[juiceweazel]

First off, thanks for all the information I've read on here. It's been a great value to me. I've gotten a lot of information from DIYMA as well.
I've taken awhile to assemble all my gear, but I finally have the major pieces. I have the following already purchased:
Pioneer 4000NEX installed
PPI 900.5 amp
JL 10TW3-D4
Silver Flute 6.5" mid speakers going in stock locations
JL C5-75ct tweeters going in stock locations

I'm going to run the fronts active and probably disconnect the rear speakers. I'm building the sub box based on the ED-10 build that's popular on here. I'm going to mount the amp on the wall on the drivers side. I also have a large box of sound deadening material I got a good deal on & will do probably 50-75% coverage on the front and rear doors.
I'm going to run 4 gauge power & ground. I'm checking to see what cable lengths anyone used and if you thought it was too much or not enough. I know I can measure, but you can never account for any headaches along the way. Any tips? I wanted to do the tweeters in the sails, but after reading how much of a nightmare it was to run the wire through the driver door, I don't know if I want to try to run 2 wires in there. Also what gauge wire did you use when running the wire through the door? Is the molex plug the hardest part of the install? That seems to me it is.

 

[OhSix]

First off, thanks for all the information I've read on here. It's been a great value to me. I've gotten a lot of information from DIYMA as well.
I've taken awhile to assemble all my gear, but I finally have the major pieces. I have the following already purchased:
Pioneer 4000NEX installed
PPI 900.5 amp
JL 10TW3-D4
Silver Flute 6.5" mid speakers going in stock locations
JL C5-75ct tweeters going in stock locations

I'm going to run the fronts active and probably disconnect the rear speakers. I'm building the sub box based on the ED-10 build that's popular on here. I'm going to mount the amp on the wall on the drivers side. I also have a large box of sound deadening material I got a good deal on & will do probably 50-75% coverage on the front and rear doors.
I'm going to run 4 gauge power & ground. I'm checking to see what cable lengths anyone used and if you thought it was too much or not enough. I know I can measure, but you can never account for any headaches along the way. Any tips? I wanted to do the tweeters in the sails, but after reading how much of a nightmare it was to run the wire through the driver door, I don't know if I want to try to run 2 wires in there. Also what gauge wire did you use when running the wire through the door? Is the molex plug the hardest part of the install? That seems to me it is.

Nice list of equipment. Your selection of the Pioneer head unit is top notch. Your ears are in for a treat!

On the topic of DC power cabling, 20' seemed just right to run between the battery and almost anywhere along the rear wall for my project.

On that subject: the reason Edison lost to Tesla when establishing the power grid standard (AC vs. DC) for the world is rooted in the inherent voltage (V) and current (I) drops over distance in DC systems. It's also the reason wind and solar farms step DC to AC "on site" before transmitting power to the wide area grid. It takes way more energy to send V & I across distance in DC than AC. And each connection in a DC system introduces insertion loss. So I strongly recommend making sure the conductor inside the cable you purchase is the gauge you are paying for. Many of the "wiring kits" offered on the market are not what they profess to be - and try to fool the buyer by adding insulation on the outside of inadequate/undersized conductors. After participating in the design and installation of various DC projects involving solar collectors, multiple batteries, controllers and distribution systems, the difference between good/better/best DC cabling can be significant, sometimes shockingly so. I spent a few seconds poking around but didn't see V/I specs @ rated output for the PPI 900.5 but, given that it is a class D amp, it's bound to be very current efficient for its power class - I wouldn't be overly concerned with V/I drop issues in a 20' cable run. 4 gauge is a fairly large cable - KnuKoncepts offers excellent value and quality so I'd recommend considering them as your supplier. Their blue 4GA cable is wonderful to work with, super flexible and tucks nicely under the RL kick plates.

Are you considering running battery ground to the amp? There are some good reasons not to do that. But I wasn't sure if that was your intention or not.

