- Thread starter
- #1
For the TLDR:
I replaced the front and rear 4” speakers with kickers
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NS9FVK...6&=&crid=2T2H025PV0KGW&=&sprefix=kicker
I also added 300Hz bass blockers for the dash 4” kicker speakers
https://www.amazon.com/PAC-BB-1PR-Blocker-Passive-Crossover/dp/B007JYZ3BG/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P9R480KY1Q1K&keywords=300+hz+base+blockers&qid=1674252521&sprefix=300+hz+base+blocker,aps,117&sr=8-1
I installed kit # 12 from plug and play which includes the plugNplay harness into the existing system, the kicker key amp, and a PAC RCA output coverter for an RCA cable connection (used for the sub amplifier signal input)
https://plugnplaykits.com/products/...y-audio-harnesses-kits?variant=41130698506430
This subwoofer with its enclosure and all the materials needed to mount it to the tailgate is very clean looking, thief-proof, weather resistant, and provides amazing bass with minimal cargo space sacrifice. It bumps hard, and I can’t imagine wanting more bass! (400 watts rms, 800 watts peak).
https://stingeroffroad.com/collecti.../ford-bronco-12-inch-loaded-enclosure-txfbb12
The sub is brought to life by a Phoenix Gold RX2 500 Watt (at 2 ohm) Class D Monoblock Amplifier. Either way, I’d highly recommend a 500 watt (AT 2 OHM) 1 channel compact amplifier with RCA inputs to power this sub that can similarly fit under the passenger-side rear seat between the metal braces.
https://stingeroffroad.com/collecti...gold-rx2-500-watt-class-d-monoblock-amplifier
A wiring kit will be needed to run power from the battery to the sub amplifier (with inline fuse holder), RCA inputs for the sub amp signal, and has speaker wire from the amp to the sub.
https://stingeroffroad.com/products/4ga-copper-1200w-complete-wiring-kit?_pos=1&_sid=2a3ce2883&_ss=r
OF IMPORTANT NOTE: this wiring kit comes with a 150amp fuse, but the phoenix gold recommends a 100 watt inline fuse, so I purchase a pack of replacement 100W fuses instead:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MYGHBY9?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1
I simply mounted the amplifiers in their locations with plenty of zip ties as well as the wiring in some spots.
Obviously, some wire terminal connectors, electrical tape, and wire crimping/stripping/cutting combo tool will be needed for the 4” speaker replacement. A trim removal tool kit would help but isn’t 100% necessary (a thin carefully-used butter knife worked fine for me).
For the subwoofer portion: a drill, screwdriver, ratchet (bronco kit works here!), wrench, and exacto knife will be needed. A small flat head screw driver and allen wrench set will be needed for wire connections.
Just like many of y’all, my major and pretty much only complaint with the Bronco is the sound system (well and my sync4 module failure, but that’s been replaced and thankfully water well under the bridge by now!) The only thing I wanted from the lux package over the mid package was the upgraded sound system. I know many want the lux package just for a better sound system. Given the news that anything with the lux package ordered recently for my2023 won’t be made this year, there’s a great alternative to step down to the high package and upgrade to a better sound system than B&O and install it yourself for much less than the lux package cost.
I started by upgrading the 4” speakers in the dash and rear to Kicker 46CSC44 speakers with 300 hz bass blockers for the dash speakers. Many have done this, and there are quite a few googlable videos on this simple process, but those speakers won’t truly come to life without an additional amplifier powering them. The stock head unit is dreadfully underpowered. The sound is significantly better with the kicker key 200.4 amp with Digital Sound Processing, and is finally good enough to hear your music clearly and well with the top and windows down at 70 mph, but the bass is still definitely lacking and upgrading the 6” kick panel speakers isn’t going to cut it. Thus, a separately powered subwoofer is needed.
Subwoofer Install
The stinger offroad subwoofer with custom bronco tailgate mounted weatherproof enclosure nailed it! This is a beefy, punchy, clean 400 watt rms (800 watt peak) 12” subwoofer that comes with a mounting kit and straightforward installation instructions.
