Restoring the Ranger.

[thunder9500 10+ year member]

Ever see this Ranger ridin around your town? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[DaveDSMer 10+ year member]

wow you need to come by MCG and give me a demo lol.

 

[DaveDSMer 10+ year member]

bored so i will post what i have done so far yeserday.. today have a lot more to do .. but getting somehwere.

this is whats going in... lol..

and what ive been doing with my free time.

 

[jeeper07 5,000+ posts]

looks nice get those rcas under the carpet!

 

[THUNDERBIRD 10+ year member]

looks good! all i would suggest is to pull ur sat antenna and run it threw the the bed light hole becuase it should go into the cab of the truck u just pull that trim peice and pull the headliner down a bit and snake it in. will look better and less of a chance of it getting cut.

 

[DaveDSMer 10+ year member]

good idea thunderbird, posting an update for today of whats been done in a minute

 

[DaveDSMer 10+ year member]

this is where i starte today.. doing the rear speakers

got the cover off and pulled the old speaker out.

got my new neat little baffles in there and wired with some new speaker wire that will be going to the Blaupunkt.

added plenty of polyfill ... muaha.

stuffed that sucker back in there

patched it up.. rear speakers went in without much trouble.

now its time for the front speakers.. in a very odd and difficult to reach location.. the back of the dash..

just to show you what kind of difference the front stage is going to be compared to the stock.. here is a comparison side by side of just the woofer.. i was like.. ****.

pulled that speaker out to reveal a very contricted area with a whole 3 posts to mount to.. yay...

lucky for me i saw this coming and got this neat little adapter that converts this 3 hole into a standard 4 hole design..

now to suit up this bad boy..

(continued pictures on next post)

overall i got quite a bit done. I also mounted my crossovers and wired up the tweeters.. oh and ran my 4ga power wire. so all thats really left is mounting the tweeters, but waiting on some music so i can stage it right and putting in my distributions blocks and fuses. I still have to pick a grounding spot.. and finalize where these amps are going to go as well as the sub. Then its all just hooking it all up.

I already have some ideas for cleaning up the wires.. I have already ordered a custom dash cover and I am going to cut a hole for the SS speaker grills when i put them up there.. that will cover all the ugly spots as well as the wire thats exposed and give it a nice clean stock look. The same concept is going to be used by the gear shift to hide the RCAs and such.. going to cut some carpet and place it over the gearshift so that its covering all the wires. I really need one more solid day of installing to get this done. I still have plenty of deadening to do but thats going to have to be another day.. I need sound to deaden before i start that.

 

[DaveDSMer 10+ year member]

 

[bibby 5,000+ posts]

As bad as i hate that body style, i have to admit, it looks **** good. Good job.

 

[Ignatowski 5,000+ posts]

not my vehcile of choice but

I like the updates.......nice job mang

 

[THUNDERBIRD 10+ year member]

looking good i have a set of those jbl 5x7s the tweeters are adjustable. they are nice but the overpowered my comps in the front. i think you may have to much poly fill in those baffles, but i am not a 100% on that kuz i have never used those baffles i am sure someone else can confirm it.

 

[DaveDSMer 10+ year member]

well finally i got everything hooked up. ITs been a rough day though. First the high amp wouldnt come on. Found out my power cable came loose on it and was off. Fixed that. Then my headunit decided to just die and not power back on. I pulled the fuse in the fuse box and put it back in.. bam worked again.. no idea wtf that was about. So now I am still tuning it but I can tell you this. The gains are set very conservative on both amps.. and this truck is louder than I thought by far. I made sure that my box was totally airtight and it made a huge difference. That Kappa Perfect is pounding away. The highs are crisp and the mids are real tight thanks to the baffles. Turn it up and it gets ear piercing loud and I know it can handle more power but I don't need it. So all thats left to do now is hide all my wires and ill take some more pictures once i finish. I can say this though those JBL GTO speakers in the rear really suprised me in how detailed they sounded for being coaxial.. very impressed. The front soundstreams are very strong for their size. You can hear a small gap in the midrange as they are only 4" drivers. I think once i tweak the settings some more I can get rid of it. I can say i hear 0 static or interference. I would say all in all it was a success for a budget SQ set up. My ears hurt though at the moment and so does my head from seeing just how much guts these speakers had.

On a side note: I do notice dimming on full power so I will need to look into that next.

 

[Max_Power 10+ year member]

nice install especially the HU. It looks great and secure. How do you like the EZ series kendwoods? I think they look retro (a good thing). I've never tried them before, but how about thoes baffles, so they work? They seem to make sense. All in all a good simple clean install.

 

[jeeper07 5,000+ posts]

looks good. i must say i dont usually like rangers but i really like what u did with yours and the fact that its a truck ur fixin up just like im doin, but ive got a FS Chevy that im doin and its a bit more work than ur doin. Very clean work. Nice job

 

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