IMO: you are spot on with your thoughts about the ROI for passive vs. active full range systems. I don't want to high jack your thread but I have strong opinions about the purely subjective results of such endeavors. The effort to reward ratio is way high on the RL - at least as far as doing a high quality installation - and maintaining rust resistance, ETC. I'll summarize those thoughts by encouraging you to consider this: the worlds finest speaker systems utilize passive networks, this includes mega-dollar esoteric audiophile home systems, mastering systems in state of the art production studios and live sound reinforcement throughout the world.

 

[OhSix]

BTW: the Silver Flutes are large magnet/frame 6.5" and won't fit without metal mods on the door. When installing them in my front doors, I made adaptors out of 3/4" MDF laminated with 1/4" ABS. The stack up worked out perfectly though. Here's a couple of photos that might help you plan your project:

 

[laserguy]

16 ft of power wire is plenty to put an amp behind the rear seat on the driver's side assuming it goes through the driver's firewall side also.


You will need 17 ft RCA's the way I ran mine, I cut a corner running them under the front passenger carpet before running them next to the center pillar, but if you ran them tight to the passenger's side and don't cut that corner or any other corner, maybe 20Ft RCA's to make it to the other side.

Stay way from Knu RCA's, too many issues with the Karma's and Krystal RCA's.


Any 4 gauge wire on sale by Stinger, Streetwires, Rockford, JL, Tsunami (TSpec), Shok industries and Knu will work and you can trust size and quality.

You can keep the factory wire for the Flutes, simply run it from the amp to aftermarket harness, it will be good for up to 230 Watts per side. Tweeters, you will need new wire from the amp to the dash, 16 gauge is good also.

If you change your mind about dash to sail panel tweeters, simply run one new line of 14-16 gauge for the midwoofers, and use the existing factory wire for the tweeters, just solder new wire to them and run it up to the sail panel since no passives to deal with, I assume the PPI amp has a high pass crossover above 3K for the tweeters since you mentioned active.

 

[juiceweazel]

Thanks for the info Ohsix. Yes I tried to get some decent equipment, nothing top notch but nothing bottom of the barrel. I've done several stereos over the years & I always started out cheap & had to upgrade shortly after. This time I just want to 1 & done it. Yes I know not all wire is created equal. I always laughed at the guy who used the 5 year old $10 cables from radio shack & swore his $300 components were getting a clean signal. So it sounds like 20' of power & RCA's is the way to go & I can always cut it back. I've only ever done 1 ground run to a battery before & will never do it again (unless my battery is in the trunk). The effort & costs aren't worth it IMO. I am going active mostly because of the severe distance between the mid woofer and the tweeter. I bought this truck without realizing the stock speaker placements are a nightmare. My leg mostly blocks the driver woofer. I also want to see how good I can make this sound going active. Everything I've read sounds like the outcome is good if you're willing to tune it a bit.
I bought adapters from here:
http://car-speaker-adapters.com/items.php?id=SAK028
I assumed the flutes would fit with the adapter (plus some metal trimming). I did note the flute has a pretty good sized magnet. So they may not fit even without adding to the adapter as it's only 3/4"?
Thanks for the info laser. Might you be lasersvt over at DIYMA? Hmm a lot of people recommend Knu. Funny thing is I have 2 sets of cheap Fusion's I used back in the day & they still look better than 1/2 the junk out there now. If I had 1 more set I would use those instead. You make a good point about tapping into the stock speaker wires. Good for 230 watts? The wires coming out of the deck seem like they could barely handle 50 though. Then you add in the plug connections and it worries me. Is that what you did and haven't had any issues? How many watts are you running & how long have you had it installed like that?
Yes the PPI has high pass and I have a lot of setting on my deck. I bought this deck so I'd have a lot of options including time alignment & crossovers. I will be able to run the flutes on band pass pretty easily. The JL tweeters also came with a capacitor that runs the tweeters at 5k & above. I will probably cross them there and see where it takes me as a starting point. I would like to drop them down to 3k or 4k, but worry about blowing them since they are only a 3/4" tweeter.

