Alphaskoom
Senior Member
- First Name
- David
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2020
- Threads
- 55
- Messages
- 511
- Reaction score
- 219
- Location
- DFW, Texas
- Vehicle(s)
- 2020 Civic Coupe Sport
- Vehicle Showcase
- 1
- Thread starter
- #1
Finally, After about a year of buying parts slowly when things become in stock or i figure out more things i needed, i finally have completed my Audio system upgrade. I have spent the past week straight when I haven't been at work, knocking this out, missing out on some family time too. But i believe it was worth it.
Here's the main stuff i bought:
JL C2 650
JL C2 525 ( Component / NON X variant) more on that in a minute
JL MX 500/4 500 Watt 4 Channel amp
JL 4 AWG install kit
DS18 V4HL 4 Channel Line-out Converter
It Begins:
I started with removing everything, seats, center console, trunk, everything had to go, hardest part of the seats was the stupid zip tie, holding the wires to the seat. BTW if you dont have an extendable magnet pen thing.. get you one, its totally worth every penny.
Center console has been out 3 times now due to previous projects so i got that down pretty quick, i still hate removing those wing bits by the shifter and AC panel, i just know they are going to break one of these days in the future. The Airbagplug ( bright yellow one under each seat ) just comes off by pulling on the clip part to maximum pull and it clicks and you end up pulling the whole clip out, its an intresting double click type of thing so to speak.
took a bit of a pause on the back seat, couldn't figure out how to remove the base cushion ( 2020 Coupe Rear Seat Removal ) more details there.
It does seem there is More "Sound Proofing" in the 19's and 20's that i haven't seen before ( these little plastic cavity cover things are one instance. IDK maybe I'm wrong, only seen these panels in one or two other posts.
I had a mini heart attack when i saw that grey box, thinking this was an amplifyer or something for the sport trim level ( more confusion to the audio setup, but it is only the AM/FM "Tuner Module". False alarm. The glue that holds these white cavity sheets in place is extremely weak, I don't expect them to hold up after a few years but that square cutout and foam insert on the door panel should hold it up sufficiently well for awhile.
Up next - Here's the back side of the Rear Corner panel, only thing holding it in is 4-5 green and yellow pop clips ( BTW the door kick plates gotta be removed first before the rear corners can come out / Simple pop clips hold it in place after the seat belt bolt is removed )
Just take your time, i ended up partially bending my headliner but its back in place now in the removal of the driver side panel - i don't really know the proper procedure for removing these as it was difficult to get them to cooperate as the upper trim panel didn't want to separate from the lower one on the drivers side. But i did get them separated on the passenger side.
- Removed the Plastic cover and gasped at how much wasted space there was in this side area.
so i added my Dynamat and Dynaliner to help with noise cancellation. Realistically, this area likely remains dry ( based on my estimates ) and could be filled up with foam, but i don't want to take a chance and used what i had.
No i did not take a dookie while i was in there.....i know what it looks like. This cavity is likely a full 3-4 inches thick of nothingness.
Door panel Removed, Cue Guitar Solo.
I started to peel back the plastic sheeting with the white foam glue stuff... and realized its not a simple remove and reapply type goup I've seen other people work with. In the end of the day i opted to leave it alone since it is a weather seal for the door, i opted to rely on my dynamat on the door panel itself to do the heavy lifting.
While im at it, heres my newly refurbished Sweidit Leather Armrests and Door card inserts. ( no more Black hard plastic panels ) - Yes i know the Black trim panel is not totally black - I'm going to repaint those as the painters tape decided it wanted a bit of that black
While im on it, i ended up wanting to match the dashboard panels i bought for a Hatchback Touring
Ended up sanding down the black area so it was textured to give it a brushed metal look - i just think i need to clean it better to make the paint stick
Anyway onto the next thing
Running the main power cable was a royal pain, i shoulda lubed it up looking back on it, but i didn't want to damage anything in the process as many people will gladly cut a hole in a rubber grommet.
I Routed the cable through the grommet, and out above the break booster harness area, and wrapped it in heat tape to protect it, my original idea to run it behind the metal shield on the battery box thing didnt feel like the right move as that piece is removable with the battery, last thing i wanted to do was attach something permanent to a non permanent piece of maintenance.
Here's the Fuseblock bracket I ended up designing and making to not require any major modification, it latches onto the bolt that holds the ECU in place
Unfortunately the factory tweeter postions had to be modified to fit the housings. A casual dremel fixed that problem right quick.
I started jumping around as the days all meshed together and i worked on indoor things in the evenings as i reached stopping points, so bear with me.
Here's how i ran the doors, i started with the passenger door, not as proud of this one but waiting on more speaker wire to arrive, I was tired enough after the drivers door, i didn't care anymore. Id fix it if it became a problem. The wires run along the base of the door all the way to the back, verified by seeing them with a light in the speaker hole looking through the pop clip hole below the crossover. Time will tell if the angry window motor gets hungry.