It feels like you don’t sacrifice any cargo space, looks clean, surprisingly has no vibrations, weather proof, and theft proof as it is thoroughly bolted in. These are all very important to me as I often will leave it parked with the rear soft top windows off (top down when driving), and it could get rained on and an open subwoofer would be vulnerable to theft.
This installation video’s instructions matched my installation experience. The ‘center punch’ tool isn’t required, just use a small bit first to get the hole started, and ABSOLUTELY, don’t skip the part where he tapes around the drill bit and only leaves ½” exposed.
Tape the drill bit up!
4 precisely drilled holes for adding the rivets for mounting.
Remove that trim piece and store it somewhere deep, but safe in the garage, you won’t need it with the subwoofer installed. This is a spot I deviated from the install video, as I like the subwoofer flush against the swing gate and no potential for plastic trim vibrations, etc.
The wrench and rachet method of installing the rivet nut works perfectly, this process went surprisingly smooth! Nut-setter tool was definitely not required.
In the pics below, you can see the top left rivet cleanly installed, and the L bracket installed in the bottom rivet that holds up the subwoofer. Theres a piece of foam pad it rests on between the enclosure and bottom of the L bracket. There’s also a good rubber washer for the screws for the top rivet mounts. The foam and rubber washers help. I had run the speaker wire zip tied along the back side of the wiring loom so its not visible, but I don’t see how it’s possible to run the speaker wire “through” the wiring loom without tearing into it. Either way, it looks clean once the zip ties were clipped. There’s a bit of a balancing act as you have to have the speaker wire hooked into the back of the enclosure while resting it on the L-brackets.
Definitely follow the instructions on ‘loosely install all 4 bolts first before tightening”, and it’ll be easy to get the box mounted and fully tightened down to the swing gate. I then spread the included polyfill evenly throughout the walls of the enclosure, hooked the interior enclosure wires to the subwoofer (this was a bit of a balancing act too, and then tightened all 8 screws holding the rubber backed subwoofer onto the enclosure. The textured hard plastic enclosure, and good rubber to seal the subwoofer to the enclosure, gives me confidence this product is indeed weather proof.
The next step was to run that speaker wire toward the passenger rear seat where I mounted the amplifier in a clean, non-visible manner.
In retrospect, I’m not sure if removing the whole side panel trim (which requires removing the cargo floor as well), was necessary, or if I could’ve just removed some top clips of the trim just enough to drop the thinner speaker wire through and fished it out by the back side of the rear seats. If you find you need to completely remove that large piece of trim, go slow removing, it, I didn’t break anything, but it was a much bigger PITA than Eville Truck makes it seem. Below is a good video that guided me through that trim panel removal
Amplifier/Power Install
With a good mounting location identified under the passenger side rear seat,
I began the process of running power from the battery to the amplifier. (please disregard my very dusty underseats, as this is a product of doors off driving in the dusty Texas hill country, haha). I like this location as its out of view from thieves, its protected from rain in case I forget to put the top back on (and from rainwater pooling under an alternative location like on the floor under the passenger seat which is no bueno), I can still access gain control knobs facing out from under the seat, and I’m sure this amplifier can get toasty so having plenty of ventilation room was vital. The wiring kit came with a weatherproof fuse holder that I found a convenient spot to zip tie along the driver’s side in the engine compartment by the fuse box.
I do want to point out that the amplifier I have says to use a 100amp fuse, and the kit I bought came with a 150amp fuse, so make sure the fuse you have in line matches up with the manufacturers spec on the amplifier. (which is why I bought a pack of 100amp fuses on amazon). Before connecting any power to the subwoofer, make sure the fuse is inline!!
With the wire cut (exacto knife) for the right length for the fuse position, I continued the power wire’s journey back from the engine bay through the firewall where there is a VERY convenient rubber gromet in the firewall just above the kick panel speakers. I removed this gromet, cut a hole in the gromet just big enough to feed the wire through and popped the gromet back into place.
The wiring kit came with a plastic heat shield that goes around the power wire for extra protection (I’m not sure if this is necessary, but it gives the install a cleaner look from the engine bay at least)
NOTE: I did NOT have the power wire hooked up to the battery at this point as seen in the pictures, I took these last three pictures after the install for this write up.
