# 2005 Ford Taurus



## Foster (Mar 17, 2008)

This is a 2+ year adventure/learning experience recap of all the work I've put into this pig...

Bought the car in 2005 because I was desperate and it was literally the only option I had at the time (long story I'd rather not share). Since I was stuck with this car I didn't exactly like I decided I wanted to put some money into it which I wouldn’t normally do. Now I really like the car and won’t be letting it go anytime soon. 

The Ford stock stereo (at least in the Taurus) BLOWS!!!!!! At 80mph on the freeway you can barely hear vocals with the damn thing cranked! I purchased an Alpine 9851 and a dash kit on whim to see if it helped any. Well, little did I know that Ford in their infinite wisdom mounted the FM tuner and speaker connections in the FREAKING TRUNK! Not only that but the stereo and heat/AC controls are all in one piece so the dash kit looks like crap. I hope to change that someday soon…

The new Alpine was installed in late 2005 but it really exposed the weak ass 5x7’s in the doors and rear deck. Also the road noise was still so loud that even with more output the sound was still suffering. So, for xmas 2005 I had my ex buy me some Infinity 6x8’s and a powered sub before I knew any better. These helped quite a bit but I was still constantly irritated by the road noise. I started reading around and found out about sound deadening so in Feb 2006 I had my ex buy me 2 rolls of RaamMat and several yards of Ensolite. I got my drivers side door done and was really impressed by the difference but didn’t realize how much work I had gotten myself into and never finished the rest of the car like I had planned. 

Funny side note; One of my rears quit working a couple months after installing it and since I didn’t have time to fix it I faded it to the front. Thanks to a faulty rear speaker I realized that only running fronts sounds a hell of a lot better. At this time I had never heard of a “front stage” heh. 

Fast forward to several months later… the ex and I broke up and I now had a lot more free time on my hands. When my drivers side speaker started cutting in and out randomly I got the itch to finish the deadening and add an amp for the fronts. Adding the amp proved to be quite a bit more difficult then I had expected since I had to have holes drilled in my door for the speaker wire. I also had two holes drilled in the firewall for two 8ga power wires since my first wire I ran was over the fender mount, down the door jam and in to the cabin via the wire boot in the door (read: not good). 

When I ripped 100% of the interior out to start the RaamMat deadening I found the floor to be not as flat as I expected. By then I had found out about Sludge and decided to order 2 gallons of it for the floor. I ended up driving my car with just the driver seat and seat belt for 2 weeks while I finished this second attempt at deadening. 3 layers of Sludge on the floor completely transformed my POS Ford into a luxury car as far as road noise is concerned! 

At this point I was done with f’ing with my car, it sounded great all put back together and I found other things to do. I still had 100+ sq. ft of mat and ¾ gal of Sludge that ended up sitting in my garage for 2 winters. I even tried to sell it on CAF at one point! 

Then my powered sub from Infinity died on me in February just in time for my birthday. Since I got the Infinity over 2 years ago now, it was always in the back of my mind that it could be better. I started looking on CAF again and put together a sub, amp and box for $200 shipped that thoroughly wiped the floor with that Infinity. Now that I’ve heard what a decent quality sub sounds like I’m completely obsessed with improving my overall sound. 


I pulled my deadener from the hole in the garage where it’s sat now for over a year and got to work. 

Sorry for the crap pictures all I have is an HD camcorder for a camera.

Started with the never started passenger side door…










After mat and sludge on the inside I sealed it up as best as possible with aluminum sheet.




























Then a couple layers on the outside…










Door card, hard to tell but the speaker grill is surrounded with Ensolite.
Best Before shot I have…









After (still needs some work actually…)










With the door done I finally get to replace the Infinity 6x8’s. Needed to do this on the cheap and wanted to baby step my way into a 2 way comp set not knowing what to expect. Cadence CWM-6 for $75 gets lots of refs on CAF…

Don’t have a router and couldn’t justify buying one right now so I had the local shop cut out some ¾” MDF mounts for the woofer. And surprisingly the tweeter fit nicely in the mirror mount cover with a simple hole saw. These are both temporary but turned out very nicely for what it is.















































Pulled the rear seat back and parcel tray cover. Still had the one speaker back there and both crossovers zip tied to the torsion bars. 

Before


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## Foster (Mar 17, 2008)

After



























While working on the parcel tray I decided to pull the trunk apart and just get it over with even though I was already losing interest with deadening. I had to leave everything unhooked for several days to keep me from quitting. 

Before floor




































Midway


















2 layers of mat and 2 layers of sludge on the wheel wells.




































The last shots were taken last Wed. and I wasn’t going to be able to do any more work on it for a while so I had to button it back up only 75% finished. 

That is where I stand with the car today, I’m very happy with the results so far. The Cadence set sounds amazing compared to the crap Infinity’s. Midbass is leaps and bounds better and the highs are much clearer. The highs are a little harsh when pushed closer to max volume but not nearly as bad as the Infinity’s. I also had to get used to the sound being up so high but I really like the separation now. The sub bass is even better with the trunk being well deadened and all audible rattles are gone. 

Current install…

Alpine 9851
Alpine 2 Channel 
Cadence CWM-6 comp set
Directed D600 
ID 10 V3 D4
70ish sq. ft. RaamMat
1 ¾ Gallons of Sludge
Some Ensolite 

Future plans, wants, needs and dreams.

I would love this car to be SQ competition quality and plan to make it happen within the next year. 

