Saturday, May 5, 2012

Tweeter/pillar installation

Didn't feel like trying to come up with any creative titles today, lol.  Anyway, got up this morning and decided that I'd get the new pillars installed so that the tweeters wouldn't be just sitting loose on the dash anymore.  I had looked at this before and decided it was going to be a fair amount of work so put it off for later.  So I looked at the new pillars and did a test fit, and it was immediately evident that there was going to have to be some serious cutting.  I wanted to avoid modifying the pillars if possible, so the first thing I did was tear the tweeter grilles off.




It was closer, but I still needed to lose another 1/4" or so of depth.  Behind the pillar grilles was some plastic framing.  I'm not really sure what it's purpose was, and it didn't look like it was critical to holding the grilles in so I cut that away.


the back side of the pillar post-cutting
After that the tweeter would just almost fit flush inside the opening in the pillar.  I stuck the tweeter in there and did a test fit.  I literally don't think you could get it closer.  It's touching both the grille on the pillar and the metal of the cab, but works.  Still sounds great too.  I can tell a big difference having them actually angled properly instead of just lying about.





The way the sunlight is it's kinda hard to see much detail, but you can tell the pillars are in and look pretty flipping sweet.  While working on this I went ahead and put the defrost vents back in.  I actually did the driver's pillar first, then these vents, then the passenger pillar, so the pictures are a little out of order.  Dad suggested leaving them blue might add some accent and kinda pull the colors of the pillars together, I actually like it a lot.  Unfortunately the dash is a little warped so they don't fit flush, but I think I can fix that with a little epoxy.


Notice the waves in the dash cap along the left side wiper



It's getting there :)  I'm really happy with how it's turned out so far.  Few setbacks here and there, but that's to be expected.  Overall I'm pleased.  I'm planning to replace the oil pan gasket and change the oil on Monday.  After that the next step will be the passenger door lock.  I'm tired of the doors being all naked :P

2 comments:

  1. How'd you run your tweeter wires? Pics?

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    1. I didn't think to get any pictures of the wiring, but I wired mine while I had the truck's dash out. I have the component set splitter box thing on the floor under the bottom AC ducts. I ran the wires up along the firewall zip tying them down to whatever unused brackets and/or wires I could find, then along that main wiring harness that goes along the top of the dash underneath the defrost vents, up through the side where the tweeters sit. It was a little different on the passenger side because I had to make sure the wires wouldn't interfere with the AC fixtures in there, so I installed that AC stuff first, then ran the wires up along the AC wiring harness, down that same long wiring harness at the top of the dash, and up through to the pillar.

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