 

[OhSix]

Thanks for the info Ohsix. Yes I tried to get some decent equipment, nothing top notch but nothing bottom of the barrel. I've done several stereos over the years & I always started out cheap & had to upgrade shortly after. This time I just want to 1 & done it. Yes I know not all wire is created equal. I always laughed at the guy who used the 5 year old $10 cables from radio shack & swore his $300 components were getting a clean signal. So it sounds like 20' of power & RCA's is the way to go & I can always cut it back. I've only ever done 1 ground run to a battery before & will never do it again (unless my battery is in the trunk). The effort & costs aren't worth it IMO. I am going active mostly because of the severe distance between the mid woofer and the tweeter. I bought this truck without realizing the stock speaker placements are a nightmare. My leg mostly blocks the driver woofer. I also want to see how good I can make this sound going active. Everything I've read sounds like the outcome is good if you're willing to tune it a bit.
I bought adapters from here:
http://car-speaker-adapters.com/items.php?id=SAK028
I assumed the flutes would fit with the adapter (plus some metal trimming). I did note the flute has a pretty good sized magnet. So they may not fit even without adding to the adapter as it's only 3/4"?
Thanks for the info laser. Might you be lasersvt over at DIYMA? Hmm a lot of people recommend Knu. Funny thing is I have 2 sets of cheap Fusion's I used back in the day & they still look better than 1/2 the junk out there now. If I had 1 more set I would use those instead. You make a good point about tapping into the stock speaker wires. Good for 230 watts? The wires coming out of the deck seem like they could barely handle 50 though. Then you add in the plug connections and it worries me. Is that what you did and haven't had any issues? How many watts are you running & how long have you had it installed like that?
Yes the PPI has high pass and I have a lot of setting on my deck. I bought this deck so I'd have a lot of options including time alignment & crossovers. I will be able to run the flutes on band pass pretty easily. The JL tweeters also came with a capacitor that runs the tweeters at 5k & above. I will probably cross them there and see where it takes me as a starting point. I would like to drop them down to 3k or 4k, but worry about blowing them since they are only a 3/4" tweeter.

You've got a solid plan juice. Couple of comments/feedback:
The spk adapters in your link are very different from the injection molded adapters sold by Scosche and others. CNC machined PVC should be stout and resilient - much better than run of the mill adapters. The opening on the Scosche adapters did not fit the Silver Flutes, at least not without some modification, so I chose to fabricate a more dense baffle with the thought of giving the Flutes a better surface to resonate on. If your PVC adapters accommodate the Flutes, the metal openings on the RL door will still need to be enlarged. Given the density of PVC, your choice of adapters should be acoustically dead and mechanically stout. Wish I would have known about them before going to the trouble of making something.

As far as power conducted by the factory spk wires, I wouldn't be too concerned about the effect they'll have on the system. Basically, all wire presents resistance, albeit very low in short runs. The combination of fixed resistance in the wire and variable resistance of the spk they are connected to *should not* be a limiting factor. As you have likely seen, the internet is full of data, charts & opinions about spk cable size, dynamic impedance curves, the effect of resistance on frequency response, ETC. IMO: given the short run of wire between the dash and front doors, speculation and concern about power and frequency characteristics is a bunch of inconsequential noise. You'll have satisfactory results by using decent wire and connection techniques between the amp and factory wiring loom.

Bi-amping with the combination of factory spk locations in the RL is an excellent choice. The Pioneer should give you every option needed to compensate for x-over and time alignment. Although I'm not familiar with the JL tweets in your list, they appear to be supplied with a 1st order x-over, which is simply an in-line capacitor (they do, however have a "protection circuit" to prevent them from being overdriven). *IF* the x-over point is 5kHz in JL's circuit, the -3db point is 2.5kHz. Keeping that in mind, you can lower the x-over point as long as the 1/2 power level is part of the equation. This gives you lots of room to play with the active x-over in the Pioneer *IF* it gives you slope adjustments - which I'm sure it does given the flagship status of your unit. By increasing the slope, you can lower the x-over to the tweets which gives you lots of ways to play with the image reflected off the windshield. Talk about tuning options! It'll be a blast setting things up to please your ears.

BTW: the Flutes in my system are x-over to dash tweets @ 4.5kHz 18db slope. The Flutes have a nice curve out to about 5k, so you have lots of room to play with limiting their top end.

