Ford Focus mk2.5 Speaker upgrade depth

[FordTheWin]

I've been looking at upgrading the Speakers in my Ford Focus MK2.5 and have decided on Focal PS 165F component Speakers. Undecided on the amp, leaning towards a Rockford fosgate 4channel and will then fit a JL audio 10" sub in a custom box enclosure that I have yet to design.

My issue is that I don't know if the Focal PS 165F will fit depth wise in the front doors. 

Does anybody here know what the max depth of a speaker can be to fit the front doors in a MK2.5 Focus? 

I know that @BigLen fitted JL Audio C3 650's for his front Speakers, but I'm not sure what the depth of his speakers is and if the speaker ring makes a difference??

Thank you everyone for your help! 

 

[BigLen]

9 hours ago, FordTheWin said:

I've been looking at upgrading the speakers in my Ford Focus MK2.5 and have decided on Focal PS 165F component speakers. Undecided on the amp, leaning towards a Rockford fosgate 4channel and will then fit a JL audio 10" sub in a custom box enclosure that I have yet to design.

My issue is that I don't know if the Focal PS 165F will fit depth wise in the front doors. 

Does anybody here know what the max depth of a speaker can be to fit the front doors in a MK2.5 Focus? 

I know that @BigLen fitted JL Audio C3 650's for his front speakers, but I'm not sure what the depth of his speakers is and if the speaker ring makes a difference??

Thank you everyone for your help! 

 

The C3 650 are 65mm deep, I have a set fitted both front and back, along with some DEi Boom speaker baffles which keep the Speakers dry when the window seals let frost in that turns to water: they also reflect bass back in to the car, 

The aftermarket speaker rings are a must, not sure if you saw pictures of my process from back in the days of 2015; still very relevant content today, i took a week holiday from work to strip out the car and install everything was a fun time and the TV tuner I now use six days per week as I have my lunch in the car now to social distance as best possible because I'm a chemical process operator manufacturing key pharmaceutical ingredients for a number of vaccines in clinical trials, it's highly important we self isolate to maintain production.

So I basically live in the car these days. 

Here's the full five year build:

I'll try find a link to the more specific relevant content and edit with it; should be around page 40 yeah here's the beginning of gathering all the parts followed by installing: 

You drill out the rivets on the existing speaker surround and bolt in the new focus 6.5" aftermarket speaker adapter.

They add depth and prevent the Speakers from hitting the window when opened.

[FordTheWin]

Thank you Lenny for the detailed reply, really appreciate it. 😀👍

I work in an NHS eye hospital in London so I understand the the lengths you have to go to, to socially distance, although it's probably much more extreme when you have such a significant role in the manufacture of the vaccine. Your job certainly sounds interesting though!

I will most likely be following your and Hassen's guides very closely for this. The only reason I picked the Focal's is because they're slightly cheaper than your JL Audio Speakers and I heard they might sound similar to the JL's. The only issue it I don't know if they'll fit.

The Speakers I'm planning on getting have a depth of 85mm, which is 20mm more than your C3 650. I'm not sure if I have that much room inside the front door panel even with the speaker adapter.

 

[BigLen]

7 hours ago, FordTheWin said:

Thank you Lenny for the detailed reply, really appreciate it. 😀👍

I work in an NHS eye hospital in London so I understand the the lengths you have to go to, to socially distance, although it's probably much more extreme when you have such a significant role in the manufacture of the vaccine. Your job certainly sounds interesting though!

I will most likely be following your and Hassen's guides very closely for this. The only reason I picked the Focal's is because they're slightly cheaper than your JL Audio speakers and I heard they might sound similar to the JL's. The only issue it I don't know if they'll fit.

The speakers I'm planning on getting have a depth of 85mm, which is 20mm more than your C3 650. I'm not sure if I have that much room inside the front door panel even with the speaker adapter.

