DIYMobileAudio.com Car Stereo Forum banner

2012 Toyota Tacoma Build

9.8K views 55 replies 9 participants last post by  Roostfactor  
#1 ·
This is my first build in a long time. The last time I did an install was back in 2008 on my 1996 Camaro. I was in High school and on a mix of a tight budget and poor knowledge on building a quality sound system, I put together something that got pretty loud and was a huge improvement over the factory Bose. The majority of the equipment either blew or was sold over the years.

For this build I am going for good quality, but budget friendly equipment. Although new to building a SQ system this hobby interest me and I don't mind spending the time to read and learn. I plan to run my speakers active using a processor and keeping the factory look. So the factory head unit is staying.

Equipment plan so far:

AMPS-Crossfire VR404(mids and tweets) and VR302(subs) (These are used but I'm getting them from my brother and are in great condition. Just have to detail his Jeep as a trade.)

MIDBASS- Dayton 7" RS180P(Purchased)

TWEETER- Vifa XT25(Purchased)

PROCESSOR- MiniDSP C-DSP 6x8 w/ Mic(Still need to buy)

SUB- Undecided

Still need to figure out the remaining items I want to use for the install(wires, deadening, etc).
This build will probably be pretty slow but I plan to document as much of it as I can.

So with the help and knowledge on this great forum hopefully I'll have a successful build.

Lets Start.

Here's the truck:
Image


Here are my speakers:
Image



Dave
 
#2 ·
So I was able to get a little bit of work/planning done last night. I pulled the passenger door panel off and removed both speakers in order to trace out templates for the baffles on the mid bass and some kind of plate for the tweeter to mount. I also did some measuring to check if everything will fit. The mid bass has a depth of 3", I figured a 3/4" baffle will give me the clearance? Anyone that can confirm this will work? I also have an idea to make the baffle out of aluminum. My dad owns his own machine shop and has 3/4" aluminum scrap that I can use for whatever I want. I figured aluminum won't have issues with moisture like MDF. Would aluminum be a good material to use?

Here's a comparison of the stock speakers.




 
#3 · (Edited)
Haven't measured depth on mine, but I think I read somewhere the access cab doors may be a bit deeper. Mine is an 05 so not sure I can help on that although i did use .75" painted mdf (hope they hold up). Im running TM65 mids so depth is irrelevant.

What I can say is to use a combination of materials in the doors although 100% coverage of cld isn't needed. Knuconceptz Kolossus cld is great stuff and I highly recommend it strategically placed on the outer skin, inner skin, and door panel. Rap on areas to see where you need it and apply. The door kit went a long long way for me in the access cab. YMMV.

On the outer skin right behind the speakers I also recommend Infinity Blox. I was able to fit about 6 per front door. 3 below the brace, 3 above the brace. All were velcroed right onto the cld aluminum facing. MLV & CCF (neoprene actually) were applied to the inner skin in the recommended fashion with careful trimming so all brackets, wires, and panels would fit back in place.

Door panels were treated with CLD in areas prone to rattles, again tapping here and there to find culprit areas to treat. Afterwards, I applied melamine foam where feasible. Doors are solid and material use was minimum. Same should be done to the rears. I can thump the heck out of the door mids and hear no rattles.
 
#5 ·
Thanks for the tips. I plan to do the CLD in the doors as you described. I've read about using MLV&CCF, but it kinda raises my budget a little too far right now. It might be something I add as I progress. Did you do any before and after say CLD then adding the MLV&CCF and melamine. Was there a huge benefit? I know this truck is a little noisy.
 
#4 ·
Subed on this build. I'm working on the build for my 2015 Tundra as well. I bought this plastic cutting board for my speaker brackets, but I bought the 3/4" too.

http://www.amazon.com/Winco-CBRD-18...ref=sr_1_6?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1449201328&sr=1-6&keywords=Winco+cutting+board

I used to make these speaker brackets on the Tundra forums for a bunch of guys. I did many for Tacomas too, and always used a 3/4" base plate and a 1/2" mounting ring. Best part about these is they are 100% waterproof. I used to make them out of MDF, but that stuff turns to cardboard when it's exposed to water. I cut them out with a Jasper on the router and painted them black. Again, I made many for Tacomas, and the 3/4" base and 1/2" mounting ring seemed to be a good fit for the Tacoma door.

Looking forward to more updates
 
#6 ·
I plan on avoiding wood. When I was messing with the doors a few days ago to make the templates there was quite a bit of moisture in there due to the rain on the drive home from work. The cutting board looks like a nice alternative.

