I recently installed 6.5" JL audio components in all 3 locations in my 04 Limited Excursion. After a break in last summer, I have decided to keep my factory head unit and keep my install as low key as possible. I have an audiocontrol LC6 line level adapter and several old school made in the USA Orion XTR amps, as well as up to eight 8" JL audio W1 subs I can install, though I will probably only use a couple of them. For now its just the factory head unit powering JL audio ZR components in the front doors. The rear doors have ZR tweeters and crossovers and XR mids. The 3rd row has XR components. The reason I used these is because I had most of them laying around from old installs. They are very expensive components and are probably overkill, but any aftermarket speaker would be a big improvement over the factory speakers.

The factory speakers are 5x7 and there is adequate clearance behind the mounting surface for just about any aftermarket speaker. If you stick with 5x7's, your install will be easier. If you want to go with any other size, you will need to buy or make an adapter. I purchased mine off ebay for adapt to 6.5's, however, as you will see the housings that hold the speakers needed modified to accept the larger diameter speaker. I would also recommend buying adapter plugs for the speakers so you don't have to cut the factory wiring harness.

I will start with the front doors:

First, pry up the plastic trim inside the mirror, known as the sail panel. It is held in place with several metal friction clips but should pop out easily using your hand.


Next, pry up the front of the trim panel that houses the controls for the door locks and windows. The front is held in place with a friction clip, and once you pop it up, you tilt the panel and pull it forward. The rear is held in place with a tab that slides under the arm rest. Unplug all the electrical connectors once you get it loose, then remove the panel with the switches. For the drivers door on my truck, there are 4 switches.



Right behind where the rear tab was, you will see a small bolt, one of two that holds the door panel in. Remove it.


Next, pry out the reflector on the lower portion of the door panel. Behind it lies the second bolt holding the door panel on.



You can now remove the door panel by grabbing the handle and lifting up and outwards away from the door. If you have memory power seats, DO NOT PULL THE DOOR PANEL AWAY FROM THE DOOR PANEL YET. You cannot remove the power seat memory switches from above. You must reach around the door panel and unplug the plug from the rear of the panel. Ford gave you about 6" of slack. The "button" that releases the plug will be facing the front of the vehicle, if that helps. Once you have unplugged this switch, go ahead and sit the door panel somewhere safe. This is what you will be looking at now:



There are four bolts securing the factory speaker/grille assembly (its one piece) to the door. Remove them, and the speaker will come out. The factory harness plugs directly onto the rear of the speaker. Carefully unplug them and set aside. You may want to consider keeping them in case you ever need to part with your excursion, so you can swap them back out.

At this point in time, if you have 5x7's, you can simply plug in your speaker adapter plug, hook up your speakers, screw them in, and put everything back together. If you have any other size speaker, you will need to screw your adapter in first. If you went with 6.5's like me, you will need to clearance the baffle. On the front doors, the speakers mount directly into the metal. I placed my adapters onto the doors and marked the area that interfered with the speaker:

I then used a small ball peen hammer to carefully round the offending metal underneath without distorting the panel. I took my time and made many small blows. The end result was something like this:


On my ZR mids, which have a massive cast basket, I also had to clearance the plastic adapters themselves where the arms of the basket interfered. A sharp razor knife made quick work of taking the edges off.


I then cut 3 short pieces of wire. The first I spliced to my factory speaker adapter plug using butt crimp connectors, then placed ring terminals on the end that would go to the crossover. You can use spade terminals but if the screw loosens over time they can come loose, and this would short out your head unit or amplifier. I recommend using the ring terminals. The second piece of wire received ring terminals on the end going to the crossover, and female disconnects on the end going to the speaker. Many speakers use two different size male disconnects on the speaker connections, so be sure to use observe proper polarity (positive and negative) when making your crimps.
The third will go to the tweeter, so it gets ring terminals on one end. The other end will need to have some sort of connection that will allow you to unplug it so you can remove the door panel. I recommend bullet style disconnects, as they grip very strongly and are 100% insulated. As you will see in the blow pics, an old installer tip for wiring up disconnects is to wire one the tweeter side with a male and a female, and wire the other side opposite. this way you (or a mechanic working on your truck) can never reverse the polarity accidentally by plugging them in the wrong way, because they will only plug in the right way. Wire everything up, again, observing proper polarity. (note that these particular crossovers are extremely high end and have 2 extra terminals to allow biamping- you probably won't see that on yours, and I'm not using that feature, so I left them unhooked).