 

Thanks mate I really enjoy my job; I've been manufacturing API's active pharmaceutical ingredients for seventeen years now across three different companies, I do enjoy my job but like many occupations now, there was nothing different thought of them until covid19 were doing the same thing we always did; just some things have gotten a huge increase in demand aswell as increased precautions with temperature checks to access areas and social distancing etc. 

The DEi Boom 6.5" speaker baffles are 91mm deep and they fitted in both front and rear doors with using the aftermarket speaker adapters, if you have scuffing though you could add washers to the bolts on the aftermarket speaker adapters which would bring the speaker closer to the door card grill,

[FordTheWin]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I honestly don't know what I'd do without you man, you helped me with the Haynes manual pages before and now this excellent info. 😁

Okay, so I had already added the Boom Mat baffles, but for the adaptors I don't know whether to get the thin looking MDF ones or these deeper ones:(https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ford-Focus-2005-On-MK2-MK2-5-Front-Door-6-5-17CM-Car-Speaker-Adaptor-Brackets/171220347689)

I think the deeper ones will give me the best chance of fitting the Speakers as you've said. Oh and washers are an amazing idea. 

So with all that, will the door card still fit lol? 

Also do you mind if I ask for recommendations on the headunit and amp. I initially thought the Atoto A6 Pro would do fine, but I want to get the best sound quality I can and I don't want to have to buy twice so I'm thinking the Pioneer DA250DAB may be a better option (Android systems tend to slow down in the long run so the Pioneer may be better in that regard as it's not android AFAIK)

Amp wise my budget is around £180, but I'm really not sure what to get, it seems that the pioneer amps are not very reliable, alpine are overpriced but I have heard good things about rockford fosgate. I would want 4 channels. 

I will be photographing all my progress and adding it here to this thread.

Thanks again.

 

[BigLen]

15 hours ago, FordTheWin said:

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I honestly don't know what I'd do without you man, you helped me with the Haynes manual pages before and now this excellent info. 😁

Okay, so I had already added the Boom Mat baffles, but for the adaptors I don't know whether to get the thin looking MDF ones or these deeper ones:(https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ford-Focus-2005-On-MK2-MK2-5-Front-Door-6-5-17CM-Car-Speaker-Adaptor-Brackets/171220347689)

I think the deeper ones will give me the best chance of fitting the speakers as you've said. Oh and washers are an amazing idea. 

So with all that, will the door card still fit lol? 

No problem atall, 

The aftermarket speaker adapters which you have linked above are the correct size for use in the front doors of the MK2 & MK2.5 focus,

no other type of depth is recommended for the front eh they are the one and only as the song also goes, 

The more shallow variant are specifically for the rear doors, different brackets for the rear and the front. 

Moving on from the brackets and speaker baffles then; you will need to purchase some fixings to fit the aftermarket speaker adapters to the doors, 

Personally I logged on to Kay's fixings on eBay UK at the time of fitting mine, 

Link: https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/kaysfasteners 

It may be worth writing down a list prior to ordering from them because you will also require some fixings for your amplifier or amplifiers at a later date. 

Anyway; for the front and rear aftermarket speaker brackets; I used M6x25mm Hexagon head bolts with one normal sized washer fitted inside the door and an M6 Nylon lock nut, four of each required for each front speaker and three of each required for the rear door Speakers. 

So for fitting front aftermarket speaker adapters you will need to purchase:

Eight M6x25mm Hexagon head bolts

Eight normal sized washer 

Eight M6 Nylon lock nut 

Preferably all in A2 stainless steel; but that's not essential.

