I've just finished an audio system upgrade and sound deadening installation on my 2022 Prime SE, and figured you all might want to see how it turned out, as well as some measurements I took of the efficacy of the sound deadening.
The components I installed were the following:
In the diagram above, light grey is white in real life, and teal is whatever the factory wire colors are, I didn't bother to write them down. On the left side of the car I sent signal down the green and green / black pair of wires in the nine-wire, and down the purple and purple / black on the right side, which made keeping them distinct when wiring them to the line output converter / EQ much easier. This leaves three of the nine wires unused in each nine-wire bundle; maybe I'll use them for something in the future. I then ran each nine-wire down the door sills and into the rear cargo area along the right side near the battery.
Back up at the dashboard, I traced the factory dash speaker bracket onto a piece of ABS plastic and cut two out. I opened up bolt holes and the speaker mounting holes with Forstner bits and secured the new tweeters with a dab of epoxy, then wired them to what will become the tweeter signal wires within each nine-wire bundle (white and white / black). All mounted up:
Wiring was now complete at the dashboard, with signal being sent back from the headunit (+DCM) to the back of the car, then two pairs of wires from the back of the car on each side connected back in to the tweeter and door speaker wiring.
With the door panel off, I used about 2 1/2 sheets per door of Dynamat Extreme to deaden the inside of the door skin, the inner door frame, and the inside of the door panel itself:
and installed the new midbass speakers using the Metra 82-8148 adapters. These needed a few tabs cut off to fit my specific speakers, but nothing a rotary tool couldn't handle in a split second. I added a bit of deadening in the speaker opening while I had the speaker out, and wired up the speakers themselves using the Metra 72-8109 harness adapters. At least on the front two doors, I had no polarity issues with either the dash speaker harnesses or the door speaker harnesses. The hardware that comes with the speaker adapters is extremely cheesy - I swapped out the weird cheap stamped nuts Metra provided for some real nyloc nuts before installation:
The rear doors got a lighter treatment of sound deadening - I didn't feel like mucking about with the sticky goo they used to hold the vapor shield in place, so I deadened the inner door frame and the inside of the door panels, which used about two sheets of Dynamat per door. For some reason, the two boxes of Dynamat came as different designs, but they're both Dynamat Extreme and appear to have identical construction, if a different appearance. Weird.
In the rear, the little cubby above the battery seemed like a perfect place to build a subwoofer box without needing to cut into any panels or do too much fabrication around the factory plastic. I popped the panel off, sound deadened behind it, and sound deadened the spare tire well while I was at it. At some point I may remove the side panels from the cargo area and go nuts with sound deadening, but for now this is as far as I wanted to tear things apart:
I also popped off the hatch trim and deadened the inside of the hatch and inner surfaces of the trim, but ya boy didn't grab any pictures of that. The cargo area + hatch took another 4 1/2 sheets of deadener.
Next up was the amp rack and subwoofer box...
The components I installed were the following:
- AudioControl LCQ-1 line out converter / equalizer
- Audison SR4.300 4-channel D-class amplifier
- Image Dynamics CTX65cs components
- Image Dynamics ID8 V.4 D2 8" subwoofer
- Blue Sea Systems fuse block
- KnuKoncepts Kolossus Fleks 8-gauge power and ground wires
- KnuKoncepts Krux RCAs
- KnuKoncepts Kord Ultra Flex 12-Gauge speaker wire (for subwoofer)
- Install Bay nine-wire speaker wiring (for audio signal and front door speakers)
- Metra 82-8148 speaker mounting brackets (front door speakers)
- Metra 72-8109 speaker wiring harnesses (front door speakers)
- Metra 72-8110 speaker wiring harnesses (dash speakers)
- A bunch of Dynamat Extreme
In the diagram above, light grey is white in real life, and teal is whatever the factory wire colors are, I didn't bother to write them down. On the left side of the car I sent signal down the green and green / black pair of wires in the nine-wire, and down the purple and purple / black on the right side, which made keeping them distinct when wiring them to the line output converter / EQ much easier. This leaves three of the nine wires unused in each nine-wire bundle; maybe I'll use them for something in the future. I then ran each nine-wire down the door sills and into the rear cargo area along the right side near the battery.
Back up at the dashboard, I traced the factory dash speaker bracket onto a piece of ABS plastic and cut two out. I opened up bolt holes and the speaker mounting holes with Forstner bits and secured the new tweeters with a dab of epoxy, then wired them to what will become the tweeter signal wires within each nine-wire bundle (white and white / black). All mounted up:
Wiring was now complete at the dashboard, with signal being sent back from the headunit (+DCM) to the back of the car, then two pairs of wires from the back of the car on each side connected back in to the tweeter and door speaker wiring.
With the door panel off, I used about 2 1/2 sheets per door of Dynamat Extreme to deaden the inside of the door skin, the inner door frame, and the inside of the door panel itself:
and installed the new midbass speakers using the Metra 82-8148 adapters. These needed a few tabs cut off to fit my specific speakers, but nothing a rotary tool couldn't handle in a split second. I added a bit of deadening in the speaker opening while I had the speaker out, and wired up the speakers themselves using the Metra 72-8109 harness adapters. At least on the front two doors, I had no polarity issues with either the dash speaker harnesses or the door speaker harnesses. The hardware that comes with the speaker adapters is extremely cheesy - I swapped out the weird cheap stamped nuts Metra provided for some real nyloc nuts before installation:
The rear doors got a lighter treatment of sound deadening - I didn't feel like mucking about with the sticky goo they used to hold the vapor shield in place, so I deadened the inner door frame and the inside of the door panels, which used about two sheets of Dynamat per door. For some reason, the two boxes of Dynamat came as different designs, but they're both Dynamat Extreme and appear to have identical construction, if a different appearance. Weird.
In the rear, the little cubby above the battery seemed like a perfect place to build a subwoofer box without needing to cut into any panels or do too much fabrication around the factory plastic. I popped the panel off, sound deadened behind it, and sound deadened the spare tire well while I was at it. At some point I may remove the side panels from the cargo area and go nuts with sound deadening, but for now this is as far as I wanted to tear things apart:
I also popped off the hatch trim and deadened the inside of the hatch and inner surfaces of the trim, but ya boy didn't grab any pictures of that. The cargo area + hatch took another 4 1/2 sheets of deadener.
Next up was the amp rack and subwoofer box...