This is a great point in the install to stop, plug in both speakers, and verify that everything is working correctly. Better to find and fix a problem now than to wait till everything is buttoned back up.

For this install, there is not adequate space to mount the crossovers behind the door panels. I examined the area inside the door itself and determined that there would be sufficient space to place the crossover inside the door without it interfering with the power window operation. I wrapped the crossover in plastic to protect it from moisture, and then wrapped it with a piece of wool to make sure it didn't rattle around.




Once the crossover is placed into the door pocket, tuck the wires from the factory plug to the crossover inside the door somewhere that they will not interfere with window operation. Ideally ziptie them to the factory wiring and door structure to keep them out of the way. Run the woofer wire up to the woofer opening, and route the tweeter wire as close as you can to where you want to run the tweeter. Be careful not to run it through one of the square openings because those are where the clips that hold the door on go, and it could pinch the wire. I found a nice little round hole that wasn't being used that was clearly designed to have wire run through it. Leave enough slack in the tweeter wires so that you will have room to plug the tweeter in when replacing the door panel later.


Now you hook your woofer up, observing proper polarity



Then you screw your woofer into your adapter. If your adapter is plastic, I'd advise putting a dab of super glue on the threads to act as threadlocker. Woofers vibrate a lot.



NOW comes the fun part, that makes the install of components way different than coaxials: you get to mount the tweeters. If you haven't ever played with external tweeters before, you may just want to leave yourself a few feet of wire and some double sided tape and experiment by putting them different places and see how you like it. Some people like to put theirs in the sail panel on the inside of the mirror because it can "raise" the music. I don't like them that far from the woofer because then my treble comes from up high and my bass from lower down and I find that I can localize the different speakers. If you are going to mount them in the door panels like I did, you need to know that the door panels are not symmetrical. The driver's door has significantly less space above the woofer to mount the speaker. I wanted my tweeter to be above the woofer to help raise the soundstage (and stay above passengers legs, which can muffle the sound), I wanted it to stay within 6" or so of the woofer to prevent localization of high frequencies, and I wanted the tweeters to be symmetrically placed on both doors for aesthetics. These requirements, combined with my need to have a 2" round spot of flat plastic for the tweeters to mount in, dictated that my tweeters be placed where they are, and it worked extremely well for me.

First you must mark the door panel. check the back to make sure there are no moldings or obstructions.

Then use a hole saw of the appropriate diamtere to drill the hole for your tweeter, in my case, 1 3/4".


You will be left with a rough hole, but you don't want all that ugly plastic shavings visible, so take a piece of sandpaper and lightly sand around the edge just enough to clean it up. If you used the correct size hole saw, you don't want to enlarge the hole, just clean it up.



Next you will mount your tweeter cup with the hardware provided with your component kit. These tweeter cups are molded plastic and they vary slightly in size. If yours is loose in the hole you just drilled out, I like to wrap it in some black duct tape to make it fit tight. This keeps it in the hole, keeps it from rattling, and makes it look better. In my case, once I installed the hardware, the bolt protruded too far and I had to cut about an inch off the end with snips.



Then you just carefully route your bullet connectors for the tweeter wires through the openings in the back of the tweeter cup and firmly snap it into place. Lift the door panel back towards the door, aligning the bottom row of clips so that you can lean the panel against your chest. Reach over the panel and plug the memory seat controls back in if you are so equipped. then plug the bullet connectors together (always observe proper polarity).

Lift the panel slightly and push it back into the door while letting it drop. Make sure all the clips are in place and the door lock **** at the top of the panel is lined up with the hole in the door panel. Once it drops, it will hold itself in place while you replace the 2 screws that hold the panel on. From there its just a matter of plugging your switches back in and snapping the switch panel and the reflector back in, before replacing the sail panel by lining it up and snapping it back in place. Youre done with the fronts!







