Sauce
Well-Known Member
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- #1
I just installed a Memphis Nano subwoofer behind the rear seat in my 2024 xlt. I have no experience with a job like this but did a bunch of research beforehand and it turned out great and really improved the sound. My goal was to fill out the bass on the stock system - not looking to rattle my fillings out - and I think the goal was accomplished. Here are some tips and thoughts having just done this.
Memphis Nano - this sub was recommended to me over the Kicker. Very similar specs but I was told the bass was a little more accurate vs the kicker. Haven’t heard them both side by side but it sounds great to me. It has a bass boost feature and I was told a LOC wasn’t really necessary unless I was planning to upgrade the whole system. Note that the system doesn’t include wiring and I got a full wiring setup from Crutchfield. The sub fits very snug behind the rear seat in a vertical orientation - it is hard to lock the seat in place and anything bigger would not fit. I think it might fit a little better horizontally but it would be hard to access the controls if I wanted to change anything.
I tapped high level speaker wires from the rear door speakers for my install. These were tapped on both sides at the front door trim which provides access to the wiring harness. Some people say the rear door speakers run through the back of the vehicle but I couldn’t find the speaker wires under the rear door trim and I think they are only run from the front.
Left rear speaker wires are gray violet and brown green. Right speaker wires are green violet and gray. I don’t remember which are positive and negative. Everything matched up with the ford wiring diagram. The speaker wires on each side are coiled around eachother so they are pretty easy to identify. I used positaps to make my connections and they feel solid and there is enough room for them under the trim.
For power I ran through the firewall on the driver side. I punctured it with a poker (note it is two layers) then taped the wire to a screwdriver and pushed it through. This wasn’t too hard with two people but would have been a big challenge alone. For my ground wire I used the rear child restraint bolt and sanded some of the paint off around the hole.
I used the door trim to run all wires to the subwoofer. A wire worm tool was very helpful for this and allowed me to run the wires without completely removing all of the trim. Note that the trickiest part was getting from the rear door trim around the back seat to the subwoofer. I had to diverge from the oem runs here and it is pretty crowded to run them at this point on each side. It might be easier if i had removed the seat. I used plastic cord wrap here since there are some angles and pieces of trim rubbing. Be careful not to bend the trim clips when you put things back together.
I haven’t actually mounted the sub yet but it doesn’t rattle and isn’t going to go anywhere given how tight everything is back there. There is basically no room for a mount anyways.
I was concerned that I would get the artificial engine noise through the sub, but I’ve done some hard pulls and revs since I installed it and there is zero perceivable engine noise coming through the sub. Not sure if that feature is disabled in my build or if the sub is somehow omitting that signal but it’s not an issue at all for me. I also don’t get any of the system alerts or anything like that through the sub. The auto on feature works perfectly with the high level input. Basically it behaves exactly like I want and thankfully there were no surprises.
Overall, I’m very happy with the Memphis sub given the size constraints and the install took me about four hours with a helper.
One thing to mention is that the sub has an Aux volume control that I ran to the drivers seat area. I’ve played around with it and I’m not finding it does anything. The gain control on the actual sub definitely works but I don’t see any difference with the volume control and I probably wouldn’t bother installing it if I did it again.
Oh yea - the Memphis sub has a cool light and you can change the color.
Memphis Nano - this sub was recommended to me over the Kicker. Very similar specs but I was told the bass was a little more accurate vs the kicker. Haven’t heard them both side by side but it sounds great to me. It has a bass boost feature and I was told a LOC wasn’t really necessary unless I was planning to upgrade the whole system. Note that the system doesn’t include wiring and I got a full wiring setup from Crutchfield. The sub fits very snug behind the rear seat in a vertical orientation - it is hard to lock the seat in place and anything bigger would not fit. I think it might fit a little better horizontally but it would be hard to access the controls if I wanted to change anything.
I tapped high level speaker wires from the rear door speakers for my install. These were tapped on both sides at the front door trim which provides access to the wiring harness. Some people say the rear door speakers run through the back of the vehicle but I couldn’t find the speaker wires under the rear door trim and I think they are only run from the front.
Left rear speaker wires are gray violet and brown green. Right speaker wires are green violet and gray. I don’t remember which are positive and negative. Everything matched up with the ford wiring diagram. The speaker wires on each side are coiled around eachother so they are pretty easy to identify. I used positaps to make my connections and they feel solid and there is enough room for them under the trim.
For power I ran through the firewall on the driver side. I punctured it with a poker (note it is two layers) then taped the wire to a screwdriver and pushed it through. This wasn’t too hard with two people but would have been a big challenge alone. For my ground wire I used the rear child restraint bolt and sanded some of the paint off around the hole.
I used the door trim to run all wires to the subwoofer. A wire worm tool was very helpful for this and allowed me to run the wires without completely removing all of the trim. Note that the trickiest part was getting from the rear door trim around the back seat to the subwoofer. I had to diverge from the oem runs here and it is pretty crowded to run them at this point on each side. It might be easier if i had removed the seat. I used plastic cord wrap here since there are some angles and pieces of trim rubbing. Be careful not to bend the trim clips when you put things back together.
I haven’t actually mounted the sub yet but it doesn’t rattle and isn’t going to go anywhere given how tight everything is back there. There is basically no room for a mount anyways.
I was concerned that I would get the artificial engine noise through the sub, but I’ve done some hard pulls and revs since I installed it and there is zero perceivable engine noise coming through the sub. Not sure if that feature is disabled in my build or if the sub is somehow omitting that signal but it’s not an issue at all for me. I also don’t get any of the system alerts or anything like that through the sub. The auto on feature works perfectly with the high level input. Basically it behaves exactly like I want and thankfully there were no surprises.
Overall, I’m very happy with the Memphis sub given the size constraints and the install took me about four hours with a helper.
One thing to mention is that the sub has an Aux volume control that I ran to the drivers seat area. I’ve played around with it and I’m not finding it does anything. The gain control on the actual sub definitely works but I don’t see any difference with the volume control and I probably wouldn’t bother installing it if I did it again.
Oh yea - the Memphis sub has a cool light and you can change the color.
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