Sounds Good Stereo Behind the Seat kit installation

[kvasiir]

OK here we go again with all the wiring stuff. Here's a picture of the stock amp rack (mounting bolts at the bottom already removed).

And the same for the subwoofer:

The sub has some kind of clip-in in addition to the mounting bolts. It took a pretty good amount of force to pop it out - enough that had tried popping off the front panel there (with the torx screws) to no avail.

Once the sub is out, blackout plate installed. Same mark/drill procedure as for the doors. It's just a bit finicky to work back here with the seat in place. Probably depends on how big your drill/screwdriver are, I guess.

That stud at the left side of that photo has to come out in order for the new sub enclosure to fit properly, and a bunch of this carpet has to get cut out. I didn't really get that at first, so I did a lot of repeated attempts and failures. There's another stud like that one just out of frame on the right side of this pic too. I think if I were to do this again, I'd take out the whole carpet and cut it outside of the vehicle... doing it in place was a PITA and doesn't look super hot in the end. NBD I guess - nobody's going to see it behind the seat anyway.

The SGS harness has a different alignment tab than the stock amp did:

I just clipped off that black tab with wire cutters and everything slid together well after that.

This ECU behind the passenger side seat had to be removed in order to fit the sub enclosure in. It bolts right back into place once the sub's in, though.

Here's another angle of the behind-the-seat area ready for the sub to get dropped in:

And here, the sub and amp rack installed:

This latch has a captive ring on the back that was a real PITA to take off. Just FYI - all fit back together nicely, though!

 

[kvasiir]

So, since I did all this wiring installation only once, not twice like I did for the doors, I have fewer and worse pictures. But here are some pics of the speaker and subwoofer volume knob wiring running up the driver side. First in back:

and in front:

I ran the sub volume cable and the speaker wires for the A-pillar behind this panel - it pops straight out towards the rear of the vehicle:

The speaker wires then go behind this vent trim:

back side pic:

The sub knob wiring I took across underneath the dash and then up into the steering column. The soft cowl on the column just pops right off which gives lots of room to work. Underneath the steering wheel, this panel pops out easily with a trim tool, and has a couple of screws behind it, which when removed allow the whole underside panel here to come off:

Here's a picture of the sub knob installed. I might have put it a bit far towards the front of the vehicle, but 1) it's not that bad and 2) I don't need to adjust it that much anyway.

 

[kvasiir]

Power wires! Starting with the battery panel in the frunk - just slide it up and pop it off. It's a bit tricky to put back on - you kind of have to push all four corners to align everything all at once, and that takes more hands than I have.

The wiring I fished through with a semi-rigid plastic wire pulling assembly I got with an in-wall power/signaling kit for TV wall installation. After the fact you can see here in the battery compartment:

Then heading down and back under the truck:

I made a little notch in the positive terminal cover with some wire cutters and a sharp knife.

 

[kvasiir]

Underneath the truck (confusing angles from here on out, be warned), first down from the battery and then off towards the driver side:

Then I zip tied the cables to the running board. Not a lot of spots to pick from down here...

Then into the big plastic bucket:

Drilled a couple of extra holes in the side of it near the existing drain holes to hold things in place with more zip ties. View from the front:

and from the rear:

Drilled some holes in the body for the cable glands - WAY TOO BIG for the glands that came with my kit (oops!), but I just got some bigger glands and then filled them up with silicone afterwards. Measure before you drill, folks!

 

[kvasiir]

And here are some pics of my new A-pillars and how they got installed. The A-pillars have these covers over the handle assemblies:

There's a little hole in the bottom you can get a pick into to pop them off. Be careful not to scratch the hell out of everything when you do it (ask me how I know).

Pics behind showing the upper screw:

And the lower one:

10 mm hex heads on these. You'll need to move your steering wheel around and out of the way to get an electric screwdriver on easily.

Here's the A-pillar with the trim removed:

And a closer up picture of the mounting/alignment tab slots next to the dash:

 

[kvasiir]

My new passenger side A-pillar went on without a hitch, but the driver one left a big gap:

I stripped the hell out of the bolt hole underneath trying to force it together (oops again), but managed to drill it out wider and putting a threaded insert in there to fix it. I recommend not making such a mistake.

Anyway, root cause turns out to be that the inside of my a-pillar trim was just ground away too far, so it didn't fill the necessary space properly. Here's a couple pics of me holding the handle in place on the unmounted A-pillar. First, the upper side:

And then the lower - which is the problematic one. You can see here how it sits proud of the inside of the trim piece, so there's no way for everything to be tightened down correctly:

I called SGS and Sage made me some plastic washers to go inside there, and now everything's fine, I just superglued them in place, using the handle with the unmounted A-pillar to keep everything aligned, and then reinstalled. Looks great!

Drilling out and retapping the screw threads was the biggest part of this fix, but hopefully you all will be able to avoid that pain. And also the pain of cleaning up all of the aluminum shavings it caused!

 

[GDN]

Looks great. Not sure how I missed your thread. I never posted any of my pics and install info, still should do that. I didn't take near the pictures you did, some great documentation you've got. One of the most befuddling things was that cover on the Oh shit handle up on the dash. I scratched one of mine a bit too. Looks so straight forward, but they don't like to turn loose.

I also ran my power cable to the front of the truck on the drivers side simply because there was nothing to tie to as you note on the passenger side.

Great work. I hope you are enjoying it. Been loving my set up a while.

 

[kvasiir]

More pictures will certainly help people. It does definitely sound great, so I'm a happy camper!

 

[kbuicker]

This is simply beautiful! Thank you for taking the time to go step-by-step and show photos each time. You win the internet today fellow Lightning owner.

 

[e-Trucka]

This is an amazing thread and the work is top notch! You are now THE Lightning mod-man of the forum. Thanks for sharing.

 

[kvasiir]

This is simply beautiful! Thank you for taking the time to go step-by-step and show photos each time. You win the internet today fellow Lightning owner.

This is an amazing thread and the work is top notch! You are now THE Lightning mod-man of the forum. Thanks for sharing. Sponsored

Thanks guys - it was easy to do the door pics, since I had to do two of each, so I could just work through it the first time and then do it more methodically and with pictures the second time. The electronics installation wasn't really like that. It's just tough to take pictures at the same time as you're doing more exploratory and try-and-error style work, unfortunately. I'm certainly happy to chat/share pictures/etc if anybody has specific questions about any of that stuff that's not well-covered here!

 

[kbuicker]

I recently added sound deadening mats (Kilmat) to the rear wall and floor of my truck. I have a ton of tiles left, so thought I would do the doors too. Do you think the block off plates are necessary? Truck is quiet as is and I'm not after an aftermarket boom.

 

[kvasiir]

Do you think the block off plates are necessary?

Necessary? Probably not. I'm not sure how salvageable the existing vapour barrier plastic is, though, and you'll definitely need to peel that off to put tiles on the inside of the doors. If it's helpful, you can buy just the plates (as opposed to a full giant kit like I got) from SGS here.

 

[kbuicker]

ok, thanks. Yes, the vapor barrier went back on without issue.

 

[SoundsGoodStereo]

I recently added sound deadening mats (Kilmat) to the rear wall and floor of my truck. I have a ton of tiles left, so thought I would do the doors too. Do you think the block off plates are necessary? Truck is quiet as is and I'm not after an aftermarket boom.

For road noise, the plates will make a marginal difference. For sound, it makes a big difference and helps resolve the "boomy" midbass performance since it adds rigidity to the door itself and prevents the back wave of the speaker from colliding with the front wave.

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