Good Morning Everyone,
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I spent 12 hours in my father's garage installing my system, but in the end, it all worked out. I still need to add rear speakers and clean up wiring, etc, but all in all, it's working, and MUCH MUCH MUCH better than the stock system.

Previously in October, I constructed my amp rack, and then took the doors off to install my Focal 165v2s speakers just to find out that they wouldn't fit in the doors. I took a month to figure out how to fit them, and need to thank bullyx2 for advice and a very useful picture.

I decided to use ¾” plywood and create rings, 5.5” on the inside, and ~7” on the outside. The outside diameter isn’t exact.

Rings

I then used a countersink and drilled the holes to install the spacer in the door. I also drilled some pilot holes for the speakers themselves as to (hopefully) not crack the wooden spacer.

Countersink Kit

I used a few small pieces of Dynamat behind the speaker hole.

Dynamat

When I was ready to install the spacers, I used ¼” weather stripping on the side that was going against the door. I went back and forth about this decision, but believe that this is the right way to go. The spacers are very secure.

Weather Stripping

Here is a picture of the spacer in the door:

Door

And here is a picture of the speaker installed. I bought some adapters to use the clips that are already in place in the door for the signal:

Speaker in door

After both front door speakers were installed, I went to work on running the power cable to the trunk for my amps. I decided to drill a hole in the firewall next to the pre-existing rubber assembly above where the clutch would be.

Hole in firewall

And installed a grommet:

Grommet

A few people have been asking around here about a certain Honda speaker adapter that Crutchfield sells that mates up with the 20 pin connector that goes out to each speaker. 06 Civic Speaker Harness

I’m happy to say that it fits wonderfully:

It fits

Though it needs to be taped to the existing connector:

Electrical tape

The connector comes with a LOT of wires on it, though I am only interested in 4 of them; the ones that go to the front two woofers. The tweeters and rear deck speakers are going to be wired directly from the amps. Here is a small translation of the wire colors needed to hook up the front woofers:

Function---------------Blue--------------------White

Right Front (+)-------Green/Yellow---------Gray
Right Front (-)--------Gray/Red--------------Gray/Black
Left Front (+)---------Green/Black----------White
Left Front (-)----------Light Green----------White/Black

I cut the remaining wires off of the bundle and ran them to the trunk via the passenger side kick panels.
I also ran Mercman’s harness along the passenger side kick panels, and it works wonderfully. I could have used another 2-3 feet of cable however, as it just barely reaches the front of the trunk when taking it along the passenger side kick panels. I thought about running it straight back through the middle, but couldn’t figure out where to run it there.

Here is a picture of the amp rack when I was installing the amps to it:

Attaching amplifiers

Hooking up some cabling:

Cabling up the amps

And here is the finished amp rack in the trunk before placing my sub box in there:

Finished Amp Rack


Now I get to clean up the wiring and install my 6x9’s over Christmas. Hopefully they don’t take quite as long!!! Please feel free to comment or ask me questions either here or via private message. Jay

 

nice write up.

 

Jay,

Good job and thanks for testing that Civic speaker harness, it will save a lot of time splicing wires!

Is that your dad at the Band saw? When I did my install I had all my parts including the back seat in the dinning room. You really have to take the TSX apart to do an install!

Glad your happy with your system.

jeff

 

Yeah, that's my dad. He helped me out a lot during the process, and it was nice to hang out with him, as I don't get to that often. I have to say that taking the car apart the first time is a gutwrenching experience, but the second time, it is much easier, both physically and mentally!!

 

Nice write up! I'm confused though. You used the Crutchfield harness and Mercman's? What's the purpose of using both?

 

That's beautiful. Great job!! What are you doing about a sub? Custom enclosure?

 

My harness takes care of the HU outputs and the Cruchfield (07 CivicSi amp bypass) takes care of the speaker connections. My harness connects to the 14 pin connector and the Crutchfiled connects to the 20 pin connector. Using both means no splicing and no snaking speaker wire into the doors.

jeff

 

So can you connect the tweeter and rear door speaker with the harness? Color code?

 

uncald4 - I have a box from my old car that I installed. It is a sealed enclosure with 2x JL 10w3 from the year 2000. I'm going to work with this but am eyeing a single JL 10w7 so we'll see! I'm just trying to fill in the low end. I haven't tweaked the amps yet, and I can tell that they could use a little tweaking. It was just too cold up here last weekend to do anything outside in the car.

chhimp - The harness from crutchfield comes with all the wires to connect the rear door, rear deck (I assume), and tweeters. The bundle was about as big as my forearm, but I cut most of hte wires off. My goal was to not have to tap into already-existing wires in the car. I'm going to be installing rear deck 6x9's but they can easily be wired directly to the amps that are 2 feet away from them. As for the tweeters, they use a different adapter than the front door woofers do, and I was told here (probably from mercman who gave me TONS of useful information and advice) that the tweeter cabling is very easy to do, and that is a fact. All you need to do is pop the stock tweets out, drop speaker wire down there, and look up from underneath with a flashlight...easy. I find it strange that my tweeters have nice, high quality 16AWG monster cable speaker wire while my fron woofers have not-so-good wire, but it still sounds amazingly better than the stock system...

 

Thanks for this writeup/pics, super helpful.

 

Do you happen to have the dimensions for your amp rack? How much did it cost you to build one, with wood cost and carpet?

 

Hey chhimp,
It's tough to say exactly...basically, the wood was free becasue my father had a surplus of it. I used 3/4" plywood as the main board. The carpet was around $15 I think but I had way too much, and you should get some 3M adhesive spray. It works wonders. If I remember correctly, I got all the supplies from Parts Express. As for dimensions, it was kind of trtial-and-error as I took the dimensions I wanted, then cut a bit off the sides of the front end, then took more dimensions, etc, etc until it was near perfect. With the slight height of the carpetting, it sits very snug in there. I'm not sure if this answers your questions, but hopefully it helps a bit. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

 

Anybody know if you can buy the carpet from Acura so it matches better?

 

Acura doesn't sell carpet. I buy my carpet form an upholstery supplier but they only sell to businesses. I'm sure that if you went straight to a car audio shop or uphostery shop they might sell you a good chunk.