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I know there are a million posts on stereo system installs, but I thought I’d make it a million and one for good measure. While I was installing all of this I lived on this forum looking at what people had done with their system install and it was immensely informative so I wanted to post this in hope I can provide something in turn for someone in the future.
I won’t spend a lot of space going over install details that other people have already covered extensively. If you have any question about how or why I did something just ask. I’ll just mention what I did and expand where I couldn’t find much info on the forum myself.
First and foremost, the breakdown of equipment:
This install is on a 2013 RTS with no factory nav.
Head unit: Pioneer AVIC-8000NEX
Steering wheel control adapter: iDatalink Maestro SW ADS-MSW
Antenna adapter: Scosche HAAB
Trim Bezel kit: Metra 95-7870G
Wire harness adapter: Scosche HA11B
Amp: a/d/s P440
Sound deadening material: Sounddeadenershowdown.com
Speakers (front): Boston Acoustics proSeries 6.5
Speakers (rear): Stock
Speaker ring adapter: Scosche SAHR6
Subwoofer: Pioneer TS-SW2502S4
Sub enclosure: homemade
RCA cable: Knukonceptz krystal kable
Power/GND: Knukonceptz 8 ga.
Speaker wire: Phoenix Gold 16 ga.
Battery Terminal connector: Knukoncpetz Bassik
USB/AUX jack: Axxess AX-USB-35EXT
• Sound proofing
When I first set out on designing this system I debated about whether to install any soundproofing material at all. I’ve done a number of auto stereo system installs in my day and I’ve never done anything other than some vibration damper here and there. In the end, I figured that I’m going to have the door panels off and back seat removed, so why not do something there.
I used the materials that Don Sambrook at sounddeadenershowdown.com sells. He’s incredibly informative and has a lot of actual data testing his products as well as data on other products on the market. He sells everything you need for a thorough sound deadening install. I used the CLD tiles installed at the recommended 25% coverage, mass loaded vinyl to block airborne sound and closed cell foam for decoupling. Honda already has the impact bars in the door decoupled with extruded butyl rope and acoustic absorbing material in the doors, so no need to add more.
My goal here really was to try and make the truck quieter, to the extent that that was possible, not just damp panel vibrations. Some of my motivation here was to make the truck quieter on the outside too. Nothing is more annoying to me than when I pull up next to a car and can hear their stereo as if I were in their car, and all their windows are up.
I have to say, even just doing the doors and back wall, this turned out to be the most cumbersome part of the whole install. It was *very* tedious and time consuming to get the material trimmed perfectly and to fit in the door so the panels would snap back on properly. Needless to say, I broke more door panel clips than I care to admit.
CLD tiles for panel resonance on inner and outer door panels
Honda already has extruded butyl rope between the impact bar and the outer door skin. This is a bar that goes across the middle of the outer skin of the doors. You want to make sure there is decoupling material between the bar and the door to prevent rattling.
Rear passenger door with closed cell foam behind the mass loaded vinyl sheet
• Running cables
A lot has been said on where and how to run cables. The two difficult areas to run cables, imo, were the driver side door speaker wire and the battery cable, so I’ll talk mostly about those. I ran power, remote turn on and driver side speaker wire to the amp along the driver’s side under the sill plate, through the pillar and under the rear sill plate to the amp behind the back seat. (Amp is installed on drivers side, behind the back seat).
The passenger side speakers took the same path along the passenger side and then behind the rear seat. I ran the RCA cables down the middle, on the passenger side of the center console, underneath the passenger seat.
I originally had the RCA cables running down the driver’s side, because that was the easiest and seemingly shortest route from the head unit to the amp. Doing that though, I had some noise issues with engine whine that I ultimately debugged to the location of the crossover in the driver’s side kick panel. As a general rule you don’t want to run the RCA along with the power cable to the amp, and I knew I was going against that so I pulled the rca’s and decided to do it properly and run them down the middle. It turned out to be a lot easier than I thought to run them there, and I should have just done that in the first place.
There is a lot written up on how to get the speaker wire through the driver’s side door. My 2013 RTS configuration was slightly different from what I read in others posts. Check out the pics. I had an extra white bracket that I couldn’t drill a hole into and made running the speaker cable really tight.
As for the battery cable, I ran it through the same grommet opening that most people used, however it looked like most people just popped it through the rubber boot under the hood. That’s fine as long as you tape it up real good after you’re done, but I got anal and didn’t want to cut the boot. So it took me a lot of time and finesse to fish a coat hanger through the boot without damaging it.
Running the battery cable through the rubber boot on the drivers side firewall, seen under the hood.
The grommet opening on the firewall on the driver’s side behind and to the left of the brake pedal, under the dash.
With the rear seat removed…you can see the power (red), driver’s side speaker (blue) and RTO (yellow) cables run in the rear divers side sill plates. The RCA cable was run just in front of the seat under the carpet and back to the amp (in the upper left in pic)
I won’t spend a lot of space going over install details that other people have already covered extensively. If you have any question about how or why I did something just ask. I’ll just mention what I did and expand where I couldn’t find much info on the forum myself.
First and foremost, the breakdown of equipment:
This install is on a 2013 RTS with no factory nav.
Head unit: Pioneer AVIC-8000NEX
Steering wheel control adapter: iDatalink Maestro SW ADS-MSW
Antenna adapter: Scosche HAAB
Trim Bezel kit: Metra 95-7870G
Wire harness adapter: Scosche HA11B
Amp: a/d/s P440
Sound deadening material: Sounddeadenershowdown.com
Speakers (front): Boston Acoustics proSeries 6.5
Speakers (rear): Stock
Speaker ring adapter: Scosche SAHR6
Subwoofer: Pioneer TS-SW2502S4
Sub enclosure: homemade
RCA cable: Knukonceptz krystal kable
Power/GND: Knukonceptz 8 ga.
Speaker wire: Phoenix Gold 16 ga.
Battery Terminal connector: Knukoncpetz Bassik
USB/AUX jack: Axxess AX-USB-35EXT
• Sound proofing
When I first set out on designing this system I debated about whether to install any soundproofing material at all. I’ve done a number of auto stereo system installs in my day and I’ve never done anything other than some vibration damper here and there. In the end, I figured that I’m going to have the door panels off and back seat removed, so why not do something there.
I used the materials that Don Sambrook at sounddeadenershowdown.com sells. He’s incredibly informative and has a lot of actual data testing his products as well as data on other products on the market. He sells everything you need for a thorough sound deadening install. I used the CLD tiles installed at the recommended 25% coverage, mass loaded vinyl to block airborne sound and closed cell foam for decoupling. Honda already has the impact bars in the door decoupled with extruded butyl rope and acoustic absorbing material in the doors, so no need to add more.
My goal here really was to try and make the truck quieter, to the extent that that was possible, not just damp panel vibrations. Some of my motivation here was to make the truck quieter on the outside too. Nothing is more annoying to me than when I pull up next to a car and can hear their stereo as if I were in their car, and all their windows are up.
I have to say, even just doing the doors and back wall, this turned out to be the most cumbersome part of the whole install. It was *very* tedious and time consuming to get the material trimmed perfectly and to fit in the door so the panels would snap back on properly. Needless to say, I broke more door panel clips than I care to admit.

