2019 Full Aftermarket Audio Install

I think this is my first post, so hopefully its a good one. First off I just want to say thanks to the many people who have contributed great info to this forum already as that's where most of my knowledge was sourced from.

Like many of you, I was underwhelmed with the performance of my stock Entune (non-JBL) system. I knew I needed something a little better and this snowballed into a full rebuild. I started with the upgraded speaker/tweeter mods that many people have done and found this to be lacking still. I was toying with the OEM-Audio and TacomaTunes setups and decided I could do the same or better on my own, probably cheaper. I bought myself an AudioControl LC-7 DSP to use with the stock head unit and an aftermarket amp and the more I thought about it, the more I hated the idea of keeping the stock head unit, but I still wanted to retain the original steering wheel controls, ports and camera. So I returned the LC-7 and wound up getting an aftermarket head unit.

In the end here's what I wound up with:
- Joying Android Head Unit
- Planet Audio 1800.5 5 Channel Amplifier
- Infinity Reference Speakers (6520CX and 6522EX)
- Infinity Reference 10" Subwoofer

In total, this setup cost just over $1k but was quite a bit of work since I did it all myself. I'm in the process of selling all of the old components and I suspect I will get more than 50% of my money back from that.

So, on to the build, and just so you know what you're getting yourself into, here's the finished product.



I started by bench testing the head unit. I wanted to make sure everything worked before I got too deep into the project and tore my truck apart.


Of course the next step was to tear my truck apart. This was made easy by watching the OEM-Audio install video a couple times. (Thanks OEM-Audio!)


Next step was to run some wires. I'm missing a few pics here, but I ran my battery cable and RCAs down the driver side channel and ran my speaker wires back up to the head unit in the passenger side channel. They all congregated here in the back of the truck. I hooked my ground wire up to one of the existing bolts where my amp would go. I flattened some of the other mounts on the left side that would no longer be used. I used in-wall speaker wire because I had it laying around already. It's definitely not as friendly to work with but it got the job done and still fit in the channel.


I didn't like the placement of the stock tweeters so I decided to install my aftermarket tweeters in the sail panels. There is BARELY enough room to do this, but it does work with some patience and a lot of grinding.


You can see here that I had to shave down a lot of material from the tweeter mounts to get them to seat back in the truck securely.

Test fit success!


I had fully intended to run new wiring from the amp directly to the speakers and I was able to get one of the wires fished through using the zip-tie method others have posted. This was quite the challenge but doable. Sadly, when I got to the front door and saw how tight the clearance was between the body and the door I gave up on this idea thinking it would be too difficult and just spliced my wires into the factory speaker wiring.


Since I was relocating the tweeters I had to bypass the original tweeter wiring. This probably could have been done non-destructively, but since I don't think most people would go back to a stock stereo after having an aftermarket one, I didn't think this was an issue. Since the leads are so short, it was easier to pull them out the side of the dash to work on them.


I clipped off the original speaker terminals (very destructively) and spliced in wiring for the component speakers I installed up front. I wound up mounting the crossover inside of the door panel just under the armrest. There is a nice little pocket in there that I stuck some foam to, then just taped the crossovers securely into the door panel so they wouldn't bounce much and would stay dry.


Wiring up the head unit was made much easier with the aftermarket harness I got from CRUX (

$73 SWRTY-61N Radio Replacement with SWC & OE RVC Retention (for Toyota Vehicles 2012-Up)

SWRTY-61N). This allowed me to keep all of the steering wheel controls, USB/AUX port and rear camera and was a bit cheaper than the iDataLink option.


Sadly the first harness they sent me had an incorrect adapter that I couldn't use. I had to reorder the harness but didn't want to have to redo all of the splices again so I wound up just repining the incorrect adapter with the adapter from the new harness. This was kind of a pain, but not as much of a pain as resplicing all the wires.


Completed head unit install. On a side note, these Android head units are pretty awesome. It's basically a full featured Android device and can run any native Android apps you can throw at them. Well worth the cost in my opinion.


I had originally reached out to Mr. Marv to construct the sub box and amp rack for me and he agreed to do this for me but he did mention it might be a bit before he got around to it. I had waited a few weeks and didn't hear back so I opted to just build the box myself. I had never done one before but had seen enough pictures and had all the wood and tools I needed so I figured why not give it a shot. I designed the box in Sketchup after taking several measurements inside the truck. My measurements wound up being off a hair but everything still worked in the end. Dry fitting the box together after cutting all the wood.


I glued and nailed everything together then left the back open so I could silicon the inside of the box.


Glued and ready to cut an opening for the sub.


Dry fitting the box and amp in the truck.


