Lateralis '17 BPP build

Hey people,
So this is my build thread for my '17 OR Taco. I'll try to get as many pictures as I can for what I'm doing to this thing. This is mostly for me but I figured I'd share. Maybe someone else can get an idea for something from this.

To date mod list:
TRD Pro grill
BD fog lights
King shocks
Toyotec AAL and diff drop
SPC UCA's
17" SCS Ray10s in Bronze
34/10.5/17 BFG KO2s
OVTune
Genesis OR dual Battery kit with monitor
Yellow top batteries

Stereo stuff:
3-way active front stage with
-Hertz ML 280.3 tweeters
-Hertz ML 700.3 Mid Range
-Hertz ML 1800.3 Mid Bass
Zapco DSP Z-8 IV
Zapco ST-4XP (2 of them)
Zapco ST-1000XMII
JL 10TW3 (2 of them)
Rockford Fosgate 2 Farad Cap
Sub box and amp rack from Mr. Marv

So this was the 1st week when I brought it home. Yup... nothing exciting. Just another Taco.



After that I decided I needed some lift in my life and better tires.



Now honestly there is not much to complain about with the stock stereo in the Tacoma. It actually is not bad for what it is. One of the biggest things that annoyed me though was the door plastics rattling from day one. That being said, I love a nice sounding system and to me it is a necessity. I'll go ahead an apologize for my incomplete pictures. I thought I took more than I did, but you should get the picture... literally..

1st up, the back of the cab. I didn't deaden the ever living **** out of it like some people because it is not really needed. I did 3 layers down below the bar where the child restraints are. I also added in nut certs to anchor the sub box and amp rack. You can drill out the safety seat anchors no problem. Below those you will see some tabs for the stock plastics. I went ahead and took a Dremel to cut them off. Even though they are spot welded DO NOT DRILL THE SPOT WELDS!!! You will punch a hole through the cab. Also if you have a window motor like me, DO NOT REMOVE THE SILVER BOLTS ON THE MOTOR!!!! I wanted to get behind the motor and didn't realize they held the thing together. There will only be 3 black nuts holding it on. Took me almost an hour to re-spool that thing......



Now as I said you don't need to deaden the **** out of the back of the cab. I only re-enforced the most flat areas. Any noise you get after that is from plastics or other loose things. In this case it's the rear rubber flap vents. I don't hear them in the cab with everything put back together so I didn't bother messing with them.

Next up was the front doors. I went ahead and threw some more nut certs in the stock speaker mounting locations. They are pretty convenient and I like that fact that you can give them a gronking without worrying about stripping the holes out.



After that I put some sound deadener in the front doors. Again I didn't go ape **** with it. Just enough where you need it. About 6 layers directly behind the speaker, 3 about 10-12"s from the speaker and 2 in the rest of the flat areas. After that I had a weird idea. I had this flower foam crap I was going to use for shaping something or other laying around and thought it was a good idea to wedge it in the door. There is a cross pipe that runs the length of the door and is just below the lowest point of the window all the way down. I propped a piece of this foam covered in aluminum tape between that and the inner door skin. This actually took out a lot of the outer skin flex since there was enough pressure behind it. So far so good and if it looses shape I can easily remove it.







After that I used some locktight foam (you can use great foam but I decided to try this stuff) to get the outer door skin to be more braced up against the 2 bars that run the length of the door. Trim up the excess after it is dried and use aluminum tape to kind of smooth out the edges from the bar to the door skin. You don't want any water sitting there.



After that I sealed the doors up with removable plexi panels. I had the plexi glass laying around so I thought that I might as well use it. I used the stock foam covers as guides and over sided them a bit. Drilled holes and used nut certs again for mounting. I also left the stock foam pieces in there to act as a seal. Works really well and unlike everyone else you throws sound deadener at these holes like singles at "The Club", I can still get back into my doors no problem. If I notice any issues with this I will just fab up a full fiberglass cover and use the nut certs I already put in to mount it if I get too much flex. So far zero complaints. I did have issues in the front corner where you see more aluminum tap though. That hole has all sorts of curves in it so the only real way to seal it properly is with a fiber glass piece. I was lazy and used some Kaizer foam I had from some left over packaging and sealed it up with aluminum tape. No issues so far.