CLD tiles for panel resonance on inner and outer door panels

Honda already has extruded butyl rope between the impact bar and the outer door skin. This is a bar that goes across the middle of the outer skin of the doors. You want to make sure there is decoupling material between the bar and the door to prevent rattling.

Rear passenger door with closed cell foam behind the mass loaded vinyl sheet
• Running cables
A lot has been said on where and how to run cables. The two difficult areas to run cables, imo, were the driver side door speaker wire and the battery cable, so I’ll talk mostly about those. I ran power, remote turn on and driver side speaker wire to the amp along the driver’s side under the sill plate, through the pillar and under the rear sill plate to the amp behind the back seat. (Amp is installed on drivers side, behind the back seat).
The passenger side speakers took the same path along the passenger side and then behind the rear seat. I ran the RCA cables down the middle, on the passenger side of the center console, underneath the passenger seat.
I originally had the RCA cables running down the driver’s side, because that was the easiest and seemingly shortest route from the head unit to the amp. Doing that though, I had some noise issues with engine whine that I ultimately debugged to the location of the crossover in the driver’s side kick panel. As a general rule you don’t want to run the RCA along with the power cable to the amp, and I knew I was going against that so I pulled the rca’s and decided to do it properly and run them down the middle. It turned out to be a lot easier than I thought to run them there, and I should have just done that in the first place.
There is a lot written up on how to get the speaker wire through the driver’s side door. My 2013 RTS configuration was slightly different from what I read in others posts. Check out the pics. I had an extra white bracket that I couldn’t drill a hole into and made running the speaker cable really tight.
As for the battery cable, I ran it through the same grommet opening that most people used, however it looked like most people just popped it through the rubber boot under the hood. That’s fine as long as you tape it up real good after you’re done, but I got anal and didn’t want to cut the boot. So it took me a lot of time and finesse to fish a coat hanger through the boot without damaging it.

Running the battery cable through the rubber boot on the drivers side firewall, seen under the hood.

The grommet opening on the firewall on the driver’s side behind and to the left of the brake pedal, under the dash.

With the rear seat removed…you can see the power (red), driver’s side speaker (blue) and RTO (yellow) cables run in the rear divers side sill plates. The RCA cable was run just in front of the seat under the carpet and back to the amp (in the upper left in pic)