I have the deck out of my wrecked Mustang that I'm planning on putting into the Runner soon, so I was poking around at the speakers tonight to see what the setup is.

The driver's side front speaker started ling a few days ago, so I pulled it out. It has a proprietary-looking plug on it. Do I want to reuse these plugs (and hence need to find speakers with specific receptacles for them) or should I snip them off and just hook the wires up to the new speakers directly?

The rears: I thought I remembered reading just recently that the rear speakers each have their own amp, so I pulled off the panel back there to look tonight but didn't see anything that looked like an amp. These too have the proprietary plugs, so the same question applies here - keep plugs and get specific speakers or what? If there is no factory amp here, is it fine to just put in new speakers and leave it at that? There looked like an awful lot of wires in the harness for just a speaker, so that's why I'm asking.

The new setup will just be a 2-3 year old Panasonic MP3/CD deck with some basic aftermarket speakers; no amp, no sub. How hard is this gonna be?

Brian

 

Not hard at all.
You just need an adaptor for the deck to plug into the car harness.
Then, snip off the toyota adaptors and install plugs (or solder the speaker wires straight to the speakers).
I may be getting rid of my infinity 4"s from the dash board pretty soon (hurry up with my kick's bumpin'!) and they fit perfect and are super clear, just provide no bass (80hz and up only) probably sell them around 50 bucks... (paid 130)...
For rears, the amp is built into the speaker, that's why there are 4 wires. the PO put some cheapie pyramids in my car so i dont have them, but my cousin's truck did. You will need some 5 1/4 speakers, or if you want to go custom, get some 6.5's or 6x9's and make em fit. 6x9's will give you decent bass if you have no sub, but 6.5's give better SQ...

 

I have a deck adapter, so I should be set there. Is there anything I need to do to bypass the rear amps, or can I just use the two wires that go to the speaker and tie the rest up?

Brian

 

The amps are part of the speaker, so when you unplug the speakers, you are also unplugging the amps. Just plug er' right in.
make sure you know which one is positive and which one is negative.. i used my FSM... a AA battery would work as well (DONT use a 9v!) by touching the old speakers to see which is positive (when you put the positive on the positive, the speaker will push out, so you know which one is positive...

 

Well, the reason I asked was because I'll probably end up having to snip the two speaker wires off the plug and use spade connectors to attach them to the new speaker. Hopefully the wire colors will stay consistent so I know which ones to snip.

Deck is probably going in in the next day or two - hope I don't blow my stock speakers up with the extra watts before I can get new ones.

Brian

 

Well, everything's in and working, but the performance is pretty subpar and I'm disappointed. At volumes above a certain level, NOT very loud, the speakers start to le and distort. Granted, they're just $40 pairs of Pioneer 4" and 5.25" from Walmart, but I expected better. My buddy said that I could get speaker enclosures that would focus the sound better so it doesn't cancel itself - do these fit inside the dash and inside the rear side panels? The sound "quality" of this setup is wholly unacceptable and I gotta do something about it.

Brian

 

My infinity's for 10 more bucks are sounding alot more nicer eh? .
They dont distort until over 5/6th to full volume, and are SUPER clear... pioneers are... mediocore.. never match the infinity's for SQ....

 

Did you have them mounted in the stock plastic open-backed locations?

Brian

 

Yep, they still are, until my kickers get here, then they're coming out.

The reason for the kickers is because i want more midbass and will sacrifice foot room for SQ. When i set the HPF to 80hz they sound great, don't really have much bass tho (which would be expected with 4's) but clarity is great in teh stock openings (basically the best you can get without getting custom kickpanels)...
I've got a nice little orion amp to power them as well, 2x20 (at 12v)... both for $75...

 

i used dynamat over the stock speaker mount locations and screwed my infinity kappa perfect 4" speakers into there. All of my speakers get 60watts RMS and i have no buzzes in the dash from the speakers...I have two Alpine type R 6x9's in boxes..they sound GREAT..but i would reccomend infinity kappa perfect 6x9's over the Alpines...they were just cheaper because of my place of employment. I have the 6x9 boxes right behind the driver and passenger seats..they are wedged between the back seat and the front seat and don't slide around at all.

for bass I have Two alpine type R 12" subs going in the back...they suck up 1000 watts RMS and well they slam for a lack of a better term.

I used to have an Infinity basslink and that did fine for me. If you don't want something that crazy the basslink is AWESOME

my setup sounds AMAZING for an 18yr old truck...

 

omg I totally agree. Pioneer only makes one set of speakers that sound good and those start at 300bones a set!

Infinities are hands down the best bang for the buck on the market!

Greg your kickpanels are coming along nicely...those damn screwholes on 1st gen kicks are going to be LOTS of fun carpeting over and making look nice! lol