Kicker 51HS10 Subwoofer install - 2022 Maverick XLT

I recently added a Kicker 200.4 amplifier, which I ordered with the PlugNPlay kit that featured the subwoofer harness cabling. The subwoofer recently arrived so I thought I would go ahead and install it.

I'm not sure why some folks are cutting/removing the factory bracket that is used for the Lariat amplifier, the bracket worked perfect for my installation. The only thing I really had to do is bend the tiny upper side brackets so they were flat, really easy to do. I also bent the bottom tabs inward a bit to that the 4 mounting points were flush. I drilled out the 4 holes shown with a 1/4" drill bit. Tip: rotate the drill back and forth in a circular motion to slightly enlarge the holes, it will make it easier to slide the 1/4" bolts through.

Note: The bottom two mounting holes had a nut welded to the back, I just drilled right through the nut. The mounting bolts I bought would not fit into these existing nuts.



The 1/2" piece of plywood that I used I just happened to have laying in my garage wood stash, I used it the size it was which happened to be perfect. I mounted the board so it was flush to the piece of factory foam on the bottom below the bracket.

I used a paper template to mark the 4 bolt holes, and drilled them with a 1/4" bit, then I glued a piece of carpet to the board.

The bolts I found at Home Depot, I wanted ones with a flat top and these were marked as designed for furniture use. They are designed to be used with a "sleeve" type nut, but I just bought 4 quarter inch nuts.

Since the nuts cannot be reached in the back to hold them for installation of the bolt, I simply used some very strong packaging tape and taped them to the back of the screw hole, then carefully screwed each bolt to the nut. No problem tightening them, the nuts did not slip.




I mounted the sub to the board with the screws that were supplied with the subwoofer. It's best to drill pilot holes for those screws in advance of mounting the board to the vehicle bracket, as once the board is mounted it's hard to get a drill in the tight space to drill the pilot holes for mounting the subwoofer.

Note: Install the 2 lower Subwoofer brackets that are mounted to the back of the subwoofer so that they are at a 90 degree angle, this allows the subwoofer to be mounted at the very bottom of the backing board.

To give the subwoofer a little more "cushion", and to keep it slightly away from the four flat mounting bolts (so as to not scratch the back of the subwoofer), I attached four 1-inch round "peel & stick" "Gorilla H147 Pads" (Furniture Gripper Pads) to the back of the subwoofer. They are made of rubber (vs felt) which was ideal.

Finished result. The sub is mounted very securely, you can push/pull on the mounting board and it doesn't have any give at all:



I was trying to figure out a way to determine how much room exactly there was between the subwoofer and the seatback when the seatback was fully closed... then I thought of using one of my low-light Ring camera's... I placed the camera behind the seatback and locked the seatback into position. As seen in the photo, not really any room left, which shows the importance of mounting the sub as low as possible.





SUMMARY of total system upgrade cost:

Kicker 200.4 Amp with custom harness (PlugnPlay Kit #11-2) - $520
Kicker HS10 subwoofer - $341.96
Front door speakers - Kicker KSC-6504 $121.87
Rear speakers - Kicker DSC-404 $48.99

Misc: ($64.74)
Amp mounting bracket
1/4" nuts (subwoofer mounting board)
1/4" bolts - 1/4"-20 x 30mm (Everbilt 471538) (subwoofer mounting board)
Front door speaker rings (Metra 82-5605)
Front door speaker wire adaptors (Metra 72-5602)
Rear speaker wire adaptors (Metra 72-5600)

GRAND TOTAL: $1097.56

NOTE:
If anyone wants a PDF of my subwoofer installation write-up, send me a PM. The file also includes instructions for installing the Kicker 200.4 amplifier.

very nice, assuming you can still fold up the seat. do you have a sound file? the car already has good bass from the factory even with a basic audio setup for the xlt

Did basically same thing using that built-in bracket using the top to holes for direct amp mounting brackets from amp.
Then i put a board in lower 3 built-in bracket holes to handle lower amp brackets into wood.
Seat not affected at all.
I even mounted a red piece of Tupperware to hold the fuse block for amp so it was no dangling as i just got around to cleaning up the wires after a year of listening.

sva50233 said:

very nice, assuming you can still fold up the seat. do you have a sound file? the car already has good bass from the factory even with a basic audio setup for the xlt

Click to expand...

Seat clearance no problem, see last photo in my thread above.
Sound file?
The basic XLT system leaves a lot to be desired. The upgrades I did are a night and day difference, blows away the stock system.

23OxOrdered said:

Did basically same thing using that built-in bracket using the top to holes for direct amp mounting brackets from amp.
Then i put a board in lower 3 built-in bracket holes to handle lower amp brackets into wood.
Seat not affected at all.
I even mounted a red piece of Tupperware to hold the fuse block for amp so it was no dangling as i just got around to cleaning up the wires after a year of listening.

Click to expand...

Looks very nice. CLEVER idea with the Tupperware!

@Milous how hard was pillar take apart for Rear speakers - Kicker DSC-404 $48,99 ??

23OxOrdered said:

@Milous how hard was pillar take apart for Rear speakers - Kicker DSC-404 $48,99 ??

Click to expand...

It's been a couple years since I installed the rear speakers, but as I recall it was somewhat tricky removing the trim pieces. The trim piece with the speaker attached was a bit stubborn, it was not real easy to lift it upwards by hand to release it from the upper clips. If I remember correctly I used a small thin piece of wood dowel to put behind it and gently tapped it upwards with a hammer to free it.