And the Driver door.... WAY better option in my opinion, ill rerun the passenger door this way if something goes wrong.
its a bit hard to see but the wires near the middle yellow screw hole area, thats where the woofer, and main inlet wire go from inside the door to the near side of the door, i covered the areas that needed to be with felt tape to quiet them down and prevent rattling / cutting of metal / plastic. While i was in there, i was also running wire for my door illumination kit i bought from Japan ( which was never made to fit in a coupe btw ) i also zip tied the wires to pre-existing conduit in the backside where i could for security of wires.
Custom Wire harness I Made for radio and speaker outputs:
with color coded wires for easy channel identification.
Ill let you guys stare at what i stared at for hours on end... Wires... ALL WIRES!!!!!!!... btw i highly recomend you get a pillow or something to sit on.. that hard floor board is NOT comfortable after 5-6 days of sitting.
I had to add some Extra Foam tape around the speaker brackets to bring the speaker out further, the supports were hitting those 2 thinner areas around the speaker holes in the doors. It was still thinner than the Factory speaker btw.
While i had the AC and radio panel out, had to rig the Interior Illumination lights in the Center Console and Cubby hole area. ( no photos of the console light install but i just took a larger drill bit and drilled out the pre existing hole to be larger, and dremeled away the clip things that are there to mount the factory light. Heres the dash install picture. Its not straight on purpose, i wanted to be able to reach and unplug / replug in the light with it installed. if for whatever reason it had to be unplugged in the future.
Battery Installed and brackets all attached :
Perfect Home for the High / Low converter, a little velcro on the bottom of it and on top of the Airbag bracket thing held it right in place.
While the center console is out, dynamat! - you can see the light illumination clip area near the bottom cutout area ( this is where the shifter sits, viewed upside down )
Trimmed the rear deck to ease my worry of clearance issues at the cost of "SOME" Bass potential - couldnt find a good way to mount the Tweeters in the factory locations to secure them... so i just wrapped them with 3-5 layers of that felt tape and shoved em in there.. friction does wonders for light things lol.
Nothing like fitting a 5.25" speaker in a 4 inch hole - i did go back and fill the gap around the speaker with some of that Foam tape stuff.
Leather Covered Wrist rest area. - Got tired of the cheap vinyl wrapped brushed metal look here, only makes sense to be leather here now that i have it. - dont know why i didn't think of it sooner.
Rear Crossover mounting locations - Nice flat spot right here and its covered by the carpet - BTW that foam piece that's right above it, that's where you must send the audio cables through to the cabin area, by the rear seat belt reels. the foam thing is just a foam cube, feel free to remove it for later shoving into the hole. kinda a pain to go through there but the best i can say is to feed it from the top, outside of the reel's, trying to feed it directly behind and below it. and reach through into the trunk and feel for it in the hole. i dont have any photos of my rear routing but, from the crossover, i went sideways and used the pre-existing conduit to support the wiring.
I Personally fed both rear channels through this drivers side hole and the passenger side ended up going into that quarter sized hole in the trunk channel to the other side.
Wires....... this was the final stages, the end was in sight. I realize i didn't take any photos of how i ran the wires from the back to here, but its pretty self explanatory, just follow pre-exsisting conduit and it leads straight to here. The front 2 channels i routed through the radio area, and center console by my right hip as the driver, then it just drops to this cutout from the console area. the main power wire i DID end up cutting the grommet and routing by the hood latch release, under the corner foam and dead pedal area, - there's a nifty cavity to route things, its nice.
All wires that were needed to, come out of this carpet hole, theres a convinient ground plug litterally right next to the set of Red and white RCA's i just bolted the Amp Ground to. i didnt even have to use the Ground cable that came with my kit pictured top left. and compfy pillow, taking up the right side. An unfortunate side effect of this amp is the fact all the controls are on the bottom side, so i couldnt mount it until it was adjusted properly, which meant i had to have extra wires laying around for me to do this. Pictured here too is the power wire from the red highlow converter routed here, with the yellow tape around the single blue wire, i grounded that box to a ground plug found in the glovebox area, I'm sure many of you know the ground plug of doom. Surprisngly the things auto remote turn on feature worked without me having to manually find a ignition source to trigger it. It's the little things that were pleasant surprises that made all the heartache and pain worth it.
Here's my Amp mount wood piece, surprisngly it didn't cost me a second mortgage ( GASP )
All Back together ( ~ ish ) Ill need to trim and reconnect the speaker wires - i have extra but thats a good thing. Shes at least Driveable now, of course i still have the door panel trim to work on still, but given the week and a half long rain storms that keep happening, spray painting is out of the question for now.
Illumination showcase - this is taken with my phones "Nightshot mode" so things are dimmer than they are in these photos but still visible.
