Last weekend me and a few friends began installing an all new stereo in my '04 Coupe. Here's the list of what's getting installed:

Focal 165V2 Polyglass Components
Focal 165CV1 Coaxials
JL Audio 300/4 Amp
JL Audio 10W3V2 Sub
JL Audio 250/1 Amp
David Navone LOC
4080's Sub Box
Then of course all the little miscellaneous things

Here are the pictures from last Friday when we started. You'll notice in some of the pictures that the driver's door is removed. We ended up removing the door in order to drill out the Molex plug to feed wire through. Just getting speaker wire into the driver's door took approx. 2.5 hours. Needless to say, I decided to take the car into an audio shop to do the passenger side. Without further ado, here are the pictures from Day 1.












Now yesterday, I took the car into Kief's Car Audio, in Lawrence, Kansas to run speaker wire into the passenger door since we didn't feel up for it again. Now here are the pictures from what we did later in the day back at my house. We got the interior put back together, amps wired and mounted, sub wired and mounted, and the rear coaxials wired and mounted. This weekend we should get the front components mounted and working good and this project will finally be complete.

 

Very clean job on the amp install!

 

Looks like a very clean install. Nice work! I have the same amps and sub ready to be put in my G coupe. I have a few questions for you if you don't mind.
How did you wire the LOC? Did you tap the signal going TO the bose amp or the output? How does it sound as is with the stock fronts? Is it really clean?
How did you mount the amps to the back seat? Anything behind the seat back for added strength?

JP

 

Wow, very nice! VERY Clean install

Doors off scares me though. Can't wait to run my wires

 

very nice install...i cant believe that u have the guts to take the doors off urself. well i took me may be 4 hours just the run the speaker wires through the rubber grommet....
I would like to know how did u mount the amp did u have any support under to keep the amp in place or just screw through the board?

 

Nice clean install. What gauge speaker wires did you run through the doors? I know it's a pain to run the wires through the molex in the doors but once you were able to do one side, the other side should have went a lot faster. How much did the shop charge to run the wires to the passenger door?

 

how do you like thoes Focals? were they worth the $$$$$??

 

y take off the door?

nice tho

 

We wired the LOC before the amp. I wasn't planning on putting the stock Bose amp back in, but I found out last night while testing everything, that you lose the navigation voice if the amp is out. So I am going to have to put the stock amp back in just for that.

Actually right now, the stock front speakers are removed. So I am definitely lacking a front stage right now.

As for mounting the amps, we just used self tapping screws. We didn't add anything to the seat, but they both seem to be secure. I'll post here if anything changes with that.

THERE'S JUST SOMETHING I WANTED TO CLEAR UP SO THERE'S NO MISINFORMATION. YOU DO NOT NEED THE STOCK BOSE AMP TO HEAR THE NAVIGATION VOICE. THE VOICE IS ONLY PLAYED THROUGH THE FRONT SPEAKERS.

 

Removing the door is actually pretty easy, just make sure you have ATLEAST two extra sets of helping hands. There's only four bolts holding it on. At first I was a little worried about getting it back on correctly and having proper gaps everywhere, but we got it right the first time. According to one of my friends that helped with the install, most of the adjustment is left at the car-hinge connection and not at the hinge-door spot, if that makes sense.

 

We ran 12 gauge speaker wire. We were just drained out pretty much after doing the driver's side. It really is a lot of work JUST to run speaker wire. The shop I took it to charged me $100 for it (I provided the speaker wire). It took them about 2 hours to complete and they also removed the door. To me, that $100 was money well spent.

 

Well I don't have the Focal components installed yet, so I can't comment n those quite yet. In the rear, I opted for one of Focals "cheaper" coaxial speakers, but I think they sound great. I'll be sure to post a review once everything is in and tuned.

 

It looked like the easiest way to do it. I've noticed that most people on the forum seem to leave the doors on, but there's really only four bolts holding the door on. The hardest part was holding the door close to the car while trying to feed speaker wire through the grommet, but as long as you have a few helping hands, it isn't too bad.

 

I just wanted to BUMP this to edit something I said. In one of my posts, I mentioned that you need the stock Bose amp in order to hear the navigation voice. I was wrong about this. The voice is only played through the front speakers and you do not need the stock Bose amp to hear the voice. Just wanted to clear this up.

 

does the audio for navigation plug into non-oem hu's? or is it some kind of proprietary connection for the stock hu only?