Milous said:

I recently added a Kicker 200.4 amplifier, which I ordered with the PlugNPlay kit that featured the subwoofer harness cabling. The subwoofer recently arrived so I thought I would go ahead and install it.

I'm not sure why some folks are cutting/removing the factory bracket that is used for the Lariat amplifier, the bracket worked perfect for my installation. The only thing I really had to do is bend the tiny upper side brackets so they were flat, really easy to do. I also bent the bottom tabs inward a bit to that the 4 mounting points were flush. I drilled out the 4 holes shown with a 1/4" drill bit. Tip: rotate the drill back and forth in a circular motion to slightly enlarge the holes, it will make it easier to slide the 1/4" bolts through.

Note: The bottom two mounting holes had a nut welded to the back, I just drilled right through the nut. The mounting bolts I bought would not fit into these existing nuts.

The 1/2" piece of plywood that I used I just happened to have laying in my garage wood stash, I used it the size it was which happened to be perfect. I mounted the board so it was flush to the piece of factory foam on the bottom below the bracket.

I used a paper template to mark the 4 bolt holes, and drilled them with a 1/4" bit, then I glued a piece of carpet to the board.

The bolts I found at Home Depot, I wanted ones with a flat top and these were marked as designed for furniture use. They are designed to be used with a "sleeve" type nut, but I just bought 4 quarter inch nuts.

Since the nuts cannot be reached in the back to hold them for installation of the bolt, I simply used some very strong packaging tape and taped them to the back of the screw hole, then carefully screwed each bolt to the nut. No problem tightening them, the nuts did not slip.

I mounted the sub to the board with the screws that were supplied with the subwoofer. It's best to drill pilot holes for those screws in advance of mounting the board to the vehicle bracket, as once the board is mounted it's hard to get a drill in the tight space to drill the pilot holes for mounting the subwoofer.

Note: Install the 2 lower Subwoofer brackets that are mounted to the back of the subwoofer so that they are at a 90 degree angle, this allows the subwoofer to be mounted at the very bottom of the backing board.

To give the subwoofer a little more "cushion", and to keep it slightly away from the four flat mounting bolts (so as to not scratch the back of the subwoofer), I attached four 1-inch round "peel & stick" "Gorilla H147 Pads" (Furniture Gripper Pads) to the back of the subwoofer. They are made of rubber (vs felt) which was ideal.

Finished result. The sub is mounted very securely, you can push/pull on the mounting board and it doesn't have any give at all:

I was trying to figure out a way to determine how much room exactly there was between the subwoofer and the seatback when the seatback was fully closed... then I thought of using one of my low-light Ring camera's... I placed the camera behind the seatback and locked the seatback into position. As seen in the photo, not really any room left, which shows the importance of mounting the sub as low as possible.

SUMMARY of total system upgrade cost:

Kicker 200.4 Amp with custom harness - $520
Kicker HS10 subwoofer - $341.96
Front door speakers - Kicker KSC-6504 $121.87
Rear speakers - Kicker DSC-404 $48,99
Misc (amp mounting bracket, nuts, Metra speaker ring, speaker wire adaptors) $64.74

GRAND TOTAL: $1097.56

Click to expand...

You made nice diagrams. Good work! Most folks aren't very good fabricators.

You said that you have a kicker amp. Where did you mount that?

Also, being a kicker key 200.4....how did you handle the rear speakers' sound? As is, the sound levels/eq are different for the front and back. Did you just leave it as is and amplify them or did you somehow force a flat eq?

scyntaxx said:

You said that you have a kicker amp. Where did you mount that?

Also, being a kicker key 200.4....how did you handle the rear speakers' sound? As is, the sound levels/eq are different for the front and back. Did you just leave it as is and amplify them or did you somehow force a flat eq?

Click to expand...

Not speaking for OP, but this is the way:
https://www.mavericktruckclub.com/f...cket-to-mount-key-lc2i-behind-glovebox.13078/

You can and should set a flat eq with Forscan.

scyntaxx said:

You said that you have a kicker amp. Where did you mount that?

Click to expand...

Above the glovebox, using the 3D printed bracket.





However, for those that don't want to bother with the bracket, you can simply attach the 200.4 with zip ties to the metal frame pieces as shown in the pic below. I did this temporarily while I was awaiting delivery of the 3D bracket. It's surprising how secure the amp is with the zip ties.

scyntaxx said:

Also, being a kicker key 200.4....how did you handle the rear speakers' sound? As is, the sound levels/eq are different for the front and back. Did you just leave it as is and amplify them or did you somehow force a flat eq?

Click to expand...

I'm still tweaking the settings. So far I have run the Key Auto Setup, and I changed the Hi-Pass Filter on the amp to 120Hz, per the suggestion of a local audio tech. On the HS10 you can see the settings the tech suggested in a photo I added today to my original post. Before these changes the bass on the front door speakers would distort a little at upper volumes, and the subwoofer sound was not that noticeable. After changing the settings the front speakers handled the bass better and the sound from the subwoofer was much more noticeable.

Per the rear speakers I have not made any additional changes . The tech suggested I may need to add some filters to them, but all this EQ stuff is pretty much greek to me. So far I am thrilled with the sound quality, I mainly listen to 60s/70s rock, sometimes at average levels, sometimes at higher volumes.

Quality sound on a budget