Any Truck Owners

I am new to this, and from reading most of the posts I see that the majority of the people on here have cars, and was just wondering if there are any other truck owners out there.
I would love to here about your installs and/or other mods you have done

You mean like a semi or a rig? Or smaller like a ute or pickup?

either, I was mainly pointed towards the 1/2 to 1 ton variety but if you got a rig you have done some work done to that will work to

The only difference I would see for installing a stereo in a Dodge truck would be the locations of the speakers, that's about it.

If you happen to have a recent-model Dodge with the Infinity sound system, you might want to look at this link.

My friend at work (who hasn't checked the board in a while) has been installing his empeg in an F150. Unfortunately, because he wants to keep his factory CD player there is no space for the empeg. In the end, he is actually making a fiberglass construction for housing the empeg, but I really can't describe it execept to say it looks really cool. I'll try to point him to your post so he can maybe send a pic of his install.

-Jeff

Scrap that! We want pics in the installs section on riocardotorg!

I was only curious because I am just big audiophile and love just hearing any difference in the different way people put together their stereo. I have already changed out my speakers with newer infinity kappas, being pushed by a Rockford Fosgate punch 45, and I have two JL 10w6 DVC's being pushed by a Rockford 800.2

I would love to see your friends install, I had the same problem myself because I wanted to keep my alpine for a tuner, I may end up mounting it in the glovebox

I'm not totally up on what he did, but he build some kind of frame and then used a kind of fabric that hardens into a fiberglass substance. He still has to paint it, but when he is finished it will look just like the Ford interior. This piece will mount almost vertically below the factory player, but the slot for the empeg will be at a much more reasonable level. I can tell you this is definately a labor of love for him.

-Jeff

I had my empeg installed in an S-10, and I've got a couple pics of it lying around somewhere, but I never put enough together for a photo gallery.

I have no idea where the pics are, so no promises, but I can tell you a little about the install. I had Boston 6.5 Pros in the front, some POS Pioneer 4x10s in the rear (yay GM), a Bazooka 10" powered sub behind the drivers seat (it was an extended cab), and I mounted the amp where the driver's side jump seat was. I removed all the foam and vinyl coverings, and bolted an MDF board to the jump seat frame, and then the amp to that.

All this stuff will be going into the Blazer now, but I'm not sure where yet.

I've installed my empeg/riocar in my 2001 Yukon Denali (a couple of times, a couple of different ways). Right now number6 is helping me intercept the bitstream data from the onstar hopefully so mlord can interface it into the riocar. After I finish I hope to have pictures. By the wya, I have two openings in the dash and two riocars so......

I have a 2000 Dakota Club Cab. I will be posting pictures of my install towards the end of this week or maybe Saturday. I will take pictures of the head unit, amp, and speakers (Guess I will have to clean the interior now...). I can show you how I mounted my amp to save some valuable interior space. There are a couple companies that have "Stealth" sub-woofer mounts for trucks. They actually replace the factory plastic compartments under the rear seats (if you have a club cab) so that the woofers will mount UNDER the rear seats http://www.4electronicwarehouse.com/products/car/vsenclosures/mtx/dakotaclub/ .

I went with a band pass box that takes up about 1/3 of my rear seating area. I did this mainly because I didn't want anyone sitting behind the drivers seat and pulling on the seat while I am driving - I hate that...

I cant wait to see it. I love to post some pics of my install if anyone knows where I can do this. ofcourse that would mean that I would also have to clean my truck. That takes a lot more time now that it is sitting on 35's

O.K. so I was going to wait till I finished the project to show some Install Porn, but since my co-worker let the cat out of the bag, I guess I can show a few pics.

First, it must be noted that the F-150 has something like a 1.75 DIN hole. There are several after-market kits that give a DIN mounting hole and some kind of short pocket. There just is not enough room to mount the empeg and a CD/Radio in the dash hole. I wanted to keep the factory head for the CD player and Radio when the empeg is not in it's sled.

My first attempt was to build a console with some cup holders on top and the empeg hidden inside. The top opened up to reveal the empeg. The idea turned out pretty good except that when I had a car full of people, the drink holders were usually full and so it was hard to open and get access to the empeg controls.

So I decided on a new approach. After much contemplation, I came to the conclusion that there just was not enough room to instal it anywhere except maybe under a seat or in the glove box. Neither sounded good to me. The only thing to do was to build a place to mount it.

Now, I learned while making the console that the inside of the F-150 is so $@#$() curved everywhere that there is no simple place to call "0" from which a set of measurements can be taken. I finally decided that the only hope was to mold a back piece that fits the contour of the dash exactly and then construct the rest of the box on top of that.

The first set of pics is the dash all taped up with the contoured fiberglass rear plate drying. The black stuff in the fiberglass is just sharpie ink I was using to mark the fiberglass material.

The second set of pics skips straight to the currently installed unit. The shell has just been primed, I still have to match the paint to the dash color and do some work on smoothing out the bezel around the face plate.

Now before someone gets their panties in a wad, I know that the recommended mounting angle is 0 degrees. However: 1. I don't have much choice, and 2. I looked inside the empeg, and I'm quite sure the worst consequence of a bad mounting angle would be hard drive failure. It'll be a good excuse to get a larger dirve. (Talk to me again in a few months, if I've had to replace the HD several times, then my story will likely change).

When the project is finished I'll post pics of all of the pieces, including the ethernet cable bracket for the wireless gear .

So less babble, more pictures . . .


Steve

Here are the second set of pics . . .


Steve

I am gonna post a few pics tonight that I have that are old just to "test out posting". THis weekend I will scrub it down and get some FULL BLOWN INSTALL PICS. You will die when you see the subwoofer. Its sooooo small and its sooooooooo loud cuase its a band-pass.

Very excellent. Please post those at riocar.org!