Next up, speaker rings. Since this is an odd shape I decided to use the stock mounting holes hence the nut certs earlier. I made a template from the stock speakers out of cardboard and cut 2 pieces of 1/2" HPDE that I had laying around. I also counter sunk the back side of the mounting holes to get them flush against the inner skin. I didn't take a picture of it but I used some clay as a final seal for the edge of the speaker ring and the inner door skin.





Side note, these speakers are just shy of 7".

Next up was speaker wire runs. Now since I'm running a 3 way active front, this means that I do not have physical crossovers. That is handled by the Digital Sound Processor (DSP). No this is not the same as your Audio Control LC whatever. This is basically a computer that handles everything. That being said, I initially ran out of wire.... 50ft was good enough to get all 3 sets of speakers going through the dash and down just in front of the shifter in the center council. This actually wasn't bad since it makes an easy spot for trouble shooting since the center council pops off so easily. I used terminal boards, labeled the wires and a specific pattern to hook it up so I wouldn't get confused later on. The pattern is simple. 2 boards, 1 left speakers and one right speakers. Inner are tweeters, middle is mid range, out is mid bass and Positive to negative from inside out. I also flipped the spades for the negative terminals down as an extra hint to myself. There is a ton of room down here so it was easy to squeeze them in.



After this I continued to run the wires center line. Once I got to the under seat cubby, Toyota was nice enough to leave plenty of gaping holes to shove stuff through. I dipped the wires down the driver side.



After that there is an interesting channel that is hollow that you can make your wires run through. I had some spare 1/8" tube laying around so I used it to cover the sharp angles. I used that and a Dremel to cut it out to make space for everything. You can see a thicker black speed wire I ran the same way from the head unit. I won't go into detail on that one since it is pretty straight forward. Simple Metra break out harness to get your high level speaker inputs to the DSP. You can use some tape to help keep the wires managed like me in the channels. Simple and effective.



After that I went ahead and started mounting the sub box and amp rack. I pushed the box and the rack so that they were butt up against the C pillar plastics on there respective sides. This created a gap just big enough to run the speed wire, speaker wires, remote bass control and remote DSP control wires.



Side note, I was very lazy with covering the sub box and amp rack. I had some left over 3M vinyl so I just threw it on them real quick. Actually turned out pretty decent IMO.

After that I wired up the back side of the amp rack. Now I know this is not the most ideal place to put this stuff since I don't have easy access, but this is a Tacoma and space is stupid limited for stuff like this. Here you will see the main fuse distribution, I have an extra blade style fuse block for DSP power and relay power and another terminal board for the 12V amp turn on signal. Since I am running 3 amps, I decided it was best to just run a relay to get the 12V amp on signal straight from battery power and not depend on the DSP to run all 3. You can also see all the extra holes I drilled into the amp rack to ensure I got that thing as snug up to the back of the cab as I could.



With that out of the way the amps, DSP and subs could go in. I had to use 90 degree RCA adapters to make this work. The RCA's are all 12" so my connections are super short. The extra red wires on the right are Y splitters I had to use since I bridged one of the 4ch amps specifically for the mid woofers. Again space is super limited. With the DSP mounting, some vinyl Velcro did the job nicely. I also re-used the stock rubber mat thingy. Works as an extra sound barrier and still allows the cab vents to breath so why not?







As you can see, I enlarged one of the existing holes and put a nut cert in it for a ground tap. Resistance there was 0.1 ohms so it is a solid ground. I'll end up covering all of this stuff up later with a beauty board when I get around to it maybe. Honestly though it doesn't matter. The seats will never come down unless you need to mess with something. In my case it would be only to hook up a USB to the DSP. I never need to adjust gains, crossover filters or whatever since I handle it through a laptop.