The next hidden cost is mounting the aftermarket speaker crossover box's to the doors, 

The crossover box takes in full range audio and seperates the tones sending high to the tweeter and low to the 6.5" sub, 

There not very heavy well around 800gram but there mass when attached to the door needs something quite sticky to insure they never shake loose, 

I used some velcro heavy duty sticky back pads to mount my crossover box's to the aluminium doors, each pad is rated for 7kg and the stick like tarmac, 

Link: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VELCRO-Brand-Heavy-Duty-Stick-On-Tape-50mm-x-2-5-metre-Black-or-White/401896250498?epid=1904326430&hash=item5d92e21c82:g:r84AAOSwkGNfecJF 

I'll now quote the next stage of your post in a separate post to keep everything categorised and reduce the mass size of this post if anyone was to quote me on it 😅

Personally if I was you mate; I'd keep this thread for discussion on things and create a new thread showing your build progress; in my opinion it helps keep things more vibrant for the follower; although this thread is all very informative content; it's nice to have a separate one with the build and progress, but that's just my personal view; you do it your way man 👍

[BigLen]

16 hours ago, FordTheWin said:

Also do you mind if I ask for recommendations on the headunit and amp.

I initially thought the Atoto A6 Pro would do fine, but I want to get the best sound quality I can and I don't want to have to buy twice so I'm thinking the Pioneer DA250DAB may be a better option (Android systems tend to slow down in the long run so the Pioneer may be better in that regard as it's not android AFAIK)

Ask me anything I'm happy to advise from personal experience; 

Regarding the headunit; if your going to be using aftermarket amplifiers to process and enhance the sound quality then the headunit has one less quality job, 

The next contributor is picture quality if you're not going to be using it for watching Netflix, amazon prime or Terrestrial television then that's another quality job less for the headunit.

Where were then at a point where your looking for something that looks the part, has bluetooth capabilities and can facilitate a reverse camera; in that case a cheap aftermarket touch screen will do quite well because the brand name quality amplifiers take care of audio processing via RCA output from the headunit. 

However if your going to be watching movies or TV then a pioneer headunit is definitely the way to go as the picture quality is way better;

And if picture quality is important then perhaps replace the 12v socket in the centre arm rest with a usb power supply and HDMI input for an amazon fire TV stick, as I have done myself, I've fitted the above with a 12v to 5v usb power supply for charging as the usb outputs on headunits are not strong enough to charge any device at any reasonable speed.

If going that far then add a usb powered in-car WiFi router with a cheap pay monthly sim card fitted to a usb power supply in the boot compartment, feels just like home 😅 

But if you just need to see a reverse camera and bluetooth streaming; any old touch screen will do as the aftermarket amplifiers or amplifier will be processing the audio for you.

Next post we will talk amplifiers

[FordTheWin]

Ask me anything I'm happy to advise from personal experience; 
Regarding the headunit; if your going to be using aftermarket amplifiers to process and enhance the sound quality then the headunit has one less quality job, 
The next contributor is picture quality if you're not going to be using it for watching Netflix, Amazon prime or Terrestrial television then that's another quality job less for the headunit.
Where were then at a point where your looking for something that looks the part, has Bluetooth capabilities and can facilitate a reverse camera; in that case a cheap aftermarket touch screen will do quite well because the brand name quality amplifiers take care of audio processing via RCA output from the headunit. 
However if your going to be watching movies or TV then a pioneer headunit is definitely the way to go as the picture quality is way better;
And if picture quality is important then perhaps replace the 12v socket in the centre arm rest with a usb power supply and HDMI input for an Amazon fire TV stick, as I have done myself, I've fitted the above with a 12v to 5v usb power supply for charging as the usb outputs on headunits are not strong enough to charge any device at any reasonable speed.
If going that far then add a usb powered in-car WiFi router with a cheap pay monthly sim card fitted to a usb power supply in the boot compartment, feels just like home [emoji28] 
But if you just need to see a reverse camera and Bluetooth streaming; any old touch screen will do as the aftermarket amplifiers or amplifier will be processing the audio for you.
Next post we will talk amplifiers

Sorry to be asking between your posts, but like you say I want a double din with a display for music and reverse parking camera, being able to watch movies is not necessary bit would be nice. When you say get a touchscreen, could you link me to an example.