The rear door speakers are almost exactly the same, with a few differences. Unfortunately, I did not take pictures while I had the door panel off, but I did find some pics off jammijammer's site that I'm referring to below. Here is how they go:
There is no sail panel on the rear, so start by prying up the switch panel


Unplug it and set it aside, and unbolt the bolt behind it.



Next, pry off the reflector and remove the bolt behind it.


Lift up and out on the panel, and from there the process is exactly the same as the fronts, only the rear speakers are mounted off the metal surface of the door using a plastic housing. If you go with 6.5's like I did, instead of using a hammer to roll the edge like you did on the front, you will use your trusty razor knife to trim off the offending plastic. I did this with the adapters screwed in place, and stopped removing material when the housings were even with the adapters.
When you're done, replace the panel same as the front, put the 2 bolts back in, plug your window switch back in, and snap the switch panel and reflector back on.







Finally, the third row.
The procedure for the third row speakers will vary a good bit depending on what you are doing. If you are just replacing the rears with coaxials, you can get away with the basic procedure I'm going to outline. In reality, because I needed to check behind the panels and drill out holes for the tweeters, I ended up completely removing the rear side panels. I will try to note the different steps where applicable, but they start largely the same.

First, locate where the second row shoulder belts bolt to the door panel. There is a plastic cover over the bolt, and it pops easily up from the bottom to reveal the 15mm nut.



Go ahead and unbolt the nut and pull the shoulder bolt off the stud and let it drop to the floor out of the way. Next you will have to reach up and pry off the C pillar plastic molding. These moldings use a ton of friction clips towards the middle of the panels. They eventually pop off, but its easy to distort them if you pry too hard. Try to pull the rubber door molding back and reach your fingers in around the back edge of these panels to pry closer to the friction clip to avoid breaking the panels. The panels pry straight in towards the centerline of the vehicle. If you pry them at an angle you will break the plastic tabs the hold the metal friction pieces in. Do not do that.



Next you will reach down and pry up the plastic door jamb sill plates. They need to go because they hold in the side panels. They are held in place with 5 friction clips. Again, pry as close to the friction clips as possible to avoid breaking the plates.




About a foot back on the side panels, under the carpet, there is a plastic fastener that holds the rear panel to the floor. Pull the carpet back and pry this out. Its really stubborn. I don't think you'll get it out without breaking it. If you do, rest assured the panel stays in place just fine without it. If you must replace it, lowes and home depot both stock replacement plastic push pin clips that fit right in there.



You can now pry the side panels forward enough to access the factory speakers and replace them. Here is a picture of the access you will have to the speakers. I took these after I had installed my 6.5's, so you will note the adapters and mids are already installed in these pics. The 3rd row uses similar plastic brackets to the rear doors.



As you can see, plenty of room to work if you are just replacing with factory size speakers.

If, like me, you needed to carve out the plastic housings for larger woofers, install external crossovers, and drill the panels for tweeters, you will probably have to completely remove the rear panels. For this, in addition to the above steps, you need to remove the 3rd row seat, if equipped. You will also need to remove the spare tire at this time, if yours is still in the factory location. when you remove it, if yours has the plastic piece underneath that bolts to the floor with 3 silver bolts, you need to remove these as well.



Pry up on the plastic molding on the lip where the floor steps up directly underneath the 3rd row seat. This plastic lip is attached to the carpet. Once you pry it up, fold the carpet in half back into the cargo area, out of the way. This will reveal more plastic pieces holding the side panels to the floor. Pry these out.





You will now need to go to the back of the truck. Pry up the plastic door jamb, held in place with friction clips:



Now pry loose the center ceiling trim, also held in place with friction clips.


Pry off the D pillar panel on the passenger side, also held in with friction clips. These d pillar panels pry straight in towards the center of the vehicle, just like the C pillar panels did. You don't need to do the driver's side, as the driver's side panel is split in half behind the spare tire.



