I am going to start working on the system on my truck. I am going to start with just a new deck, all the door speakers and a small amp. Should i go with the 6x8 or the 6 1/2? I was looking at some infinity 6x8's with some components. They run around 200 a set on crutchfield but i found some for about 110 a pop. I couldnt quite find an amp i really wanted so i think i may just go with a 600 watt mtx am that matches the rms on them for now. Suggestions or comments?

 

I believe you will have to trim the openings for the 6.5" woofer, plus find a place to mount the tweeter. I prefer the 6.5" round option, but it's more work. I also believe you could drop in some adapter plates and 5.25".

Find an amp that provides what your speakers need and you should be pretty well set.

 

i have not taken my door panel off yet but is there anything that would keep me from trimming the hole to make them fit? i would just get a dremel or a cutting wheel and trim it out. Where would you put the tweeters?

 

If I were doing the job (and I plan to eventually) I would take a good look at the firing direction of the OE speakers. If they aren't pointed to the driver's head area or have obstructions I would find another option. In my 89 F150, it worked out pretty nice just to cut the hole open in the door and mount the woofer, then mount the tweeter to the door panel a couple of inches away from the woofer.

In my Superduty, I have a set of Q-form kick panels which I am putting 6.5" components in. The kick panels have the tweeter space right next to the woofer. I've heard you can space them a bit and change the phase in the cross over to get it to sound right, but my opinion on the matter is mount them as close together as possible so the sound travels nearly the same distance so it arrives at your ears within the least amount of delay.

So here is some theory for you to kick around. Sound travels at 1130 feet per second at sea level with about 70% humidity. Drop the other stuff and you get sound traveling at 1130 fps. If one speaker is 36" away from your left ear and the other is 30" away, the one 36" will take 0.00265 seconds to reach your ear. The speaker that is 30" away will take 0.00221 seconds leaving a differential of 0.00044 seconds which isn't terrible, but the idea is to get that differential as low as possible. Where this comes into play is at the cut off of the cross over, if you're listening to an instrument that is on both sides of the cut off you want it to hit your ears as closely as possible. The same idea also goes into the right and left placement of the speakers. The lesser the differential between the dwell of the right and left speaker's audio impacting your ears the closer the sound stage is to actual or intended by the sound engineer.