I was originally looking at the much cheaper chinese Atoto A6 Pro headunit which runs android, but people online were telling me that it it had poor sound quality then no amp could fix that. Supposedly the sound quality is alright the manufacturer states that it has a Toshiba pre amp built in but I don't know if that means anything.

I just don't want to be in a situation where my headunit is the cause of bad sound quality when the rest of the components (amp and speakers) are of decent quality.
Sorry to be asking again, just want to clarify.

Sent from my Mi 9T Pro using Tapatalk

[BigLen]

17 hours ago, FordTheWin said:

Amp wise my budget is around £180, but I'm really not sure what to get, it seems that the pioneer amps are not very reliable, alpine are overpriced but I have heard good things about rockford fosgate. I would want 4 channels. 

I will be photographing all my progress and adding it here to this thread.

Thanks again.

Regarding amplifiers Rockford fosgate would be a premium brand there in the world of amplifiers, personally I have two JL audio amplifiers,

Pioneer make great headunits but there amplifiers buckle under pressure in the sense that the begin to distort,

The next thing to note about amplifiers is the class number, the higher the class number the better quality and smaller physical size it will be,

However the higher the class number the more restrictions there are on mounting positions, because the higher class D amplifiers don't have any fans to cool themselves down, there mostly made from aluminium with digital audio processing compared to the older class C with analogue processing and thermostatic fan cooling.

A class C can be fitted in more positions than a class D because it can cool itself easier using a fan, however it's also twice the size of not more than that of a class D, 

Personally I have two class D amplifiers, one fitted vertically and one at 45 degrees both working very well now for the past five years and exercised daily 🤟

 

Moving on from the class then; your choosing a 4 channel, 

I assume your planning to bridge the outputs to double the loads feeding the front Speakers, 

Or

Bridge two outputs to power the sub with the low pass filter set to 50hz and below.

Perhaps consider purchasing a second hand amplifier on eBay; although covid19 is a huge risk; use some gloves and sanitizer, 

You would quite literally get alot more bang for your buck; alot of young kids these days buy huge output amplifiers and don't know that they need to be tuned for optimal results, 

They will turn up the sensitivity needle to full tilt and think there achieving optimum performance when in reality it will mostly be distortion and clipping at high levels.

The gains need to be set correctly on an aftermarket amplifier using a syn wave audio CD and a multi meter,

Disconnect all Speakers for safety; plug the multi meter in to the speaker output of the amplifier, play the correct audio track for 50hz and adjust the gains needle until the voltage read out from the speaker output is in accordance with the amplifier manufacturers specification for running 4Ohm's or zero'Ohmz 

The next thing is the position of the amplifier; my full range amplifier is fitted on a removable panel with 20mm wide aluminium bearings used as large washers to space it out from the carpeted panel allowing air flow between the amp and the carpet, 

If I need more boot space I can unplug the panel at the rear and plug the Speakers directly in to a feed from the headunit which keeps audio going without the amp. 

Final things to consider then are choice of cable and wheather a capacitor is something that you would require.

In my opinion 4AWG cable is king, particularly Vibe Audio 4AWG FlatFlex use a TX40 and TX50 torx bit to lift out the front and rear passenger seats on your MK2/MK2.5 focus then route the cable properly underneath the carpet through the correct holes like a boss.

some people say "ow class D amplifiers are more efficient these days an 8AWG kit is sufficient" yeah this is true and 8AWG is slightly cheaper and smaller diameter but your then stuck with a low output class C amplifier or a higher costing Class D, 

If you fit 4AWG cable then you can fit anything you like or can afford in the boot without any worry, 

For fuse then; fit a 10amp per 100watts of amplifier, so a 450watt amplifier needs a 45Amp fuse, and these days you can get trip switches, the days of using fuzes on amplifier cables are gone, 

Don't fit a higher fuse; it's not cool atall because it won't ever trip or blow and your amplifier would be on fire while the fuze is still working without issue, 

My advice is fit a trip switch fuze within the first 12" inches of the battery under the bonnet and bolt the trip switch to the side of the battery box, 

Earth feed is then sourced locally to the amplifier: no longer than 24" inches for optimum performance. 