Originally ordered 50 feet of wire.... ran out after running the back and the passenger door.. ordered 50 more... 100 total feet of speaker wire, and this is all i have left.... always order more than you need, i had to jump around a bunch during this install because i didn't have enough of something, either wire or fittings. ( 3-4 trips to Home Depot or Lowes.
For those of you that read this whole thing, thank you.... I'm mentally and physically exhausted from this. But I'm quite proud of all that i did here. I hope it inspires similar stories in future endeavors. I included a few side projects in here as well as they were related to this whole process, as with any project car.. work is never done. but i am definitely going to take a break after this one.
Here's the main stuff i bought:
JL C2 650
JL C2 525 ( Component / NON X variant) more on that in a minute
JL MX 500/4 500 Watt 4 Channel amp
JL 4 AWG install kit
DS18 V4HL 4 Channel Line-out Converter
It Begins:
I started with removing everything, seats, center console, trunk, everything had to go, hardest part of the seats was the stupid zip tie, holding the wires to the seat. BTW if you dont have an extendable magnet pen thing.. get you one, its totally worth every penny.
Center console has been out 3 times now due to previous projects so i got that down pretty quick, i still hate removing those wing bits by the shifter and AC panel, i just know they are going to break one of these days in the future. The Airbagplug ( bright yellow one under each seat ) just comes off by pulling on the clip part to maximum pull and it clicks and you end up pulling the whole clip out, its an intresting double click type of thing so to speak.
took a bit of a pause on the back seat, couldn't figure out how to remove the base cushion ( 2020 Coupe Rear Seat Removal ) more details there.
It does seem there is More "Sound Proofing" in the 19's and 20's that i haven't seen before ( these little plastic cavity cover things are one instance. IDK maybe I'm wrong, only seen these panels in one or two other posts.
I had a mini heart attack when i saw that grey box, thinking this was an amplifyer or something for the sport trim level ( more confusion to the audio setup, but it is only the AM/FM "Tuner Module". False alarm. The glue that holds these white cavity sheets in place is extremely weak, I don't expect them to hold up after a few years but that square cutout and foam insert on the door panel should hold it up sufficiently well for awhile.
Up next - Here's the back side of the Rear Corner panel, only thing holding it in is 4-5 green and yellow pop clips ( BTW the door kick plates gotta be removed first before the rear corners can come out / Simple pop clips hold it in place after the seat belt bolt is removed )
Just take your time, i ended up partially bending my headliner but its back in place now in the removal of the driver side panel - i don't really know the proper procedure for removing these as it was difficult to get them to cooperate as the upper trim panel didn't want to separate from the lower one on the drivers side. But i did get them separated on the passenger side.
- Removed the Plastic cover and gasped at how much wasted space there was in this side area.
so i added my Dynamat and Dynaliner to help with noise cancellation. Realistically, this area likely remains dry ( based on my estimates ) and could be filled up with foam, but i don't want to take a chance and used what i had.
No i did not take a dookie while i was in there.....i know what it looks like. This cavity is likely a full 3-4 inches thick of nothingness.
I started to peel back the plastic sheeting with the white foam glue stuff... and realized its not a simple remove and reapply type goup I've seen other people work with. In the end of the day i opted to leave it alone since it is a weather seal for the door, i opted to rely on my dynamat on the door panel itself to do the heavy lifting.
While im on it, i ended up wanting to match the dashboard panels i bought for a Hatchback Touring
Ended up sanding down the black area so it was textured to give it a brushed metal look - i just think i need to clean it better to make the paint stick
Anyway onto the next thing
Running the main power cable was a royal pain, i shoulda lubed it up looking back on it, but i didn't want to damage anything in the process as many people will gladly cut a hole in a rubber grommet.
I Routed the cable through the grommet, and out above the break booster harness area, and wrapped it in heat tape to protect it, my original idea to run it behind the metal shield on the battery box thing didnt feel like the right move as that piece is removable with the battery, last thing i wanted to do was attach something permanent to a non permanent piece of maintenance.
Here's the Fuseblock bracket I ended up designing and making to not require any major modification, it latches onto the bolt that holds the ECU in place
Unfortunately the factory tweeter postions had to be modified to fit the housings. A casual dremel fixed that problem right quick.
I started jumping around as the days all meshed together and i worked on indoor things in the evenings as i reached stopping points, so bear with me.
Here's how i ran the doors, i started with the passenger door, not as proud of this one but waiting on more speaker wire to arrive, I was tired enough after the drivers door, i didn't care anymore. Id fix it if it became a problem. The wires run along the base of the door all the way to the back, verified by seeing them with a light in the speaker hole looking through the pop clip hole below the crossover. Time will tell if the angry window motor gets hungry.
And the Driver door.... WAY better option in my opinion, ill rerun the passenger door this way if something goes wrong.