Now came time for popping up trim and running it along the side floor all the way back around the corner of the rear driver’s side seats and around to the amplifier. Having a straightened coat hanger with a hook to fish the power wire through really helped get it from the front row to the back row. From there it wandered around behind the seats (only one easy-to-remove trim piece is needed to remove directly behind the rear seats). When running this wire behind the seats, make sure it won’t interfere with the clip holes where the trim will be popped back into. I found a good ground wire location on the metal as seen in a zoomed in pic below (I found having the ground attached from below helped the trim seat back down better). Make sure to sand down the area where the power wire is bolted in to the frame so it touches actual metal and not paint. It was kind of tricky to sand down underneath that rail, but my fingers with a small piece of sand paper just barely fit through that hole. If you look closely, you can also see some good zip tie locations to keep the wiring more secure.
With the wiring in place and cut to length, I connected the speaker wire, and power and ground wires to the amplifier. Once the wires were connected to the amp, I zip tied the amplifier under the rear passenger side seat with those wires facing the rear. NOTE: do leave enough slack in the wires that the seats can fully fold over as the amplifier will move forward about 6 inches or so with the seat folded over.
The RCA input wires and phone wire for the amplifier gain control will also need some slack as well. I first ran these wires up into the bottom forward part of the cargo area side trim, and then down along the passenger’s side floor, up and over the kick panel speakers and hanging in the glove box area (glove box is super easy to remove). Again, using a hanger to fish the wires through from back seat area to front seat area along the side really helped.
Kicker Key Amp Install and Final Subwoofer hook up.
I ordered the plug and play Kit #12, which includes the Kicker key 200.4 amp, a line output converter (LOC) for the RCA inputs for the subwoofer amplifier, and the famous plugNplay wiring harness. As others have said, this harness is what makes this whole job DIY-able to begin with, and is VERY WELL MADE!
This video that’s been posted for about a year on B6G https://www.bronco6g.com/forum/threads/kicker-key-amp-200-4-install-diy-video-do-this-first.38520/
is somewhat accurate and a good guide, but removing that center trim is a MUCH bigger PITA than he makes it seem. I did disconnect the battery for this amp install process, as I didn’t want the Bronco to freak out that things were disconnected. The video also does not do justice as to how TIGHT everything is back there. In order to fit the plugNplay harness back there (which barely fits with the trim buttoned back up, I found I had to remove three tab connections to the center console controls.
Bill on his Eville Truck channel has a pretty good video about this trim removal and harness install starting at about 16 mins in this video At 23 mins in the video he talks about removing those bolts to feed the harness through. I didn’t have to do that, but it was a VERY tight squeeze. I did have to disconnect the connections already made into the LOC to feed it through, but that wasn’t a big deal (just take a pic before so you remember which wires go where when reconnecting them)
I got the amp, and plug and play kit hooked up, ran the subwoofer amplifier gain signal wire across, and buttoned everything back up with the exception of leaving the kicker key amp and LOC just hanging in the glove box area. I was nervous about what settings to use for the kicker key amplifier (dipswitches on the side), but the way it comes preset from the factory (or at least ordered from Joe at PlugNPlay) is perfect. It utilizes 50 amps for each of the 4 channels (50 to each rear pod, 50 to the left kick and dash speaker combo, and 50 to the right combo). Before starting the digital sound processing (DSP), make sure the gain is set all the way down on the amplifier as the DSP will manually control the gains. The instructions and everybody else says to turn it up to a loud volume, but nobody says exactly what subjective level that is! The first time I ran the DSP, I had it very loud at volume 20, but this was too loud even for the microphone and it sounded worse than stock set up after DSP. (After plugging in the amp before running the DSP, the system is much louder at lower volume levels than it was before!) I then ran the test again at volume 10 or 11, and got another happy jingle, and it sounded perfect. Also, don’t use a random pink noise from Spotify, use the pink noise .wav file from the kicker website and play that through the carplay from your phone. The instructions say to have no background sounds or have the subwoofer connected, so for this process, I still had the subwoofer amplifier disconnected form the battery and did it in a quiet garage with the air flow completely off, and obviously the engine not running.
