Re: BigAl205's 2015 Ford Explorer XLT
Well...after you left, one of Blake's installer buddies from Jasper stopped by. He has a civic like yours and I think he wanted to bounce some ideas off you, but he missed you. Anyhoo, as everybody was leaving, I asked if he had ever done an Explorer like mine and wondered what his opinion was. I had planned on asking what he would charge, and I was going to set up an appointment to go see him at his shop, but he asked if a had a grommet and said "let's pop a hole".
I brought it inside, and he did some exploring (no pun intended) and found a place on the firewall to drill thru, but when we pushed a fish wire thru, he couldn't find it under the dash. He ended up prying the cowl up (as seen in the pic) and realized the thing had a double firewall. He ended up having to remove half the dash under my steering wheel, drilling from the inside, and fishing the wire thru TWO holes that are 90 degrees from each other. I felt so bad that a 10 minute job ended up taking almost 2 hours.
I now have about a foot of slack under the hood, and the other end laying in the back floorboard. If it hadn't been for William, I never would have gotten done.
Re: BigAl205's 2015 Ford Explorer XLT
Wow. Wish I'd have seen this sooner. There are two places I've gone through in the past. The first one I did, I saw the one ABOVE the Smart Junction Box and was like "Wow, there's a nice big grommet..." Then I ended up having to pull the wipers, cowl, etc. and with large wire, I've had a hard time getting the cowl back in place. The other place (and the one I use almost exclusively) is on the firewall directly IN FRONT of the Smart Junction Box. Sorta. If you remove the box, it's pretty easy to get through. We use it on most amp installs/remote starts that we do on these. You can get 4ga through the existing grommet, IIRC, but for bigger wire, you could probably go through right next to it. I believe the wire comes out under the brake booster, but it's been a few months since I've done one.
Jay
Re: BigAl205's 2015 Ford Explorer XLT
I just started taking a look at mounting ZR800s in the lower door and have been working on stuffing GB25s around the bend from the stock tweeter. This (very old I just realized) thread has given me some motivation. I picked up a spare door card on eBay that I'm going to cut up and try to figure it all out. I know I won't be building a box as the ZRs need to breathe. I was going to put boxes under the seats and vent them out the bottom but I think I like this better.
So much for the stealth look I really wanted.
Re: BigAl205's 2015 Ford Explorer XLT
Good luck with it. I somewhat regret that I never followed up on this install, but ended up trading it before I ever got started on it in earnest. It would have been nice to see how it would have turned out.