It was suggest on a Tacoma forum to use a baffle that was 1.5" and trim the plastic around the grille opening on the door panel. This would put the speaker closer to the opening and depth wouldn't be an issue at all then.
 
#9 ·
So I'm still slowly gathering my equipment. I finally got the amps from my brother.

The VR404 will be for my midbasses and tweeters.

The VR302 will be for my Sub(s) when that time comes.


He also had an assortment of Power wire, fuse boxes, and speaker wire. Ill have to go through and see what will be useful. He also has a brand new set of JL RCA's a 4 channel set and a 2 channel set.

Still haven't ordered my DSP...don't know what I'm waiting for.

I get a week off between Christmas and New years so I'm hoping to get my baffles made up and start getting stuff put into the truck. I'll need to figure out an amp rack. The 4 channel is pretty good sized. The cubby behind the driver side rear seat seems to get filled up by just it.
 
#15 ·
Thanks, I'll have to see what happens. I might stick them in the door for now and figure out a way to get them on my sail panels down the road. My fiber glassing skills are zero, I'm willing to learn, but I might look into doing a mounted pod with some kind of ability to adjust the aiming of them.
 
#14 ·
I hope they work out well. I can still remember, I think I was 13, my brother took me for a ride in his s10. He had 2 12" JL W0 and I think a set of Diamond Audio components, ran by these amps. I'm know it wasn't the best setup but I had never heard music so loud and clear. I was hooked from then on.
 
#13 ·
I haven't decided on one yet. There isn't a ton of room in the Tacomas without cutting some of the stock trim panels, I may have to do it regardless. PM me with what you want for them, I'll have to look them up do see if they would work as there isn't a lot of depth(I think its around 6").
 
#16 ·
Sub'd as well.. Got a '13 Access Cab I'm itching some day to start.

One thing you could do is do some small mids in the door tweet spots. Dayton RS75's will fit. A guy on tacomaworld did it. Might be a fun match up to the RS180's. Then do those vifa's in the sails.

On subs, there's a thread on doing row's of subs under the rear seats in those double-cab's. Pretty cool idea. I wanna do as close a copy as I can of this thing I saw over there also...
taco sub build
 
#17 ·
I've read both threads on tacomaworld. I'm documenting this build over there too. I like the idea of a 3 way but that would involve getting another/different amp. I think if I do go with tweeters in sail panel I will consider it more. I really like the under seat subs. I really don't use that space at all. I do fold down the seats often but, I don't really use the cubbies behind the seats. This members set up is awesome. A lot of fab work is needed it seems to get this to work and seal it up. I think my challenge behind the seats is not removing the child restraint hooks(kids are in my near future). So I might have to look into under seat more.
 
#18 ·
So I have a question. I worked on making my harness to connect the factory head unit to the DSP. I originally figured I would tap into the front speaker wires to get the full range signal to the DSP. After getting the harness back in to test it out I realized that the bluetooth phone voices out of only the front speakers and not the rear. I plan to leave the rear factory speakers in and most likely fade them out on the head unit. Would it be wise to instead flip the connections and get full range signal out of the rear to the DSP and voice the bluetooth out to the rear speakers. Would doing this prevent any kind of noise or interference with the signal to the DSP due to bluetooth? This only affects the call feature.
 
#19 ·
Not sure. I tapped into all four of my inputs. I will probably end up running the rear off rear hu outputs for fill if desired but I can also hook them up to dsp to see if it makes a difference. I'm just going to run the front inputs to front active speakers. If I'm done before you I'll let you know how it works for phone.
 
#20 ·
I read somewhere on a Tacoma World post that they were getting noise from a LOC and that it was possibly due to the bluetooth. But I think they changed LOC or switched to DSP and the noise went away so who knows.

I'm moving very slow on this project. So I am sure you will have yours done before me. Let me know if you have any troubles.
 
#22 ·
So here's the speakers installed on the drivers side. I should have taken the easier route and made the baffles out of MDF. But, I decided to make them into a horrible project by doing them out of aluminum. While the idea was cool at the time and yeah they wont disintegrate in few thousand years they took forever to make and every step of the way I seemed to make mistakes.Wrong measurements as you can see by the extra drilled holes, broken taps(yes two of them), and deciding that I couldn't wait to finish them without a drill press and making some extra holes. They are definitely unique...

The tweeter baffle I got creative and used a clipboard that I had in the garage and cut them up with a jigsaw. I wanted them in the truck and this seemed to work.