Now I can put the back seat in. Since the spacing is so tight back there I had to remove the plastic on the back side of the 60 bench. There are 2 cloth clips that seemed to be flopping around so I used some zip ties to the seat frame to keep them tight. No wonky vibrations so far.



Next image shows why I'm probably not going to bother with a beauty board. You can't drop the 60 bench seat down without smacking the sub woofers.



I also used some washers to help get a little more clearance.



Here is what clearance I get with all of that. It still looks kinda close and the subs are not fully broken in yet but I haven't noticed any slapping yet.



With the 40 bench I didn't use any washers and was able to retain all of the stock plastics. Yay?



Now I went ahead and threw together the front doors. I'm not sure if I needed to but I cut the plastic speaker guide off on the door card. Better safe than sorry. Also I didn't take a picture of it but to imitate the speaker guide I cut up the Kaizer foam packaging that the speakers came in and mounted it to the speaker. It's the perfect size since, well the speakers were shipped in it.... I had some more random foam packaging laying around so I stuffed the stuff were I could in the door cards to help wedge anything that could vibrate. I had some thinner almost cloth like foam too that I used to wedge the plastic clips. Works like a charm for re-usable trash.





Door cards back on time to mess with the tweeters. I opted to put them into the sails. I 3D printed some tubes out of PETG plastic so that I could easily press fit the tweeters in by hand. I than cut an access hole and shoved them through ensuring I didn't disturb any of the stock mounting tabs for the sail panel. With them in place I was able to aim the tweeters and than hot glue the backsides for extra insurance They are not perfect but I they came out pretty decent and they are angled correctly on axis. Might be pointing a little down... but whatever close enough.







Note, I was again LAZY and just covered it with some more CF vinyl I had laying around instead of making them look super pretty. I might change it later if it starts to bug me.

Next up the mid range speakers. So I had high hopes that this was going to be easy since I checked out the spacing prior to doing this and I was... very wrong.... 3" mid ranges do fit... with a lot of cussing, kicking, drinking, cutting stuff and a little bit of crying. I started off making some spacers out PETG again with my 3D printer to match the stock mounting holes. Turns out the only one that fit was the passenger side. You have a lot more room to work with on this side. I had to cut up a goo section of the dash plastic underneath the speaker grill to get these to fit. Cutting that stuff in there is super aggrivating since you have zero room to work with and it is right up against the windshield. A good sharp exacto knife, decent lighting, 30 rack of beer and no one around to hear you yell at the stupid spacing are required. The drivers side is a whole different story. Thought the passenger side was hard? This side spits in your face, eats your food and takes your sister out for a good time. I ended up not using any spacer at all on the drivers side. Luckily the Hertz speakers have a decent lip on them so I was able to use the stock bolts to just clamp them in place without them moving around. Again you got to cut up quite a bit of plastic from to dash there to make it work. Nothing you will see though since the stock grill is still being reused.





Note, I didn't take any pics of what I did under there since I was that pissed off. Sorry, but for all of you that are thinking of sticking a 3" mid range in there IT WILL FIT and look stock..... if you make it....

Next up... POWER! If you noticed earlier I had an extra black wire leading to the amp rack and fuse distribution block. I actually ran out of red power wire at that point and all I had left was black of the same size. MEH.... oh and if you are curious I'm using 1/0 welding cable. Why? because it is cheaper and isn't full of aluminum crap. Solid copper IMO is the way to go and it's welding wire so you absolutely know it can handle high current conditions and high temps no problem.

With that out of the way I decided to run my power wire across the engine bay and into the cab from the passenger side. Conveniently there is a rubber grommet that was just a hair bigger than my 1/0 cable. Perfect. I had to drop out the glove box to make it easier to run the wire but it pops out right behind what I think is either the ECU or TCU. Not sure if the Tacoma has a BCU but you get the picture.