This is where things got tricky. My sub stuck out about 1/2" and since the clearance to the back of the seat was too close, the sub would be rubbing on the back of the seat which I was not ok with.

I wound up having to create a rabbet so I could flush mount the sub into the box. Of course this meant the wood would be very thin under the sub so I wound up gluing some wood "tabs" on the underside of the lip to give a little more for the screws to grab onto. This seemed to work out pretty well.


A lot of the final fitment was done by hand which was extremely laborious and took a lot finagling to get just right. I wound up with an extremely tight fitting flush mounted speaker. Right after I took this pic I cursed myself for having to remove the speaker from the box (Note to self, get the measurements right the first time).


Did some measurements on the amp rack and drilled out some holes where the wires would go.


Everything got a couple coats of DuraTex before going into the truck for final placement. This stuff is great and definitely recommended over carpet.


I filled the box with polyfil and ran a speaker wire directly through the box and siliconed it in place (as opposed to installing a terminal cup).


Sub box ready for install.


Before installing I decided to fish the speaker cables through the c-channel in the back. This was practically made for this purpose. On a side note, I had fully intended to carpet the back section like the 2016 BBP build but since they decided to add a power sliding window motor in the back it always bothered me on how I was going to address this and wound up going a different route instead.


Speaker wires fished and ready to go.


Since I knew I would never be using the rear storage compartments again I figured, why not just reuse those in such a way that I could hide the back section of the truck and still have my box and amp unimpeded. This wound up working fantastically.


I hacked both pieces down with an oscillating tool and did some finish filing to get the edges a little nicer. The pieces still fit perfectly and can be bolted in securely.


Since I was reusing the plastic I figured I might as well reuse the sound matting as well. 1) Because it fit and 2) Because I figured it would help a little bit with sound deadening (since I didn't do any).


I cut out a small section for the speaker wires to get through, but otherwise it fit perfectly.


Before doing the final install I hooked up the amp to do some tuning with a little DSO138 oscilloscope. Oddly enough, I could never actually get my 40hz wave to clip. I think the RCA outs on the Joying unit are a bit under-powered, but after fiddling with some amp settings a bit I think it's dialed in pretty well.


Got everything in place and wired up with original plastic installed. Everything fits very tight and secure and doesn't budge at all even though its not secured with anything.


Clearance between the box and the back seat. As you can see the top of the box is a bit close. A steeper angle on the box would have been ideal. Lesson learned. Still fits, no sub rubbing and it sounds light years ahead of the original system.

 

interested to see how the tweeters ended up looking. I did the same (with the JBL version), but I used a different mounting cup because I didnt like how far out the tweeter sticks out with those adjustable mounts.

 

you may want to clean up the Power/Negative/Remote inputs on the amp. There is a lot that can go wrong leaving wire like that. Like they say "if it can... it will" go wrong at some point. Box looks great btw.

 

Next time use some lotion or remove the jacket from the wire and use lotion to fish the wire through.

 

They stick out a little further than I would have liked but I don't think I could have done a true flush mount with the limited space behind these panels.

 

Thank you. I actually looked around locally for some 4GA spade connectors but was unable to find any. And I don't have a crimp tool that big either. I may still try to do this though, I didn't really like connecting the bare wires this way but I did make sure there weren't any loose strands.

 

The fishing rods worked fine for this. It only took about a minute to fish the wires through the channel.

 

Here are mine, these are the jbl version (same mounting system) I used the surface mount cups, pressed them into the hole and hot glued them from the back. I like that you have the option of aiming your, but they do stick out pretty far. I wish infinity/jbl didnt make them stick out so far.... the older versions didnt stick out that much.

 

Also, I used the same subwoofer, but the jbl version

 

Nice. I definitely like the idea of flush mount, but I also like being able to adjust. I'm torn. I don't really think you can go wrong either way.

 

Yeah, one issue I also ran into with trying to use the same mounts as you was that the JBL logo is not adjustable. So when I put them in with the adjustable cups, the JBL logo was sideways and looked like trash.

 

And those are exactly the little things that will bug the crap out of you whenever you look at them. Fortunately for me (even though I haven't put them on yet), the Infinity tweeters come with logo stickers that you apply after you install them so you can use whatever orientation you want. +1 for Infinity =)

 

I think the kappa ones come with a logo in the center of the grills, its not as noticable as the JBL logo, but the kappa version has like a rose gold trim, the JBL used a chrome trim that matches the OEM tacoma chrome trim really well. Its kinda a shame that the reference/club is a little better looking that the higher end kappa/stadium.

I would love to upgrade to the kappa perfects, but their 3 inch mids dont fit the dash on the tacoma.

 

How do you like the joying head unit? Is that a 10.2” screen?