You can now continue to pry the side panels outward. they are held in place with friction clips. Both sides have 12 volt outlets, so if you plan to remove them (rather than just pull them back a good bit to give you access) you will need to unplug them. One is on the passenger side at the very back, the other is in that weird little storage pocket on the driver's side. You should now have the side panels completely loose except for the seatbelts. You will have plenty of room to work. If you want to pull them out of the truck, you will also have to unbolt the seatbelts. Start at the top of the third row shoulder belts. They are held in the same way as the second row, with a single 15mm bolt, only this time under a rubber cover you just flex out of the way, instead of the plastic cover.



Next you will need a torx socket to remove the 4 rear seatbelts where they bolt into the floor.


Once those are out, snake the seatbelt assemblies back through the holes in the side panels and you can completely remove the side panels. You shouldn't really need to do this, but there is the info if you do. Here is a better view of the rear speaker area with the side panel out:



There is plenty of room in the back to do just about anything crazy you want. If you build a custom bracket you could even fit 8" subs back there, which woudl be cool. They fire into a hollow in the panel so they could theoretically use the hollow rear quarter panels as an enclosure, though you would need to seal them off.

I mounted my tweeters below the speakers since it was a nice flat spot with plenty of room behind it. there is a friction clip for the rear panel directly next to the speaker grille and the seat belt runs right over it so you have to be careful where you place your speakers, as not to interfere with the seatbelt.

Reassemble things in the opposite order they came apart.

Here's a pic of how mine turned out:




Put your favorite CD, cassette, or 8 track in and turn it up while you slap yourself on the back for being awesome. Bob your head, do a little dance, then gas up and go for a long ride on a sunny day with a smile on your face. Play drums on the steering wheel and tap the brakes to the beat. Sing until your kids make fun of you, then ground them.

 

Haster, nice write up bro! I will be adding this to the tech folder.

The crossover you put in the door, did you just set it inside, or is it mounted somehow to keep it from bouncing around?

Also, can you take pictures of the front door panels with the doors open, from a slight distance so I can see how it looks in conjunction with the rest of the panel and door?

Stewart

 

I took a few more pics and added a couple steps I forgot about (like the spare tire, because I don't carry mine inside anymore). I feel like its mostly complete.

As to the crossovers, I just laid them into the door pockets. This means they can easily be remove if I need to make adjustments or change speakers. Wrapped in wool, they kinda pack down in there pretty tightly. They won't be bouncing or sliding around, and the wool will keep them from rattling. I would have still preferred to zip tie them, but as you will find if you try to do the same, there just around enough holes in the door to get your hands in there, as the crossover has to go on the very bottom to clear the window mechanism. If this makes you leery, you can try screwing the crossover into the door somewhere with enough clearance for the panel to slide over. I've also seen people cut a square hole on the back of the door panel right behind the door pocket, so that the crossover ends up protruding into the door pocket.

another technique is to intercept the factory wiring at the door jamb (or straight from your external amplifier), mount the crossovers inside the truck (under the seats or center console, normally), and run 2 sets of wires through the door jamb to the tweeters and woofers. This is a bit more work and running wires through the jamb is a pain, but on the plus side, you can run higher quality wiring than the factory stuff, particularly if you are running an external amplifier. The factory wiring is more than adequate for powering these speakers from the factory or any other head unit.

 

Now that is some great detailed instructions on how to get it done.

Great job and love those JL ZR components.

 

I've got a similiar setup but used the door pods to keep things out of site. It's also easier to return to stock if you decide to sell the truck later. You can also get adapters to mount them in the door. I just cant bring myself to cutting into the panels. It's phobia I have, like going to the dentist.

 

Where did you get the adapters?

Did you get those sail panels sans tweeters?

Stewart

 

nice write up .. i have the stock head unit for now , but i have polk/momo 6x9s in all three locations and they fit perfectly.. i have a dimond audio 10inch sub in box made for sub and i 500w amp under middle seat .. works really well

 

They are extremely nice and well built components... for the record, the XR's were made in the US and the ZR's made in germany, although these speakers are all at least 5 years old. A lot of JL's newer stuff, especially their cheaper stuff, is now made overseas, which is sad.. they used to make everything in the US.

If you went out and bought these components new at anything close to MSRP, you would pay around $900 for the XR's and around $400 for the ZR's.

The good news is that you can get fantastic sound at a small fraction of that price.. JL's C3 and C2 lines both offer speakers with the tweeters integrated into the woofer, but still with great voicing.

