I have wanted to upgrade my sound system in my 2004 GT but wanted to keep things as stock as possible. I looked on the internet, and most videos and posts were replacing the component speakers with co-axle speakers and I wanted to keep the tweeter and woofer separate. I called Crutchfield to review my options and discovered that none were inexpensive as the whole system would have to be replaced. You cannot just replace the speakers because the amps and speakers are matched by Ford and a single part of the system (except for the head unit) cannot be replaced without replacing all. By that I mean, if you want to upgrade the Amp or Speakers, you need to upgrade the Amp and Speakers together. Something about the Ohms.

With that in mind, I settled on a Kenwood touch screen head unit, JBL component speakers and an Infinity 60w/channel Amp. I wanted to use the factory wiring as much as possible (especially the door wiring) to limit the effort/difficulty of the job. What I learned is that you can use the factory wiring if you use the tweeter wires to drive the cross over for the woofers and tweeters. I also wanted to use the Amp Panel because I felt like it was important to the quality of the sound coming from the system. The woofers were a direct match for the mounting, but the tweeters required some fabrication. This is because they are much smaller than the factory units and required mounts to be fabricated. I used the factory tweeter housing to mount to the Amp Panel and doors after stripping out the speaker material and knocking out the magnet.

After fabricating the tweeter mounting brackets, I was able to use the stock mounting apparatus in the doors and Amp panel. If you have the time to be patient, it is worth the extra effort. The car looks stock except for the Kenwood unit.

I was able to run the wiring harness for the new components along side the factory wiring which made for a very neat installation that would be easy to maintain. To make all that work, I removed all the interior panels of the car with the exception of the passenger side rear panels. I removed all the seats, center console and the rear fold-downs to gain easy access to the interior for the installation. There were a number for videos available to make this part easier, and I would recommend using them at every step. I cannot imagine how hard it would have been otherwise. I worked on the car in my garage and it took about 40 hours in total. I didn’t start out with that in mind, but I wanted to do a quality installation with no shortcuts. The fabrication took a lot of time because I was figuring it out for the first time with no guidance from the internet.

My hope is that someone else can use this post as a reference and will be able to cut the installation time down considerably while keeping the component system design in the car. I will say, however, that all of the time and effort were worth it! This system produces the most clean and crisp sound I have heard in a car!
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I settled on a Kenwood touch screen head unit, JBL component speakers and an Infinity 60w/channel Amp. I wanted to use the factory wiring as much as possible (especially the door wiring) to limit the effort/difficulty of the job. What I learned is that you can use the factory wiring if you use the tweeter wires to drive the cross over for the woofers and tweeters.
 
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Reactions: 1 user