Quick story on running + & - cables from a battery to an amp: years ago, a DIY'er brought his ride into my shop to have his amp rack replaced. He had run both + & - from the battery to the rack using 8 ga welding cable, the rack was attached to the trunk cross members behind the rear seat. The factory - battery cable that connects to the engine block & chassis had corroded severely. The end result was: the electrical system began demanding ground from the circuit between the amp rack and the vehicle chassis. When he went to start the vehicle, several hundred amps tried to flow across the circuit boards inside his amps. Since the demand for current was coming from the - side, the + side fuse did nothing to protect the amps. I've never seen a more thoroughly fried mess of electronics.

Keep us posted on your progress.

 

[laserguy]

A bit late posting but sharing similar thoughts as ohsix
A 25 ft run of 16 gauge wire is good for over 200 watts. Factory speaker wire is good 16 gauge wire. There is no tapping or cutting of factory wiring, you can solder the new wire ran from the amp to the aftermarket harness speaker leads that connects to the factory harness. Or you can run 12-14 g wire to it if makes you feel better, or run new wire to the doors and deal with removing the fuse box or fishing it through the door as you planned it.

Knu is good above average power wire with extra strands,and ok speaker wire, they have affordable decent dist blocks. Their RCA's look amazing, but have a high failure rate due to poor construction and connectors used, their cheap line may be better than the karmas RCA's. Their kolusus butyl deadening offers top performance and value.
Kicker offers good general car audio wiring and parts also.

If you visit DYMA you can find better answers and opinions there related to basic or advanced general car audio information and get ideas from installations done.
The name you mentioned has a car audio shop in Texas, I'm not in Texas or own a shop.

I would try the passive with the tweeters, you can connect it near the amp and remove it, if it does not sound good. The pioneer HU has a simple HP with 12 db slopes, for the main channels not covering the range to cross the tweeters or any tweeters unless they play down to 400hz , not active by far, I would use the amps crossovers since it covers a wide range and appear to offer bandpassing for the main channels, and use the rest of the audio settings, like TA and EQ. There is no way at least for me to know if the tweeter will be protected without its small crossover, running off the amp even crossed above 4khz, another option to be safe would be trying to run them off the HU with its passive, or combine the amps at 3khz-4khz, and the passive, leaving the HU HP to off or flat, and only using the PPI crossovers, this would be my first choice.

A few options to choose or try, some may sound or work better than others.

 

[juiceweazel]

The adapters do need a small amount of trimming due to the stoutness of the flute baskets. I chose the flutes because many at DIYMA have said you can't beat them for what they cost & they seemed to be very well constructed. I plan getting some modeling claim to beef up the area around the adapter as well.
I would love to tap into the factory wires then & not the wiring from Pioneer. The last time I bought a deck it wouldn't have been a question. This past time I noticed Pioneer SEVERELY cut on costs with the wire gauge for the deck. It made me feel as if the deck was made cheaply compared to decks 10 years ago.
I wonder if that circuit is in the capacitor or in the tweeter itself. I planned on on not installing it as it would limit my flexibility. The Pioneer does give several slope options. It's been years since I've had a system & I've never had the ability or played with this many options so it'll be a big dive into unfamiliar territory ha ha. I need to find a few test discs when I get this installed! Thanks for the heads up on the flutes. I thought they could be crossed pretty high & one of the reasons why I chose the gear I did. They should blend pretty well. :act035:
Hmm so the moral of the story about running power & ground here is to make sure your other wiring is capable of handling the extra current, or at least in good shape. I am considering doing the big 3 upgrade down the road. Not sure if it would make much of a difference though as I'm not running a huge system.

 

[juiceweazel]

Laser, I will have to try the method to wire the flute you describe laser. It should save me a few hours of headaches and possible damage to the plugs and fuse box, thank you.
Right now I am looking at the NVX RCA's & wire. They seem to offer decent price / performance value.
The capacitor by the amp sounds like a good idea, thanks. I can try it & see what happens. When I bought this deck I planned on running the amps hi pass for the tweeters & then running the high pass on the deck for the mids & setting the amp on low pass so I could get my band pass option, but this amp has bandpass ability so I won't have to worry about it. Sadly you are partially correct about the Pioneer crossover. I just tried & it only goes to 200k, not nearly high enough for the tweeter. But it does have 6, 12 or 18 db slope including the sub channel which I will play with.
Right now my plan is to run the front channels to the amps crossover to control the tweeters. The rear channels will be run to the amps crossover to bandpass the flutes. My rear speakers will be disconnected. This way I have the ability to adjust each speaker separately. So I have a few options to try if my plan doesn't work.
Again thanks for all the input & advice. Like I said it's been a few years since I've done this.

