Power feed was tapped directly at the battery and run out. I put the fuse holder under the seat so that it was accessible. I took the pictures with my camera and can't find the cable at the moment. Oops.
Power wire was covered in Red techflex.

I made new spacers for the Focal 165V30 Midranges that bolt in place of the factory speaker. They were made out of 2 pieces of 3/4" MDF and a piece of 1/4" mdf, the outer ring was back cut to ensure plenty of room for the mid to breathe. They were glued, clamped together, and painted with truck bed liner to keep them from rotting.

Since the factory door panel had a spot for a small mid (I assume with the Dyn system) I made a plate to block these off.

They screw in to block the hole. I covered them in closed cell foam before mounting them so they wouldn't squeak or rattle.

Jay

 

Removing the door:

I recommend using a set of plastic pry tools (cheap, and available at Harbor Freight)

Stock door for reference:

Carefully remove cover from door pull.

There is a screw back at the top. IIRC it is a T27 or T30.

Note woodgrain trim:

Carefully remove this. I found prying from the bottom toward the rear worked well to get it started and then I used my fingers. CAREFULLY. lol

Remove this screw.

Carefully pop the panel with the window button off. 2 screws back there.

Don't miss this one on the bottom:

Then carefully pull the door panel off. I used my fingers, but a panel tool might work better for some. Be careful...wrap the end where it makes contact in several layers of tape so it doesn't scratch...start at the bottom.
Once it's loose, unclip the door pull cable:

And unplug the puddle lamp:

That should do it...but It's been a couple weeks, so don't blame me if I forgot something. LOL

Jay

 

OK, that's not *quite* it. You also need to unplug the blue connector from the door module.

Now, you should be good. LOL

Now, because I'm me, and I take everything WAY too far, I decided to run 2 runs of 12ga speaker wire into the door incase we ran the tweeters in the factory location (or ran a 3 way with a tweeter on the a pillar).

You need to rotate the orange clip down to get it to unplug from the door. I believe there was a locking tab at the top.

Then pull that out. There were plenty of unused holes in the plug that allowed me room to cut holes in the plug for the 12ga to run through.

I popped the car side connector out, also, for easier access:

Jay

 

Then I used my air powered dremel to make holes in both sides of the plug.

The bottom of the groove I cut was so thin I went ahead and removed the excess plastic.

Then I fed the wires through the factory boot (A real PITA!) and came out the factory location.

Bolted in my adapter plates:

Woofer wire, techflexed and run to woofer. Terminated and heat shrink.

Woofer bolted in:

Jay

 

Wires in truck, techflexed, terminated, heat shrink and labeled.

About where the crossovers ended up (but not quite):

Sound deadened the door:

Blocked off mid hole in door:

And more sound deadening:

Also went back and added closed cell foam between the woofer mounts and the door panel to decouple it.

Jay

 

Ran an Ignition feed from the fuse box, just in case. Wire was techflexed, heat shrank, labeled and I used a fuse tap to avoid issues with the dealer. No wires were cut during this installation.

I later had to go in and interrupt this wire with a relay, triggered by the starter wire, so the feed would drop out during crank.

Found the starter relay under the cowl in the fuse box. It's marked "433". The wire is actually a red/black 10 or 12ga wire in a black plug a little further back in the box.

I tapped there (fused), ran it through the grommet in the fusebox and along the factory harness to a grommet above the gas pedal.

I didn't get any pics of the relay or grommet, but you get the idea.

I tried the Mosconi using signal sensing, but it stayed on too long, so if you turned the car on, but waited before starting it, you got a very loud pop through the speakers. Then I tried using my original ignition feed, and had the same problem.

After trying everything I could think of, I called a guy at ORCA (US Distributor for Mosconi) and he suggested wiring the switched wire to the "+12V" on the mosconi, and the amp, and not using the remote out on the Mosconi. As long as the feed I ran dropped during crank, it worked great.

It was hard to diagnose because it was a combination of things. But in the end it works great.

Jay

 

Next up, sub box.

Pulled the left rear side panel out of the truck to make it easier to work on.

