Anyone running 5 1/4" in their 3rd gen? +JL sub question.
 

Is anyone running 5 1/4 " speakers in the doors of their 3rd gen. I've been casually looking (no rush) to round out the system of my truck and was curious if the smaller mid offered more sizes/options.

I'm also probably going to take my friends JL 12w3 offf his hands (orion amp)...anyone have one in their truck?

In 3rd gens, the sizes that you SHOULD use (per my extensive research a while back) are 6.5" up front and 5.25" in the rear. Anything else would mean customizing which should be unnecessary as there are many options available in those two sizes.

I agree with marko.
For the front doors, go with 6.5" components...meaning a 6.5" mid-bass and a separate tweeter.
For the rear doors, you can upgrade to 5.25" coaxial speakers. To make it an easy installation, get some adapter plates like these: http://www.mjmautoinnovations.com/sak4rt525.htm you can find them cheaper on eBay from the same seller.

The initial reason for asking was due to browsing through Crutchfield and seeing that there were more 5 1/4 components than 6.5's, as well as an adaptor plate for the 6.5 to 5 1/4 conversion.

What is the max depth for 6.5's in the front with no modifications?

Far as i believe you should be able to fit any 6.5" componets up front with no modifications. Why in the heck would you consider downsizing your speakers??

There are hundreds of options for 6.5" componets. Crutchfield is overpriced.
Try...
http://www.onlinecarstereo.com/
http://www.cardomain.com/shop
http://www.hifisoundconnection.com/S...l/fp/SFV/30046
http://www.cardiscountstereos.com/
http://www.ebay.com/

So I ended up with MB Quart 6.5" components and a JL Audio 12w3. Now I need a 4-channel amp to power them. If anyone is familiar with Rockford stuff, I can get my hands on a P4004, but not having any experience with this amp, I'm not sure if it would be enough. Any thoughts?

Best thing to do would be a 2 channel for the front speaks and a mono for the sub.

Whats wrong with running 2 channels to the comps and bridging 2 channels for the sub?
Any advantage of having 2 amps?

so you dont have all the bass in the speakers i would run a mono sub amp and a 4ch amp

speakers
 

Just run a 2channel amp for the fronts and run the rears off the head unit. Honestly i have tried everything when it comes to stereos. Right now i have a alpine 10'' running on a MTX 200w mono amp and my infinity's 6.5's running on a 250watt alpine amp. I just think you get too much sound coming from coming from the rear if you amplify the speakers that compete with the fronts which is where you really wnat the best sound coming from

w3=beat and lots of it. i thought about running a w3 in my 3rd gen but decided it was to much. i gotta few friends that run them, top quality. i gotta one friend who was running two w7, which retail at about 1000 a piece. thats alot of beat.

You may not know off the top of your head, but what kind of wattage are they pushing to their W3's?

Where did you locate your amps in the truck? I may disconnect the rears altogether to achieve a better soundstage. I'd still like to know what the advantage of running two amps is, when I could get 1 quality JL amp, for example, and run it in 3 channels. With one amp it's easy to conceal in the 3rd gen. Any more thoughts/theories on 1 amp vs. 2 are appreciated.

A mono amp pulls less power and will give a cleaner sub-sound than a 2 channel amp.
(research Class D mono amps, and class AB, class A, etc)