Now that the regular speakers were sound processed with the Kicker Key, it was time to really bring the system to life and connect the sub amp to the battery. I found turning the gain on the LOC to about ¼ the way up was perfect for my taste (left at 20 kOhm setting), and then controlling the rest with the gain controller knob allowed me to have more bass than I could imagine, or turn it down/basically off. On the sub amplifier itself, I have it accepting all 200hz and below frequencies, but have the 60hz frequency boosted a bit from spotify on my phone. This way the kick drums are still punchy at lower gains on the knob without the lower 150-200hz bass guitar frequencies drowning everything out. But definitely play around with it, because sound is subjective and bass significantly varies from song to song.
Once I got the sound dialed in, I needed to secure the kicker key amp and the LOC in the area above the glove box. Other videos talk about using a plastic backing or custom fabrication, but I found that some good ol zip ties strapped as tight as absolutely possible hold the Kicker amplifier and LOC perfectly in place (I also ziptied excess RCA wire out of the way to the right of the glovebox as well). Make sure the Kicker amp and LOC are above the metal bars otherwise it will interfere with the glovebox.
Finally, I secured the bass gain control knob in a convenient yet discrete spot with some excess 3M Velcro tape I had laying around, and it hasn’t budged in 2 weeks. There is a blue light on the knob that is ridiculously bright, but a small piece of black electrical tape over it dims it up perfectly.
Again, at the time of purchase for this equipment (mid December 2022), I was all in $1,357 for this install (not including some extra zip ties, electrical tape, wire connectors, 3M velcro tape, or tools if you need to purchase any), and while prices have risen a bit since, this can still easily be done in one very long day for an amateur for under $1,500, that will produce a sound quality (and extreme bass if wanted!) better than the B&O system, without sacrificing any cargo room or other weather proof features.
You may notice that I didn’t do anything with the 6” kick panel speakers, and honestly, I don’t think I will. The Kickers handle 300Hz and up flawlessly, and the subwoofer handles anything below 200Hz, and that small window of mid bass between 200Hz to 300Hz is handled by the stock 6” speakers just fine when they’re properly powered by the Kicker key amp.
Now, I have the Bronco I’ve always wanted and can take pride in doing it myself and saving a LOT of money!!
I replaced the front and rear 4” speakers with kickers
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NS9FVK...6&=&crid=2T2H025PV0KGW&=&sprefix=kicker
I also added 300Hz bass blockers for the dash 4” kicker speakers
https://www.amazon.com/PAC-BB-1PR-Blocker-Passive-Crossover/dp/B007JYZ3BG/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P9R480KY1Q1K&keywords=300+hz+base+blockers&qid=1674252521&sprefix=300+hz+base+blocker,aps,117&sr=8-1
I installed kit # 12 from plug and play which includes the plugNplay harness into the existing system, the kicker key amp, and a PAC RCA output coverter for an RCA cable connection (used for the sub amplifier signal input)
https://plugnplaykits.com/products/...y-audio-harnesses-kits?variant=41130698506430
This subwoofer with its enclosure and all the materials needed to mount it to the tailgate is very clean looking, thief-proof, weather resistant, and provides amazing bass with minimal cargo space sacrifice. It bumps hard, and I can’t imagine wanting more bass! (400 watts rms, 800 watts peak).
https://stingeroffroad.com/collecti.../ford-bronco-12-inch-loaded-enclosure-txfbb12
The sub is brought to life by a Phoenix Gold RX2 500 Watt (at 2 ohm) Class D Monoblock Amplifier. Either way, I’d highly recommend a 500 watt (AT 2 OHM) 1 channel compact amplifier with RCA inputs to power this sub that can similarly fit under the passenger-side rear seat between the metal braces.
https://stingeroffroad.com/collecti...gold-rx2-500-watt-class-d-monoblock-amplifier
A wiring kit will be needed to run power from the battery to the sub amplifier (with inline fuse holder), RCA inputs for the sub amp signal, and has speaker wire from the amp to the sub.
https://stingeroffroad.com/products/4ga-copper-1200w-complete-wiring-kit?_pos=1&_sid=2a3ce2883&_ss=r
OF IMPORTANT NOTE: this wiring kit comes with a 150amp fuse, but the phoenix gold recommends a 100 watt inline fuse, so I purchase a pack of replacement 100W fuses instead:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MYGHBY9?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1
I simply mounted the amplifiers in their locations with plenty of zip ties as well as the wiring in some spots.