Note, It is a little hard to see but the red power wire is ran through the fire wall there. You will need to run a drill to poke the hole initially through the matting and use a knife to do little slits to make it easier for the cable to pass through.

After this I just ran the cable down the side plastics and into the convenient cubby holes again on the passenger side. Now, since my truck is lifted I deem the stock jack is completely useless. (was it even useful when stock???) So i drilled out the spot welds and threw some nut certs in the 4 holes I made to get the jack tray out. Drilling out the jack tray will PUNCH HOLES THROUGH THE BOTTOM OF THE TRUCK! So don't do this unless you plan to plug it up some how. I used the the nut certs than to mount a piece of HPDE that I cut to fit to hold my capacitor. After that I only cut the plastic wall of the cubby that was associated with the jack. Everything else was already open stock. I took the paint off of a stock hole and bolted some all tread into as a ground lead. This was nice since the hole in the cubby was already there from a rubber band thingy for holding the tool set. The way I routed everything I still have the drivers side cubby for rando things like rags or whatever.




Note, don't mind the colors...... I was using what I had as to not waste wire.

With that done I put in the Genesis dual battery kit and twin yellow top batteries. Genesis recommended the Odyssey PC1500 batteries but I'm glad I didn't go with those. I have no idea how I would have got those to fit nicely in the engine bay it is already a tight fit with the yellow tops. The yellow tops did give me some more wiggle room and it turned out pretty nice. I do not like how all of the positive terminals are exposed though with exception to the one of them. I also hate the cover they provided for it. I didn't take a picture of it but I ended up just cutting them off and using some rubber mat to cover up all of the exposed positives. Down the road I might 3D print something to cover everything better.



I had some rubber mat in this pic and I decided to just hook up the main power to the aux batter positive post instead of running it to the positive distribution terminal.



Note, some other things I don't like about this kit is how they route the 2ga connectors. You end up with some pretty serious kinks in the wires how they are run and that is not good for high current applications. I will probably re-wire these at a later date to relieve tension off of the wires.

Once this was done I hooked up the voltage monitor kit you can get from Genesis OR and routed it to the random empty slot on the drivers side. I used the hood release hole to shove my wire through and cut up a random piece of plastic to slide in front of the pocket, I retained the pocket behind this plastic piece so that it could hold the little computer brain thingy that comes with the voltage sensing kit. Again, more random left over CF vinyl to make it look pretty.







Note, it also has another view where you can see if the relay is closed connecting both batteries together. Says like "BOOST ON". Kinda funny.

Next up is charging the cap. Now the stupid board that Rockford Fosgate gives you isn't easily used. You have to extend the wires to make any sort of connection to this thing. To top it off you can't just hook the wires up to the cap since the smallest wire you can get away with without needing any wire gauge adapter is 4ga. So since I already made my connection and my main line fuse was not in yet I just charged it up from the engine bay all in its hideous glory. Worked well though.



Once that was done I put in a 200A main line and hooked up the laptop to the DSP. Here is an early shot of me messing with the settings. You can set time delay, crossover set points and EQ for every speaker. Yes I said every speaker as in not front or rear, I'm talking each speaker individually.



Note, I didn't dead wall my speakers with those initial slopes and that was just my initial setup to see if everything works.

Overall, this is NOT for everyone. Most people would be fine with a nice set of components and a little bass. For me though this **** sounds amaze balls. I'm still making tweaks here and there as I get more seat time but overall I'm very happy with how this has turned out.

Up coming mods for me are some new fender flares and I'm in a toss up on what to do about a front bumper. I'm really considering getting a slime line from SSO but I haven't decided yet. I need to do something with my headlight too. The output of the stock units is terrible.

Hope you guys enjoy the read. I'll update this as I do more things to my taco.