... wherever it's the least inconvenient, so that you won't have to move it much.