Obviously, some wire terminal connectors, electrical tape, and wire crimping/stripping/cutting combo tool will be needed for the 4” speaker replacement. A trim removal tool kit would help but isn’t 100% necessary (a thin carefully-used butter knife worked fine for me).
For the subwoofer portion: a drill, screwdriver, ratchet (bronco kit works here!), wrench, and exacto knife will be needed. A small flat head screw driver and allen wrench set will be needed for wire connections.
Just like many of y’all, my major and pretty much only complaint with the Bronco is the sound system (well and my sync4 module failure, but that’s been replaced and thankfully water well under the bridge by now!) The only thing I wanted from the lux package over the mid package was the upgraded sound system. I know many want the lux package just for a better sound system. Given the news that anything with the lux package ordered recently for my2023 won’t be made this year, there’s a great alternative to step down to the high package and upgrade to a better sound system than B&O and install it yourself for much less than the lux package cost.
I started by upgrading the 4” speakers in the dash and rear to Kicker 46CSC44 speakers with 300 hz bass blockers for the dash speakers. Many have done this, and there are quite a few googlable videos on this simple process, but those speakers won’t truly come to life without an additional amplifier powering them. The stock head unit is dreadfully underpowered. The sound is significantly better with the kicker key 200.4 amp with Digital Sound Processing, and is finally good enough to hear your music clearly and well with the top and windows down at 70 mph, but the bass is still definitely lacking and upgrading the 6” kick panel speakers isn’t going to cut it. Thus, a separately powered subwoofer is needed.
Subwoofer Install
The stinger offroad subwoofer with custom bronco tailgate mounted weatherproof enclosure nailed it! This is a beefy, punchy, clean 400 watt rms (800 watt peak) 12” subwoofer that comes with a mounting kit and straightforward installation instructions.
It feels like you don’t sacrifice any cargo space, looks clean, surprisingly has no vibrations, weather proof, and theft proof as it is thoroughly bolted in. These are all very important to me as I often will leave it parked with the rear soft top windows off (top down when driving), and it could get rained on and an open subwoofer would be vulnerable to theft.
This installation video’s instructions matched my installation experience. The ‘center punch’ tool isn’t required, just use a small bit first to get the hole started, and ABSOLUTELY, don’t skip the part where he tapes around the drill bit and only leaves ½” exposed.
Tape the drill bit up!
4 precisely drilled holes for adding the rivets for mounting.
Remove that trim piece and store it somewhere deep, but safe in the garage, you won’t need it with the subwoofer installed. This is a spot I deviated from the install video, as I like the subwoofer flush against the swing gate and no potential for plastic trim vibrations, etc.
The wrench and rachet method of installing the rivet nut works perfectly, this process went surprisingly smooth! Nut-setter tool was definitely not required.
In the pics below, you can see the top left rivet cleanly installed, and the L bracket installed in the bottom rivet that holds up the subwoofer. Theres a piece of foam pad it rests on between the enclosure and bottom of the L bracket. There’s also a good rubber washer for the screws for the top rivet mounts. The foam and rubber washers help. I had run the speaker wire zip tied along the back side of the wiring loom so its not visible, but I don’t see how it’s possible to run the speaker wire “through” the wiring loom without tearing into it. Either way, it looks clean once the zip ties were clipped. There’s a bit of a balancing act as you have to have the speaker wire hooked into the back of the enclosure while resting it on the L-brackets.
Definitely follow the instructions on ‘loosely install all 4 bolts first before tightening”, and it’ll be easy to get the box mounted and fully tightened down to the swing gate. I then spread the included polyfill evenly throughout the walls of the enclosure, hooked the interior enclosure wires to the subwoofer (this was a bit of a balancing act too, and then tightened all 8 screws holding the rubber backed subwoofer onto the enclosure. The textured hard plastic enclosure, and good rubber to seal the subwoofer to the enclosure, gives me confidence this product is indeed weather proof.
The next step was to run that speaker wire toward the passenger rear seat where I mounted the amplifier in a clean, non-visible manner.