 

Those sail panels are pretty trick, although I do not like the way tweeters in the sail panels sound, but thats a matter of personal preference. I did consider mounting my tweeters there but after playing with them I decided I couldn't live with it. If I ever sell my truck and the new owner doesn't want the JL's, I will probably bid on 3 sets of $10 tweeters off ebay and put them in my holes just to have something to fill them up. the stock speakers really need tweets anyway so it wont' be hurting anything.

The door adapters you pictured are what I had initially intended on using, or something similar, however, you will not find any in that style that can fit a 6.5" woofer. A 5.25" woofer is the absolute largest you can fit in that style adapter, and even then with a larger tweeter its a tight squeeze into the factory bracket. And a 5.25" has a lot less cone area than a 6.5, less cone area than the factory 5x7. I wouldn't want to sacrifice that much low end presence.

Probably the best option is to build a custom bracket that can house both your woofer in the factory location and hold the tweeter off to the side, like forum member red ex has in his gallery (also give him an A+ for judicious use of dynamat, geez).



The only problem is that with a 6.5" woofer you are not left with much factory grille left, and your tweeter will be firing directly into a crudely molded piece of plastic. Also with this option you are stuck with the factory sound stage, which is a little low. I thought about this option too, but I felt that a wood bracket would be too thick and cumbersome, a steel one just too difficult to construct, and I didn't feel up to the task of working on an ABS one right now. I did the install in the parking lot in front of our duplex so simple was better.

there are a lot of different ways to do it. None are right or wrong, just different options. I really like what I did, I think its low key enough not to attract the wrong kind of attention but performs ideally and IMO looks good.

 

You can find all sorts on Ebay METRA 82-6901 5.25" OR 6.5" SPEAKER TO 6" X 9" MOUNTING HOLE ADAPTERS PLATES | eBay

I got the sail panels with the stock tweeters from the wreckers for $50. I think you can still get them brand new but they are around $75 each.

 

How do you like the Dynamat? I looked into getting some but it's just too damn expensive. I ended up using something like rubberized roof flashing, did the whole truck for around $30 I think. Didn't notice a huge difference. Just a little less road noise and a more solid feel when I close the doors. I guess you get what you pay for.

 

You don't, dynamat doesn't produce much of a difference than the roof seal stuff. The pic with all the dynamat isn't my truck... i wouldn't even bother doing that much sound deadening to my diesel, there is a point where it helps out, and then there is a point where you don't get much in benefits for a whole lot in cost and labor.

I actually didn't have time or the resources to put any sound deadening in on this install. I wanted to try and put some in behind each speaker and to seal off the holes around the factory speaker "brackets" so there weren't air leaks so close to the woofer.

I will probably go back around at a later point like in the summer (the adhesvies prefer hotter weather, it woulda been too much work with the heat gun right now) and add some to the rear wheel wells and around the speakers. I am planning on adding the external amps so I'll need to have it all apart to run the new wiring anyway.

 

Haste great right up! I just put some jl C2 570x in the second row. I am going to take out the front and third row kickers as soon as I get some time and money within the next week or two. I have components in the front and will want to spend a little extra on the front row components. Is the difference in 6.5 vs 5x7 that big? I have a jl audio A6450 pushing all six and a separate amp pushing the two 10s in thbarn door. I have two old school PPI amps that are just sitting in my garage one ppi 5440 and another 4400. I think I am going to run the 4400 to the two subs in the barn door. Again great write up always a pleasure chatting with you!

Eric

 

btw shepard2, those metra adaptors you linked to are not the correct size for the excursion, you linked to 6x9's which are about an inch long and an inch wider than the factory 5x7's. There is no way a 6.5 will mount offset like that in the factory speaker brackets (or holes on the front doors). a 6.5 will only mount in the exact center of the hole, and even then you have to cut the plastic bracket all the way to the edge, or dent out the middle of the hole. and honestly if you are modifying things that much you are gonna need to make your own baffles anyway.

eric, the cone size between 5x7 and 6.5 is insignificant, but both have a bit more than a 5.25" round speaker, though the round speaker would mount easier than a 6.5 in the factory holes.