 

[laserguy]

Good, assuming this is the amp, the front channels offer crossovers for tweeters only, you only need a high pass from say 3000-4000 hz to all pass above that, no need for a LP, and the Pioneer HU does not offer any LP for the first 4 channels. Only the sub's channels offer a Low Pass. The HP on the HU at 200 hz will not offer any benefits other than increase the slope, and since you are using the passive and the amp's high pass, no need to use the HU, crossover.

Not sure why you keep bringing up the speaker wires from the HU, You will not be using those.

You have HU to RCA's, RCA's to amp new speaker wire from the amp to the harness we talked about, not the HU. The harness has 16 g wire and the leads are short, maybe 4-5", white, white black is left front , gray, gray black is right front once you connect those to the new wires and their polarity, the aftermarket harness connects to the factory harness and that is how you get sound from the factory speaker wiring.

 

[juiceweazel]

I only brought up the wire size as I see things getting cheaper & cheaper. When you get a deck that retails for $800, you expect a little more than paper thin wires. I was also concerned about wire size going through the aftermarket wires & harness. As you mentioned though, they should be fine & that's the route I will take. I'm going to cap off the decks speaker wires & tap right into the scoche harness. I know the deck goes to the RCA's, to the amp, wire to the speakers.
Yes the deck offers high pass only on the 4 channels. I will run the deck on high pass for the flutes & cross them at say 80 hz as a starting point. I can run the amp on low pass & just turn that all the way up to 4khz. That will give me the band pass on the flutes I need. Hopefully I can run the JL's down to 4kHZ so I don't miss that 4-5 range too badly. According to PPI's site, the crossover slope is 12db so that should hopefully give me what I'm looking for.
With this being a slim 10" sub the subsonic filter should come in handy & I love the extra bass knob for the amp. I've always had 1 & enjoyed being able to cut or boost with a quick turn of the knob. The sub should sing pretty well getting 440 watts to it.

 

[OhSix]

juice, for what it's worth, a couple of thoughts on your system:

The active xovers in the PPI are rotary potentiometers so any setting between between lowest and highest settings would be guesstimate's. With that in mind;

- Absent a graphic interface for more accurate HP and LP xover points & assuming the upper/lower settings on the amp controls are spot on, it looks like you have a perfectly safe way to use the frequency characteristics of your front speaker system.

- By using the front amp channels set to HP @ 4kHz and rear channels set to LP @ 4kHz you'll take MAX advantage of amp features and speaker characteristics.

- The JL's will be plenty comfortable with a 12db slope @ 4k and the Silver Flutes sound great up in that range.

- You'll have lots of control over levels between the tweets and doors by using the F/R fader in the Pioneer.

- On the sub side, running the PPI's LP @ 200hz and using the Pioneer's sub adjustments is a perfect way to keep control up front. The freq and slope will be at your command from the drivers seat, right where it belongs. Not all subs are the same but in my experience, xover points above 100Hz or so start to sound localized. I'm thinking yours in gonna sound good around 80Hz.

A while back, I drew a diagram of my system, which is very similar to what you are doing, so I took a few seconds to change text around to match the suggestions above. Hope it helps. Can't wait to see how your system turns out!

 

[OhSix]

OOPS! Sorry juice, just saw your post a few seconds after the one above. You have all the bases covered. I should have known.

 

[juiceweazel]

Thanks for the input OhSix. I was thinking 80 hz would be the sweet spot for the sub as well, but I will have to play around with it. That should blend well with the flutes. The amp will have to chill under the rear seat for a few weeks (on a cheap amp board) & when I'm happy (if that ever happens LOL) I'll mount the amp to the wall.
I plan on downloading the android app to aid me in doing a quick tune. Never used it, but I hear it's pretty easy to use.