They are not hooked up yet. Still have to run wires and figure out where to put the amp. I left the plastic screw nuts that clip into the door where the speaker mounts. This causes the speaker to have a slight gap all the way around between the baffle and door. What should I do with this? I've seen people use modeling clay to decouple the two surfaces, is this a good idea?
 
#26 ·
Haha. They seriously made me want to give up on this whole project. But I did learn a lot about fabricating. I kinda want to use aluminum for some kind of amp rack.

Weatherstripping is your best friend when it comes to sealing up gaps.
I actually thought about this, this morning. I think that will work great.

Looking great man! Sorry I am behind on your thread. As a former Tacoma owner that has put just about everything possible in these trucks, just hit me up as a resource if needed.

Looking great so far, I love the alum baffles.


http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...io.com/forum/build-logs-project-install-gallery/21694-08-tacoma-double-cab.html

Thanks! I'll have to check your build log out.
 
#27 ·
Order from Knuconceptz came in yesterday. Started running wire last night. Got the 4 ga. power wire ran to the rear and drivers side door speaker wires ran. Hopefully can get some more done tonight. Also trying to figure our how I want to mount my amps. I'm thinking a plywood wall on the back wall of the cab that doesn't involve removing the car seat hooks. The amps are pretty big compared to todays class D amps. Looked at under the rear seats and their just too big to fit there.

 
#28 ·
So I have everything hooked up. Still have a few things to straighten up as far as the install goes but I wanted to have my sound back in my truck. Did some messing around with REW and my DSP. This is where I'm at for now. Obviously the graphs aren't that smooth still need EQ work and T/A. I have the tweeters and mid crossed at 3000 Hz with a 24 db Slope. The tweeters are sounding harsh at higher volumes. I think part of it is their roughly 10 db higher than the mids and need the levels brought down, would this help? This is each speaker measured individually with my Umik-1 taking sweeps from ear to ear and 1/6 smoothing. Any you guys recommend with my results so far?

 
#29 ·
Not bad.. If the cause of that 400-500 dib could be helped, you'd be golden. I suspect if you get a layer of CCF and MLV between the door metal and door card, and get some more stuff (ccf or some kind of absorption behind that card to help eliminate the card itself as a factor, that chart will improve dramatically.. Like very audibly huge difference.

I just did fast rings and some extra CCF behind the card after already having a full MLV layer over CCF on the door metal and the sonic difference was frighteningly better.
 
#30 ·
Spent a few hours tonight EQing the DSP. Must of been a set up error the other day, the tweeters are now rolling off higher now. Sounding really good, still room for improvement though. The biggest difference was doing the time alignment. It really brought everything together. Really wishing I had a sub now!
 
#37 ·
How's the image and stage with that stock tweeter location in 2-way?

On door treatment I can guarantee more is better. Highly recommend as much deadening as you can do will be helpful for getting those mids to play nice. How's the tactile transference through the door card?


Sent from iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#38 ·
Staging & imaging is pretty good despite the tune not being optimal. The tweets are the stars of the pair.

Doors are already treated with cld, neoprene & mlv. Door vibration are minimal unless I crank on the system, but from my experience low qts drivers tend to shake the door more.. I believe I'm getting a bit of destructive interference from not sealing the mid to the door panel as the stock drivers were. I plan to remedy the latter when I get the chance.
 
#39 ·
I had mentioned this is a previous post about my tweeters sounding harsh at higher volumes. It almost sounds as if their distorting. The power ratings of the tweeters/amp match perfectly 50 watts rms I wanted to do some tests to see if anything could help. So the first thing is it is really noticeable when I have my mids muted and just the tweeters are playing. If I bring the mids back they seem less harsh but after 15 minutes of listening my ears feel pretty fatigued. First thing I did was take some measurements of a tweeter on-axis and off-axis and at a medium volume and a high volume where I would hear the harshness.

First graph is on-axis(stuck the mic right up to the tweeter) and second is off-axis. The tweeters are in the stock location off-axis.




Second test was I plugged in my ipod using headphone jack to rcas directly into the DSP. The result was the harshness was worse so I don't think its a issue of the stock headunit.

I then tried adjusting the crossover points from 3k to 4,5 and 6K. Didn't improve.

Last I tried messing with the gain level I had it around half way of its adjustment(HU volume 30/64 when loud). I then tried it at 1/4 turn(HU volume 50/64 when loud) and that didn't help.

Any thing else I should try? Anything you guys see that could be causing issues? Let me know if you need more details too.