In retrospect, I’m not sure if removing the whole side panel trim (which requires removing the cargo floor as well), was necessary, or if I could’ve just removed some top clips of the trim just enough to drop the thinner speaker wire through and fished it out by the back side of the rear seats. If you find you need to completely remove that large piece of trim, go slow removing, it, I didn’t break anything, but it was a much bigger PITA than Eville Truck makes it seem. Below is a good video that guided me through that trim panel removal
Amplifier/Power Install
With a good mounting location identified under the passenger side rear seat,
I began the process of running power from the battery to the amplifier. (please disregard my very dusty underseats, as this is a product of doors off driving in the dusty Texas hill country, haha). I like this location as its out of view from thieves, its protected from rain in case I forget to put the top back on (and from rainwater pooling under an alternative location like on the floor under the passenger seat which is no bueno), I can still access gain control knobs facing out from under the seat, and I’m sure this amplifier can get toasty so having plenty of ventilation room was vital. The wiring kit came with a weatherproof fuse holder that I found a convenient spot to zip tie along the driver’s side in the engine compartment by the fuse box.
I do want to point out that the amplifier I have says to use a 100amp fuse, and the kit I bought came with a 150amp fuse, so make sure the fuse you have in line matches up with the manufacturers spec on the amplifier. (which is why I bought a pack of 100amp fuses on amazon). Before connecting any power to the subwoofer, make sure the fuse is inline!!
With the wire cut (exacto knife) for the right length for the fuse position, I continued the power wire’s journey back from the engine bay through the firewall where there is a VERY convenient rubber gromet in the firewall just above the kick panel speakers. I removed this gromet, cut a hole in the gromet just big enough to feed the wire through and popped the gromet back into place.
The wiring kit came with a plastic heat shield that goes around the power wire for extra protection (I’m not sure if this is necessary, but it gives the install a cleaner look from the engine bay at least)
NOTE: I did NOT have the power wire hooked up to the battery at this point as seen in the pictures, I took these last three pictures after the install for this write up.
Now came time for popping up trim and running it along the side floor all the way back around the corner of the rear driver’s side seats and around to the amplifier. Having a straightened coat hanger with a hook to fish the power wire through really helped get it from the front row to the back row. From there it wandered around behind the seats (only one easy-to-remove trim piece is needed to remove directly behind the rear seats). When running this wire behind the seats, make sure it won’t interfere with the clip holes where the trim will be popped back into. I found a good ground wire location on the metal as seen in a zoomed in pic below (I found having the ground attached from below helped the trim seat back down better). Make sure to sand down the area where the power wire is bolted in to the frame so it touches actual metal and not paint. It was kind of tricky to sand down underneath that rail, but my fingers with a small piece of sand paper just barely fit through that hole. If you look closely, you can also see some good zip tie locations to keep the wiring more secure.
With the wiring in place and cut to length, I connected the speaker wire, and power and ground wires to the amplifier. Once the wires were connected to the amp, I zip tied the amplifier under the rear passenger side seat with those wires facing the rear. NOTE: do leave enough slack in the wires that the seats can fully fold over as the amplifier will move forward about 6 inches or so with the seat folded over.
The RCA input wires and phone wire for the amplifier gain control will also need some slack as well. I first ran these wires up into the bottom forward part of the cargo area side trim, and then down along the passenger’s side floor, up and over the kick panel speakers and hanging in the glove box area (glove box is super easy to remove). Again, using a hanger to fish the wires through from back seat area to front seat area along the side really helped.
Kicker Key Amp Install and Final Subwoofer hook up.
I ordered the plug and play Kit #12, which includes the Kicker key 200.4 amp, a line output converter (LOC) for the RCA inputs for the subwoofer amplifier, and the famous plugNplay wiring harness. As others have said, this harness is what makes this whole job DIY-able to begin with, and is VERY WELL MADE!
This video that’s been posted for about a year on B6G https://www.bronco6g.com/forum/threads/kicker-key-amp-200-4-install-diy-video-do-this-first.38520/
is somewhat accurate and a good guide, but removing that center trim is a MUCH bigger PITA than he makes it seem. I did disconnect the battery for this amp install process, as I didn’t want the Bronco to freak out that things were disconnected. The video also does not do justice as to how TIGHT everything is back there. In order to fit the plugNplay harness back there (which barely fits with the trim buttoned back up, I found I had to remove three tab connections to the center console controls.