 

[laserguy]

The subsonic filter most likely will have no effect since the sub is mounted on a sealed box with the recommended volume, and that will limit the excursion caused by lower frequencies. It does not hurt to use it either.

When you cut the holes for the midbass, you can use one of those 30-50 pack cd plastic covers to trace the line.

Are you going to deaden the door and try to seal the inner door holes?

 

[juiceweazel]

Hmm good idea with the CD pack. Never thought of that.
I'm going to use probably 50% coverage on both the outer & the inner skin & see how that sounds. If that's not good enough I will probably use acrylic over the holes with silicone & deaden over that. If I'm still getting too much road noise then I'll look at doing MLV. Hopefully I won't have to go that far. I understand that I'm fighting 2 different types of noise, but the sound deadening should help quite a bit. I'm also thinking of doing a deflex pad or some CC foam behind the flute.

 

[OhSix]

Recommendation: when enlarging the hole for the Silver Flutes, keep in mind alignment of the speaker mounted to the adapter/door metal and opening in the interior door panel. I'd recommend using the very cool PVC adapters you purchased as your guide to the size of the opening & placement on the inner metal skin. Using the mechanical attributes of your adapter, place it where it is meant to mount on the door & trace the inside of the ring on the metal, then cut. That way, everything will properly align upon assembly.

Tip from an old timer: regardless of how you cut the hole (jigsaw, snips, nibbler, ETC), use a garden blower or shop vac to blow and/or suck out metal shavings that are bound to fall inside the door. I've seen the long term affects of metal filings left inside doors and it ain't good. Giving rust a birth place is always bad - metal shavings are fertile ground for rust to get a hold on the inside of your doors. Same goes for the metal debris left behind by drilling mounting holes.

I'd also recommend giving the bare metal edge left by creating the speaker opening a coat of primer - and if you have the time, a follow up coat of paint or spray rubber as an additional precaution. If you are as anal retentive as I, putting a spot of silly-cone (where possible) on the back side of self tapping screws into metal is an excellent way to delay the growth of rust too.

 

[juiceweazel]

Good point about the adapters OhSix. Like I said earlier, I will have a slight bit of trimming on the adapter, but that's just at the top side of it due to the size of the basket. The bottom of the basket should fit right in the opening already created by the adapter company.
I agree about trying to evacuate the door of the trimmings. It only takes a few extra minutes (depending on the method). One brain dead tip for those using a leaf blower, wear glasses. You've basically just created 1 million metal projectiles LOL.
Boy you are pretty anal if you are painting the new door opening LOL.
I just hope I can get this started sooner than later as I've already got the major components ready to go.

 

[laserguy]

I am not against anything that has been recommended, I can only speak from my own experience and YMMV as they said depending on the what area of the country you are at, if you park inside during the day or night etc and I am not far from the Pacific Ocean and the Bay.

When I installed my speakers in early 2010 I drilled through the metal to place the MDF speaker rings plates I made. Last June I replaced them with HDPE, I saw no rust on those holes, last June I cut the speaker holes bigger, and no rust on the rough edges as of this last weekend after having to remove the panel. This means that if in 5 years I got no rust from screwing on the door with the same screw holes, most likely it is not a concern at least for my area.

It is good to maybe use Rustoleum Paint over or if you have the touch up paint over the non painted metal, it will give it some protection.

As far as the alignment, the factory grills are near 6" wide, the cone area of any 6.5" speaker is barely over 5.25" by eye you can cut the the hole and even if not centered, the cone area will still be in the door panel grill area.

Regarding the spacer thickness, in the past I recommended 1" ring spacers, I would say that will depend on the frame thickness of the driver, speakers with over 3/16" thickness will affect the door panel low corner from not clipping or mounting the panel flushed, a 3/4" spacer would be better and then use fast rings or apply closed cell foam on the factory grill ring to seal the gap if needed or use those expensive fast foam rings. The good news is, a 7" driver MAY be possible to install in our doors without door panel or grill modification.