Removed the little "wall" at the bottom. It just snaps out.
Then I turned the panel over and ground the plastic welds out for the piece it snaps into and removed that. It can easily be reinstalled with short ISO screws. Didn't get any pics of the last part. Ooops.

Built up my glass to about 1/4". I prefer to use lots of layers instead of using Coremat or Woven Roving because it makes for a more deadened box. I cut a wood frame to serve as the face.

Cut a ring to recess the sub for a flush grille.

Pics of the Arc Audio Black 10:

It's a monster. lol

Jay

 

Sorry, I just noticed some of the pics are out of order.
The accompanying text (mostly) applies.

This is probably closer to 1/4" of glass, the pic in the last post was like the first layer.

Side panel:

"Wall" retainer removed:

Taped off before glass.

More glass:

While I let that harden, I wired up the Mosconi...Techflex, heat shring, solder and labeling.

Grabbed Constant 12v and Ground at the HU harness in back to avoid ground loops.

Relocated factory HU to top plastic Din slot. It wnet right in and the locking tabs even lined up!

Mosconi underneath it.

Built and painted the amp rack:

It bolts to two of the original HU brain mounting points and one unused ground point.

Jay

 

Trimmed up glass portion of box, added deadener.

Tested airspace with a bag full of popcorn:

On a side note, while I was running wires I noticed this area:

The floor is uneven, and the Alpine amp we used wouldn't have cleared the floor...but if you are using something small and narrow, (say Arc Mini or Memphis Belle) you might be able to get your amp in this area.

As a matter of fact, I'd be curious to try a couple of Arc Mini's next time around.

I don't necessarily think they'd perform much better, but it would make serviceability easier.

Jay

 

How I grabbed signal:

I happened to have a Metra 71-9003 plug at the shop a customer ended up not needing. I took the speaker portion out of it and added RCA ends to it...soldered, heat shrink, labeled.

Then I popped the factory speaker portion of the plug out and replaced it with this. Then (since I still used the factory wires for the rear speakers) I used a metra 70-9003 harness to clip onto the factory speaker wires and that gave me my rear speaker wires for the amp. Techflex, heat shrink, yada yada. I used a ziptie to make sure they didn't come apart.

Jay

 

I think you can see it in this pic:

Got the amp all wired:

Everything is techflexed, heat shrunk and labeled.

Amp mounted to amp rack:

Back end buttoned up:

Jay

 

Back to the box...I test fit the woofer before I laid all the glass in...when I got it all built up, the air space was a little small and the woofer no longer fit!
So, I revised my plan slightly:

This is when I thought it would still fit, baffle attached with fiberglass reinforced body filler. I stood on the box (I weight about 240lbs) and it didn't make a peep.

After I realized it wouldn't fit, I made another ring to space up the woofer for clearance, which also gave me a 1 1/2" baffle. I then used some ABS plastic to create a recessed ring for a grille.

Then I built my grille frame:

As it so happens, this gave me a reason to rework the box and get more airspace. So it turned out to be a good thing.

Jay

 

Then I opened up the baffle so the woofer could use the extra air space I was about to add.

Wrapped it in an old work t shirt to get my shape and applied a layer of resin.

I didn't get any pics of adding fiberglass cloth and resin to it since I didn't want to get any of that on my camera or my phone.

Built up and trimmed, checking to see how it looks.

Taped off panel again, and blended edges with Easyglass for a perfect fit.

Some body work to get it smooth and shaped right. Took about three hours to get perfect by hand...I even made my fingers bleed. lol

Jay

 

On to the grille:

Stapled some metal mesh I had into the recess of the ring. Then applied Easyglass to bond it in and blend the edges.

The mesh has been kicking around my garage for years waiting for me to use it, so it wasn't perfectly flat...that's why it looks like there's so much filler on it. Because I used fiberglass reinforced filler, I had to go back and manually pop out hundreds of holes that were block with it. I didn't get an pics, tho. Fingers hurt by then. LOL

Apparently I got no pics of my applying the grill cloth to it, either.

Jay

 

When I ran the sub wire (12ga OFC) I terminated it with a Deans connector. You RC Car guys may know these. Makes it easy to unplug if I need to pull the box out.

I dislike terminal cups, so I ran the wire out (it goes out the top where the dome light used to be) and sealed the hole.

