My CD Receiver - Pioneer DEH-P6400, and the wood grain plastic dash panel from my 1985 Delta-88 Royale. Note the home made sheet metal "ears" that I fabricated for mounting the head unit into the factory opening. The lower section of the panel has been cut for a 7 inch opening, centered around where the knob cutouts used to be. No going back now...
This is a close-up shot of the head unit installed in the factory radio location. The faceplate is on the receiver, and you can see the side mounting ears. There are plastic adapters available that would have made this easier, but the homemade brackets allowed me to precisely position the HU in my dash opening.
The receiver's bezel only hangs about 1/8" around the outside of its chassis, so the hole in the dash panel has to be dead nuts if you want to cover the hole completely. I'm really proud of myself for this job coming out so perfectly. Also visible (lower left) is the volume control I put in series with the rear RCA cables, for bass control.
The 85 Delta-88 didn't come with any speakers in the front doors, only 3-1/2's in the dash and 6X9's in the deck. I replaced the 3-1/2's with Boston Acoustics FX3's but the front stage is still lame. The absolute biggest speaker I can fit in the doors are 5-1/4's. The grille will almost hit the armrest (see outline above). Here I cut the outer door panel and taped the hole up to prevent fraying.
RAAMmat 60 applied to inner and outer door skins. I also used the foam cups sold by Crutchfield for weather protection. God help me if I gotta take these doors apart again… the RAAMmat is tenacious stuff!
I made mounting rings for the 5.25"
components out of 1/4" Lexan (Plexiglass). They seal to the uneven surface
of the padded door panels and provide a flat surface for attaching the
grilles.
Front speakers are Kicker RS5 components,
with the tweeters mounted coaxially.
Rear deck is only a bit more than 6 inches deep. The biggest things I can put back there are a pair of 8's, and even that will have some of the speaker covered up by sheet metal. I used a pneumatic nibbler tool to cut the holes. Padding is 1/2" felt carpet underlay, covered with .060 RAAMmat.
View through the rear window. Not much of the Kicker RMB8's are blocked by the deck opening. The 6X9's are Infinity Reference 6953i 3-way's and I love 'em.
There's not a whole lot of room
behind the spare for anything like boxes. The Kicker's are low profile,
so they hang in there nicely.
My amp rack is just a piece of carpeted 1/2" MDF. The USX-4065 4-channel amp runs the 8" woofers bridged (rated 160 X 2 @ 4 ohms), the Rockford Fosgate 160.2 runs my front 5.25's at about 40 watts per channel.
The amp rack installed.
10/12/2002
All photos and text Copyrighted by Dave Cullen.