I would place butyl dynamat type deadener on the inner door right behind the area where the speaker will be mounted, it will help with sound and more support. I would stay away from insulated crimped connectors unless you put heat shrink over the whole connector and seal the gaps where water can get in to. Also, I cut, like 10" of that factory hard plastic covering the factory wiring, it is hard bulky plastic hard to deal with, and water gets inside just causing more problems guiding water to your speakers and connectors and gets in the way, I simply got some good electrical tape like 3M and wrapped bundled all that area very tight. Or get some 1/8" tube type insulator if you don't want to use electrical tape.

Our door has a very thick steel crash protection bar right behind the speaker on the outer door, very hard to place a rubber acoustic deflector there. Open cell foam on the door panel also helps, our trucks have that white fabric, I believe is thinsulate, extra foam could help, on areas it can be glued.

Get rid of the plastic moisture barrier, once you seal the inner holes, it is useless and a pain to deal with if you leave it on.

If you use quality CLD deadener, you will need less deadening, maybe 30-35%

Covering the inner door openings, the way I did mine was screwing roof galvanized sheet metal, I used rope caulk to fill the gaps. Lots of big gaps once you put a sheet metal or plastic over it. Instead of deadener on the overlaps, I used aluminum tape. Much easier if a window or door needs service simply remove the tape, screws, sheet metal and get access to the door.

Or you can just put deadener over that area and it will seal the gaps, the only issue with deadener is that it costs more and it is hard to remove if service is needed on the doors.

You can use the rare peel and seal closed cell foam ensolite also to level/ fill those gaps, instead of dealing with rope caulk or duct seal.

Use stainless still screws if you can.

 

[juiceweazel]

So after way way too much time I finally have my stereo installed minus the sound deadening. That will come hopefully before winter. I wound up 86'ing the Flutes due to the magnet size & the amount of material I'd had to remove to fit them into the door. I'm sure they would've sounded great, but after much debate, I couldn't justify it. I wound up with a set of NVX XSP65 mid bass speakers. These still required some trimming, but not nearly as much. I purchased the JL C5 tweeters and installed them in the dash. Rounding out the bottom is the slim JL 10w3. I initially built a box to put behind the seat, but could not get it to fit. It just will not fit without hitting the seat support. I took it to one of the better stereo shops in town & they tried as well, but agreed without a lot of expense, the JL would not fit behind the seat. Regretably I wound up with a small box down firing under the seat, but it sounds good so that's what matters. Powering the whole system is the PPI900.5. Wiring I ended up with all NVX & was able to reuse some old 4 gauge Streetwire power wire I had laying around from my last stereo. Unfortunately I did not stop to take pics because I was in such a rush.
Initial Impression before things break in?
The JL tweets sound surprisingly good on the dash. I've always been a fan of sail tweeters, but I don't notice that much of a difference. Install was pretty straight forward, wires were reasonably easy to run.
The NVX mids were the shocking part of my system because I've never auditioned them before. They have a great amount of mid-bass & that's exactly what I was looking for. I've turned my sub off for a few people & they think it's playing because the bass drum just thumbs with these things. I mounted them using a custom MDF spacer.
The JL 10W3 slim plays pretty nicely with the system. The stereo shop gave it a little more than a half cube to let it drop down a little lower. I must say it did work. My initial box was about a half and while it was extremely punchy, it dropped off severely on the lower notes. I lost very little in sound quality and wound up with a little more output as a result. I am very disappointed this couldn't be mounted behind the seat, but again, it was another cost vs benefit factor.
The PPI amp is a great solution for those looking for a single amp setup. I mounted it behind the seat and it's out of the way. The only bad thing is if I need to tune the amp I'm going to have to remove the whole seat to do it. It has a good amount of output for it's price and size. I wish it had more output, but for what it is, I'm very happy. My issue is that I used to have huge stereos and have to learn when enough is enough LOL.
The system is still breaking in but I expect everything to only get better once it does.
Running the system active was very easy due to selecting the right speakers and amp. It really isn't difficult if you do enough research. Thanks to all for the advice on here. Hopefully I won't have to touch anything on this system for awhile.
Next up sound deadening and some maintenance, stupid wheel well rust...