Custom Wire harness I Made for radio and speaker outputs:
with color coded wires for easy channel identification.
Ill let you guys stare at what i stared at for hours on end... Wires... ALL WIRES!!!!!!!... btw i highly recomend you get a pillow or something to sit on.. that hard floor board is NOT comfortable after 5-6 days of sitting.
I had to add some Extra Foam tape around the speaker brackets to bring the speaker out further, the supports were hitting those 2 thinner areas around the speaker holes in the doors. It was still thinner than the Factory speaker btw.
While i had the AC and radio panel out, had to rig the Interior Illumination lights in the Center Console and Cubby hole area. ( no photos of the console light install but i just took a larger drill bit and drilled out the pre existing hole to be larger, and dremeled away the clip things that are there to mount the factory light. Heres the dash install picture. Its not straight on purpose, i wanted to be able to reach and unplug / replug in the light with it installed. if for whatever reason it had to be unplugged in the future.
Battery Installed and brackets all attached :
Perfect Home for the High / Low converter, a little velcro on the bottom of it and on top of the Airbag bracket thing held it right in place.
While the center console is out, dynamat! - you can see the light illumination clip area near the bottom cutout area ( this is where the shifter sits, viewed upside down )
Trimmed the rear deck to ease my worry of clearance issues at the cost of "SOME" Bass potential - couldnt find a good way to mount the Tweeters in the factory locations to secure them... so i just wrapped them with 3-5 layers of that felt tape and shoved em in there.. friction does wonders for light things lol.
Nothing like fitting a 5.25" speaker in a 4 inch hole - i did go back and fill the gap around the speaker with some of that Foam tape stuff.
Leather Covered Wrist rest area. - Got tired of the cheap vinyl wrapped brushed metal look here, only makes sense to be leather here now that i have it. - dont know why i didn't think of it sooner.
Rear Crossover mounting locations - Nice flat spot right here and its covered by the carpet - BTW that foam piece that's right above it, that's where you must send the audio cables through to the cabin area, by the rear seat belt reels. the foam thing is just a foam cube, feel free to remove it for later shoving into the hole. kinda a pain to go through there but the best i can say is to feed it from the top, outside of the reel's, trying to feed it directly behind and below it. and reach through into the trunk and feel for it in the hole. i dont have any photos of my rear routing but, from the crossover, i went sideways and used the pre-existing conduit to support the wiring.
I Personally fed both rear channels through this drivers side hole and the passenger side ended up going into that quarter sized hole in the trunk channel to the other side.
Wires....... this was the final stages, the end was in sight. I realize i didn't take any photos of how i ran the wires from the back to here, but its pretty self explanatory, just follow pre-exsisting conduit and it leads straight to here. The front 2 channels i routed through the radio area, and center console by my right hip as the driver, then it just drops to this cutout from the console area. the main power wire i DID end up cutting the grommet and routing by the hood latch release, under the corner foam and dead pedal area, - there's a nifty cavity to route things, its nice.
All wires that were needed to, come out of this carpet hole, theres a convinient ground plug litterally right next to the set of Red and white RCA's i just bolted the Amp Ground to. i didnt even have to use the Ground cable that came with my kit pictured top left. and compfy pillow, taking up the right side. An unfortunate side effect of this amp is the fact all the controls are on the bottom side, so i couldnt mount it until it was adjusted properly, which meant i had to have extra wires laying around for me to do this. Pictured here too is the power wire from the red highlow converter routed here, with the yellow tape around the single blue wire, i grounded that box to a ground plug found in the glovebox area, I'm sure many of you know the ground plug of doom. Surprisngly the things auto remote turn on feature worked without me having to manually find a ignition source to trigger it. It's the little things that were pleasant surprises that made all the heartache and pain worth it.
Here's my Amp mount wood piece, surprisngly it didn't cost me a second mortgage ( GASP )
All Back together ( ~ ish ) Ill need to trim and reconnect the speaker wires - i have extra but thats a good thing. Shes at least Driveable now, of course i still have the door panel trim to work on still, but given the week and a half long rain storms that keep happening, spray painting is out of the question for now.
Illumination showcase - this is taken with my phones "Nightshot mode" so things are dimmer than they are in these photos but still visible.
Originally ordered 50 feet of wire.... ran out after running the back and the passenger door.. ordered 50 more... 100 total feet of speaker wire, and this is all i have left.... always order more than you need, i had to jump around a bunch during this install because i didn't have enough of something, either wire or fittings. ( 3-4 trips to Home Depot or Lowes.
For those of you that read this whole thing, thank you.... I'm mentally and physically exhausted from this. But I'm quite proud of all that i did here. I hope it inspires similar stories in future endeavors. I included a few side projects in here as well as they were related to this whole process, as with any project car.. work is never done. but i am definitely going to take a break after this one.