Painted the area around the woofer:

Deadened the back side of the panel.

Jay

 

Applied vinyl with DAP Weldwood Landau Top adhesive.

Then added grille after the woofer was loaded (wired to 2 ohms, getting about 500 watts)

Jay

 

The original intent was to keep everything stealth as possible....but the factory tweeter locations were awful. I moved the tweeters up to the pillars and tried to make them as unobtrusive as possible.

Pillars before:

Marked off with painter's tape to get my locations exact.

Modded some Focal tweeter cups to the tweeter would still go in and out with the Focal tool. CA glued to the pillar once in position.

Wrapped in some more t-shirt.

Glassed.

Blended with filler:

Wrapped in Metra InstallBay Light Gray Grille Cloth:

Not a *perfect* match...color is pretty close, but the weave opened up when I applied it, so the texture isn't perfect. Probably be fine for 99% of people out there, and it's all but impossible to find the factory match fabric.

The passenger one turned out a little lumpy so I'm going to redo this in a couple of weeks.

He took it Friday so he could get some time in it, and we can get some feed back and let the speakers break in. Then it will return for some touch up work and retuning.

I guess it was an improvement based on the email I got from him. LOL

Jay

 

I just realized I forgot to mention, once I got my shape on the pillars with the tshirt, it was too brittle to leave that way. I cut some opening from the back side and poured in a mixture of Fiberglass reinforced Filler and Fiberglass resin...strengthened it up nice and solid now.

Jay

 

Also, the box is mounted with 3/8" carriage bolts and washers/nuts/lock washers front and back, with 3 or 4 screws to keep tension in critical areas. I tried to keep from making any extra holes.

One thing I noticed, the box makes getting to the tail light release a pain...hopefully the bulbs last a while.

Jay

 

Jay, how is the sound quality over the stock stereo you replaced?

 

Hi Zosocane,
I have about 7 hours into this system and in my opinion, it is night and day over the stock Lux audio package. I had about 25-30 hours with the stock system before I completed my due diligence and dropped it off to Jay. I'm currently breaking it in and I would say moving the sound stage up and cleaning up the lower end have had the biggest impact thus far. The biggest problem I had with the stock system was really after about 25% on the volume, the low end would muddle up, I'd lose mid-bass range and detail in the high end was never there to begin with or just lost by the bass mud. After seeing the initial Frequency Response chart, it pretty much validated what I was hearing so that made me feel pretty good about it trusting my ears. I'm still running through my usual gamut of reference material and making notes to compare with the final tune but for me and my tastes, this makes the traffic jams I'm in much more tolerable. Add that to the reasons we're all on a Touareg forum and you get the idea. More to come...

 

With just a basic tune, it's FAR better. My initial impressions of the factory setup were that the sound stage was basically coming off the top of the cluster or steering wheel. No real bass to speak of and the highs were diffused and muffled.

Now the soundstage basically goes from pillar to pillar, is on top of the dash almost to the windshield. The highs are much clearer, and there is actual impact with bass.

Once Touaric sees this, he would probably be the one to comment.

I only expect it to get better after the speakers break in and we retune it.

Jay

 

this is AWESOME. very detailed and thorough. I wish you were in the washington DC area to do installs.

 

this is AWESOME. very detailed and thorough. I wish you were in the washington DC area to do installs.

Big questions: how much did this cost and is it substantially better than the Dynaudio in the Exec? Thanks - great stuff here.

 

Also, how do we make the exec sound better than it does? I moved the fader back so more base comes from the back but the base seems kinda dull and non distint

 

Replace it? LOL Frankly, for how much Tregs cost, I can't believe how BAD the audio system is. I had made a comment on another forum that the factory system had very little impact, but seemed to have a lot of "bass."
It's like they used a high pass filter, or some sort of circuitry (like the BX circuitry in Arc Audio Mini amps) to shift the bass "up" in the frequency range.

Honestly, I don't know how much you'll be able to improve it without replacing or adding components.

Jay

 

So JayinMI...I'll be dropping off my Treg at the beginning of Oct.. think you can have mine done by Dec 20th?

 

Might be doable. I'll check the PM now. lol

Jay