Bill on his Eville Truck channel has a pretty good video about this trim removal and harness install starting at about 16 mins in this video At 23 mins in the video he talks about removing those bolts to feed the harness through. I didn’t have to do that, but it was a VERY tight squeeze. I did have to disconnect the connections already made into the LOC to feed it through, but that wasn’t a big deal (just take a pic before so you remember which wires go where when reconnecting them)
I got the amp, and plug and play kit hooked up, ran the subwoofer amplifier gain signal wire across, and buttoned everything back up with the exception of leaving the kicker key amp and LOC just hanging in the glove box area. I was nervous about what settings to use for the kicker key amplifier (dipswitches on the side), but the way it comes preset from the factory (or at least ordered from Joe at PlugNPlay) is perfect. It utilizes 50 amps for each of the 4 channels (50 to each rear pod, 50 to the left kick and dash speaker combo, and 50 to the right combo). Before starting the digital sound processing (DSP), make sure the gain is set all the way down on the amplifier as the DSP will manually control the gains. The instructions and everybody else says to turn it up to a loud volume, but nobody says exactly what subjective level that is! The first time I ran the DSP, I had it very loud at volume 20, but this was too loud even for the microphone and it sounded worse than stock set up after DSP. (After plugging in the amp before running the DSP, the system is much louder at lower volume levels than it was before!) I then ran the test again at volume 10 or 11, and got another happy jingle, and it sounded perfect. Also, don’t use a random pink noise from Spotify, use the pink noise .wav file from the kicker website and play that through the carplay from your phone. The instructions say to have no background sounds or have the subwoofer connected, so for this process, I still had the subwoofer amplifier disconnected form the battery and did it in a quiet garage with the air flow completely off, and obviously the engine not running.
Now that the regular speakers were sound processed with the Kicker Key, it was time to really bring the system to life and connect the sub amp to the battery. I found turning the gain on the LOC to about ¼ the way up was perfect for my taste (left at 20 kOhm setting), and then controlling the rest with the gain controller knob allowed me to have more bass than I could imagine, or turn it down/basically off. On the sub amplifier itself, I have it accepting all 200hz and below frequencies, but have the 60hz frequency boosted a bit from spotify on my phone. This way the kick drums are still punchy at lower gains on the knob without the lower 150-200hz bass guitar frequencies drowning everything out. But definitely play around with it, because sound is subjective and bass significantly varies from song to song.
Once I got the sound dialed in, I needed to secure the kicker key amp and the LOC in the area above the glove box. Other videos talk about using a plastic backing or custom fabrication, but I found that some good ol zip ties strapped as tight as absolutely possible hold the Kicker amplifier and LOC perfectly in place (I also ziptied excess RCA wire out of the way to the right of the glovebox as well). Make sure the Kicker amp and LOC are above the metal bars otherwise it will interfere with the glovebox.
Finally, I secured the bass gain control knob in a convenient yet discrete spot with some excess 3M Velcro tape I had laying around, and it hasn’t budged in 2 weeks. There is a blue light on the knob that is ridiculously bright, but a small piece of black electrical tape over it dims it up perfectly.
Again, at the time of purchase for this equipment (mid December 2022), I was all in $1,357 for this install (not including some extra zip ties, electrical tape, wire connectors, 3M velcro tape, or tools if you need to purchase any), and while prices have risen a bit since, this can still easily be done in one very long day for an amateur for under $1,500, that will produce a sound quality (and extreme bass if wanted!) better than the B&O system, without sacrificing any cargo room or other weather proof features.
You may notice that I didn’t do anything with the 6” kick panel speakers, and honestly, I don’t think I will. The Kickers handle 300Hz and up flawlessly, and the subwoofer handles anything below 200Hz, and that small window of mid bass between 200Hz to 300Hz is handled by the stock 6” speakers just fine when they’re properly powered by the Kicker key amp.
Now, I have the Bronco I’ve always wanted and can take pride in doing it myself and saving a LOT of money!!
Sponsored
Last edited:
