Well recently I noticed that my '06 F150 has a blown passenger front speaker. Makes the notorius cracking sound when music has any bass or when turned up about 1/2 way on the stock head unit.

Couple quick questions:

1) The truck only has 3100mi on it, are these stock speakers still under the 3yr/36mi warranty or are they considered a wear item?

2) I'm looking at aftermarket 5x7's, something that sounds good but not too costly. I recently found these Polk Audio's and want to know what people think of Polk Audio speakers. I've owned Fosgate, Pioneer and Inifinity speakers before, but never Polk. Is Polk good, bad or middle of the road. Below is a link to the speakers I'm looking at. These will be run off the factory head unit for now, but I do have an aftermarket Pioneer head unit I will install at a later time. The aftermarket head unit pushes either 20 or 25 watts per channel. These actually sounded better than the Kicker, Infinity and Pioneer 5x7's at the store, but just don't know their quality.

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Polk-...oductDetail.do

3) I was informed by a salesman I will need special connectors ($10 kit) to hook these up to the factorey wiring. True or False? I've connected speakers before and know the typical wiring fasteners/connecters needed, just didn't know if I actually need this kit or if he was just trying to up sell me.

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

Number three is false. You can cut the ends off the wire and solder them straight to the speaker. I do it all the time. In fact thats the prefered method.

Polk is a good sound quality brand. I dont deal much with their car audio equipment but their home audio equipment is quite high end.

 

Thanks! I figured he was blowing smoke up my a5$, but you never know with these new vehicles.

All reviews I've read on the Net say these are good speakers, just waiting for more reviews from FTE on Polk before I purchase.

 

Polk usually makes pretty good speakers. The ones you are looking at are pretty nice. I had the Kickers in my 99 and wasn't too impressed with them, the Infinity reference speakers are ok. The Infinity Kappas are pretty nice, but quite a bit more. I recently bought 2 pairs of these Eclipse speakers but haven't had a chance to install them yet. They sounded really nice in the store, and I have been really happy with the Eclipse sepakers I have owned in the past so I think I will be happy with them.

As far as the adapters go are you installing the speakers yourself? I think CC makes you buy them for the free speaker installation. If you are doing it you can cut the factory plug off and either crimp/solder on the female terminals or solder the wires straight to the speaker. The adapters do make the installation very simple though.

 

How do you know which wire is the + and - when you cut off the factory plug and solder them on? Is the negative wire black?

I'm about to upgrade all 4 in my Crewcab with the 6x8 Pioneers that Wal-Mart sells. Any comments on these speakers?

 

Thanks! I had some Infinity Kappas in my '93 Sentra SE-R and they sounded good, but I'm not going all out on the stereo like I did that car. Now that car rocked, but with 3 kids, money is a little tighter and I don't get to use the stereo as often. Just need them to sound good and clear.

Yeah, I'm gonna install them myself. CC didn't offer a free install on the speakers, only on head units. They wanted $40 to install, which I've done it before, so I'll save the cash and buy me some dinner and a couple 12 packs instead, as well as the connectors.

So I have 2 that okay Polk Audio. Any others, good or bad, let me know. I would like to buy them this week so I can get all 4 installed over the weekend and see how they sound.

Have 2 Fosgate 8" Subs and 500 watt amp to run them that will also be installed down the line, once I have a few more funds and can find a under the rear seat sub-box at a decent price.

 

Unsure about the speakers you refer to, but usually the wires are color coated and the speakers have a + or - symbol on them to designate which is pos and which is neg. Could be wrong, but this is my experience with all speakers I've installed.

 

I installed those Polks in my '06 Expy. Decent improvement over the stock speakers...

 

I'm referring to the factory wiring in the truck. Are the speaker wires in the door red and black? Or are they different colors? If so, how do I know which is which? Should the factory speakers be marked positive and negative?

 

The speaker wires are all different colors for each corner of the truck and they are not labeled. Do a search here for speaker wire color and you should find a listing of the positive/negative colors for each corner.

 

I just put a new head unit in my truck...looking at the same idea with speakers. What was your concensus on the speakers?

As for the color codes:

Violet (right rear positive)
Green (left rear positive)
White (left front positive)
Grey (right front positive)

THis is at least what the harness in the dash shows. Its pretty much a standard so if your wire colors match at the speaker, then its right. The coordinating color with a black stripe is the negative side.

Hope this Helps,

 

<TABLE borderColor=#d3d3d3 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 bgColor=#ffffff border=1><TBODY><TR align=middle height=18><TD>LF Speaker +/- </TD><TD>orange/lt. grn - lt. blue/wht </TD><TD align=middle width=135>+,- </TD><TD>radio harness </TD><TD align=middle></TD></TR><TR align=middle height=18><TD>RF Speaker +/- </TD><TD>white/lt. grn - dk. green/org </TD><TD align=middle width=135>+,- </TD><TD>radio harness </TD><TD align=middle></TD></TR><TR align=middle height=18><TD>LR Speaker +/- </TD><TD>gray/lt. blue - tan/yellow </TD><TD align=middle width=135>+,- </TD><TD>radio harness </TD><TD align=middle></TD></TR><TR align=middle height=18><TD>RR Speaker +/- </TD><TD>orange/red - brown/pink </TD><TD align=middle width=135>+,- </TD><TD>radio harness </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>