Capacitor then: 

If your installing more than 400watts then I recommend that you consider fitting a 1.0fared capacitor, 

For those whom may not know; a capacitor is a reservoir of power it can supply power faster than a battery; so when your music requires a large sound; that requires a large amount of power to the amplifier at that split millisecond to match the beat and drive the speakers, 

The amplifier will demand that power from your battery and alternator; if it's 28°C outside and your banging the tunes with the Air conditioning flat out and your auxiliary lights on, without a capacitor fitted then your lights and fan are going to starting dimming every time the beat goes, 

And the life of both battery and alternator will be affected, 

A capacitor takes power from the battery at a steady and consistent rate; the amplifier can then pull power out of the capacitor at any speed it wants without impacting on the performance of other devices; the rule is 1.0 fared to every 1,000watts power output.

Personally I have a 1.0 fared connects2 branded capacitor which I measured by wrapping it in a sheet of paper then measuring the sheet to get the size for a wrap, I logged on to DMB graphics and provided them with a Red bull can label graphic which they kindly printed now I have a one of a kind RedBull capacitor which also helps to explain its purpose is maintaining a standard of energy and eliminating lag. 

Any further questions man im happy to assist; I enjoy this type of activity aswell as home improvement which I've since moved on to since completing the focus build Link https://www.fordownersclub.com/forums/topic/80864-living-room-project/

 

[BigLen]

1 hour ago, FordTheWin said:

Sorry to be asking between your posts, but like you say I want a double din with a display for music and reverse parking camera, being able to watch movies is not necessary bit would be nice. When you say get a touchscreen, could you link me to an example.

I was originally looking at the much cheaper chinese Atoto A6 Pro headunit which runs android, but people online were telling me that it it had poor sound quality then no amp could fix that. Supposedly the sound quality is alright the manufacturer states that it has a Toshiba pre amp built in but I don't know if that means anything.

I just don't want to be in a situation where my headunit is the cause of bad sound quality when the rest of the components (amp and speakers) are of decent quality.
Sorry to be asking again, just want to clarify.

No problem, 

I've not heard of the brand Atoto until you mentioned it yourself; sounds like they make blow off valves too 😅

I have heard good reviews for Xtrons which are a cheaper than pioneer aftermarket headunit opinion as there units are model specific; it will save you some money not having to purchase an aftermarket headunit adapter kit; 

Where you would need that kit if going for a pioneer, 

Also from my understanding and I could be wrong but I always thought that RCA output wasn't really affected by the quality of the headunit itself because RCA output isint amplified it's just flat processed audio but I'm open to learning on that, the advice you got from others could be 100% I don't know to be honest.

Regarding Toshiba as a brand then they make great televisions and laptops in regards screen quality and design but there harddrive manufacturing quality is disastrous perhaps there not great at sound processing either. 

Check eBay for focus MK2 Xtrons headunit; I don't want to give any particular seller a free bump by linking on here 😅 

I do have an Xtrons TV tuner in my focus though; it has pause & record built in and has been fitted over five years now; 

I use it six days per week now on my lunch breaks and the sound quality is pretty good aswell as picture processing, the display then is on the pioneer which in this case would show any lack in perfection as it's a slave to the Xtrons TV tuner in that setup.

I also have a 10" Xtrons roof monitor; the picture quality isint as good as the pioneer headunit but it's also going very well over five years now;

I don't know what the sound output is like as I've only wired it to mirror the headunit.

Guide: https://www.fordownersclub.com/forums/topic/67763-guide-fitting-10-hd-flip-down-roof-monitor-dvd-to-focus-mk2-mk25/