Fully active 3-way front stage which will require heavy fab work 
Dual 10’s in Stereo which will require a complete trunk build out
Complete re-wire to the likes of BigRed and The G quality
Lots more deadening 
Would love to see a complete Zapco and HAT install but I just cannot justify that expense so I’m going for cheap quality. 

Unfortunately everything is on hold with the car until it gets a new rear suspension and brakes on all four corners. The deadening in the trunk really made the sagging rear suspension a lot worse and can no longer be ignored. I am going to start stock pilling the cable for the complete re-wire which I would really like to complete in May. If the bug doesn’t go away I’m probably going to end up with a 4 channel amp and a 9887 to start experimenting with new drivers in an active setup.

Thanks BigRed and The G and many others for the inspiration to continue what I started 2+ years ago. Hopefully I can accomplish the rest… Stay tuned!


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## syd-monster (Jan 7, 2008)

Woah, patience is a virtue you have in spades mate. This far down the line on a Taurus, I would have caved in. Well done!


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## Brian_smith06 (Jan 31, 2008)

nice work. im really looking forward to seeing what you do with this. i have a buddy with an 04 taurus and maybe this will give us some ideas for his. oh and i love the deadening pics, thats always my favorite part of any install


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## Foster (Mar 17, 2008)

Thanks guys... Think I'm going to increase the size of the pics, I didn't realize they were so small.

I have found a new "buzz" from the passenger door when listening to NIN - With Teeth. Not looking forward to pulling the door card again so soon but it must be stopped...


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## E300 (Apr 23, 2009)

Any updates?


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## ZAKOH (Nov 26, 2010)

I kinda wonder, what's the point of covering every square inch of the trunk surfaces, even the bent ones, with vibration dampening tiles?


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## SHOToonz (Sep 18, 2007)

i can't help but wonder why bump a 3 year old thread...


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## subwoofery (Nov 9, 2008)

SHOToonz said:


> i can't help but wonder why bump a 3 year old thread...


That guy might have a Taurus too and wants to see the final result... Who knows  

Kelvin


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## E300 (Apr 23, 2009)

subwoofery said:


> That guy might have a Taurus too and wants to see the final result... Who knows
> 
> Kelvin


Nail on the head...


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## mitchjr (Mar 8, 2010)

I have an '02 Taurus and it looks exactly like this. I had my tweets in the mirror covers (?) on the doors and when I moved them to the pillars it helped a lot. If yours is like mine the drivers side was firing into the hump on the dash. I now have my FR-88's in pods tucked as deep on the dash as they would go. (I also fit the 4" deep RE XXX mids in those doors) glwt

How is your sub box fit? There is that area in the front that I can't decide what to do with. Its kind of a large area to have wasted in front of the box but if I make the box small enough to tuck inside it that wastes a lot of height, and requires the box to be deeper. My thought right now was to maybe put a sheet of mdf (like a wall) and mount the amps in there facing the interior. My car doesn't have the fold down seats which is a bummer, but it's not hard to pull out completely. 
Hopefuly someone understands the area I'm referring to. Any thoughts would be great. It's just exciting to know at least 2 other people putting stereos in these. 

And as far as the rear springs, one of mine broke completely and I replaced both last summer. I have to say that I am unimpressed with the outcome. It still looks a lot lower than the front and the fronts are still original. I got moog springs from advance. What's funny is ford recalled their springs on '01 and older models and every one of our newer version has the same issue and ford won't recall them. Bs


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## schmiddr2 (Aug 10, 2009)

E300 said:


> Any updates?


Click on his user name, view profile, and it shows his "Last Activity: 08-19-2008 "

So it's unlikely he would respond to you considering so much time has elapsed since his last login.


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## SHOToonz (Sep 18, 2007)

if you wanna raise your ass end up a bit, you can raise the strut inside the knuckle a bit...us SHO guys go the opposite direction to get rid of wheel gap on the gen IIIs which share suspension.


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## E300 (Apr 23, 2009)

mitchjr said:


> I have an '02 Taurus and it looks exactly like this. I had my tweets in the mirror covers (?) on the doors and when I moved them to the pillars it helped a lot. If yours is like mine the drivers side was firing into the hump on the dash. I now have my FR-88's in pods tucked as deep on the dash as they would go. (I also fit the 4" deep RE XXX mids in those doors) glwt
> 
> How is your sub box fit? There is that area in the front that I can't decide what to do with. Its kind of a large area to have wasted in front of the box but if I make the box small enough to tuck inside it that wastes a lot of height, and requires the box to be deeper. My thought right now was to maybe put a sheet of mdf (like a wall) and mount the amps in there facing the interior. My car doesn't have the fold down seats which is a bummer, but it's not hard to pull out completely.
> Hopefuly someone understands the area I'm referring to. Any thoughts would be great. It's just exciting to know at least 2 other people putting stereos in these.
> ...


Any pictures you would be willing to share of what you have done?


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## SHOToonz (Sep 18, 2007)

ford screwed the pooch on the 96-05 suspension. i'm not sure if ya'll know this, but the taurus went essentially unchanged from 96-06 when they killed it. everything from my 98 SHO will bolt up to a 03 Taurus without serious modification except for the tail end. hell, there's a gen III SHO running around with a gen IV front clip that bolted right on. unfortunately, there aren't many options for stiffer springs unless you wanna lower the car. you can, however, take out the pinch bolt for the strut, grind the bracket off the strut, slide the knuckle down the strut and tighten the pinch bolt...it's good for about an inch or so.


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