The stereo that should have came with F3L

[Sammie]

I'm on the finishing touches of having 100 watts stereo on F3L with no major modification on the spyder dash. All new amp and 5.25 speakers and best thing is, looking at the bike you would never know. Best thing I still am able to use the speed volume assist and can actual hear the music at 85mph. Didn't want to have to turn volume down at each stop So, after a lot of experimenting and multiple voltage test I was able to accomplish what I wanted.
To get everything to work you do have to get one or two additional items because the stock headunit puts out a very weak signal at idle. If you are thinking about doing something like this and want to keep all factory features such as the speed assist volume just ask as I probably know more now than the designers that originally installed that 15watt stereo.

[pegasus1300]

I can guarantee that others will want to know what you did so please put a write up on the process as soon as you can. Thank you for your creativity and willingness to share.

[BLUEKNIGHT911]

I can guarantee that others will want to know what you did so please put a write up on the process as soon as you can. Thank you for your creativity and willingness to share.

X's 10 ..... what speakers did you go with ???? ..... what exactly is the center device in the pics ???? .... and have you replaced the OEM face parts ????? .... need lots more info .... our appetites are beyond WET and ....:congrats..... Mike

[MONK]

X's 10 ..... what speakers did you go with ???? ..... what exactly is the center device in the pics ???? .... and have you replaced the OEM face parts ????? .... need lots more info .... our appetites are beyond WET and ....:congrats..... Mike

I think the "center device" you're referring to is the 2018+ dash.

[spyderbear]

You are a Great in my book . I have been trying to do that stock controls but real sound. Please give details when you can .You found the holy grail . Great job !!!

[Sammie]

Sorry about the length of this:
This was the second attempt at trying to achieve my goals but im no quitter. This was done on a 2019 F3L, these bikes have 4 4ohm (actually 3 by meter but give or take) speakers up front and 2 in the rear. The 4 up font are split with mid/lows going into the OEM woofers and highs going into the OEM mid speaker (the 2 inch speaker) and the back are sort of full range speakers. The headunit has 4 channels (as normal) but the OEM 20 Watt amp splits the front input into lows on one channel and mids on another channel and feeds the rear full range. For this reason using the OEM amp would not give me the desired results i was looking for.

My goal was to do the least modification i can on the OEM panels and maintain the stock appearance. I just wanted to be able to hear the music at 70 - 85 MPH (my normal highway speed). My first attempt i went with the Polk Audio 402 DB+ speakers (4 inch 45 watt RMS), Kenwood 45 RMS amp, and Sound Audio LC1i LOC and line booster. Note, to get good sound from the stock headunit to your amp you will want to get some sort of line booster as the headunit just doesnt put out much current at idle or low speed. My test should that the headunit alone set at wide open sent .1 volts from the front channels at idle and only 2.0 volts at 50MPH with the speed volume set on high (the headunit with variable speed volume is all in at 50 MPH). This really is not enough power to let after market amps work as they should. So this is where the line booster comes in, you can add a line booster (in my case the LC1i) to boost that idle to .3 volts at idle to 3.4 volts at 50MPH. This is what i needed. (Note that the front channels on the OEM headunit put out more power than the rear in all scenarios so i am using just the front channels of the OEM headunit (i never switch from front to back speakers so i am not missing anything). Now with everything connected it sounded great at slow travel but 45 watts was just not able to produce the sound i needed at highway speeds for me and my wife.

So here we go again, This time i went with Polk Audio db522 DB+ 5.25 speakers (Polk Audio has the shallowest foot print from what i have seen and plus the 402s sounded great they just didnt work for my application. The db522 are 100Watt speakers so with that i purchased an amp that will deliver that 100 Watt easily and i have used their amps before in my Harley so i trust them. I purchased the Sound Stream stealth st4.1200D (4 channel 100Watt RMS x4). so with this new hardware it was time to figure out how to install it with minimal fabrication to the Spyder. Let the fun begin.

Shopping List includes:
1/4 Acrylic sheet (2 x 3 or something small like that) about 25.00
Foam sheets from Hobby Lobby (used as insulation as i wanted to take full advantage of the OEM ported enclosures that are on these bikes) about 1.50

To mount the 5.25 speakers i used the Acrylic sheet and made me 2 spacers with one having the inside diameter a tad smaller than the outer spacer (image included). Use the foam sheet to create a seal between the bottom spacer and the OEM speaker box. Reason for 2 spacers is so i could mount the inner spacer to the original speaker holes and then attach the outer spacer to the inner spacer. Have to counter sink the mounting screws in the first spacer along with making the inside cut out angled so the speaker can slide into the spacer as deep as it can without going outside of the OEM speaker box diameter and make the same counter sink holes on the inside of the outer spacer. Using the 2 sided tape between the spacers for sealant and to help hold the 2 spacers together at the top as the top you will have to cut off one mounting ear on the 522 speakers or the tab will hit the bottom of the dash. With the acrylic spacers leave 3 mounting tabs so the 522's can be mounted to the speakers. With the spacers mounted you just need to mount the speakers to the spacers.

With the speakers mounted it was time to replace the 45 watt amp with the 100watt soundstream which because i already had the wires run from the previous fail it was simply a matter of cutting and soldering wires. The rear speakers are a different story but because the OEM rear speaker boxes are not expensive and easy to replace and are limited in outward space i am just going to widen the mounting hole in the rear speaker pods that are also ported and just drill me the few mounting holes needed for the speakers.

When the front was completed to set the amp correctly i ran a few test using the variable speed volume by connecting a volt meter and taking a few trips around some back roads to make sure that when the head unit goes all in that the amp was not sending to many volts to the speakers (the more power in an amp, the more power out the amp). With screw driver in hand, Speakers UNPLUGGED, Meter straped to bike connected to one of the speaker outputs from the amp, phone playing 1000Hz wide open, and Head Unit set almost wide open (this headunit does not put out enough voltage to cause clipping at full range so if test are done at 3/4 volume you will be leaving power on the table. A few trips later i had my settings for 100 Watt power to the speakers when traveling at highway speeds. At idle it is now (depending on the test tune used) in my case i used all three but my settings are based off a -3DB test tune (music is dynamic so using a 0db test tune is also leaving power on the table). Currently at idle my output is 2.9 volts for a -6db test tune, 4.4 volts for a -3db test tune, and 5.7 volts for 0db test tune. I say at idle because at 45-50 MPH the oem headunit will increase its voltage out and this increases the voltage the amp sends to the speakers. The headunit with the line driver (booster) will up its voltage from .3 volts at idle to 3.4 volts at high settings on the speed assist and if you set your gain on amp from what you have at idle it is sure to burn something up when you highway travel as this can have the amp sending 30+ volts to the speakers that only need 20 volts to put out its 100 Watt RMS. With all amp settings done and bike put back together (yes i rode with bike panels off) i went for test ride with just the 2 front speakers (when in town i remove the back luggage box so it feels like i have 2 bikes a F3L and F3T) and to my pleasure i could ride down the road radio set almost full power traveling 85+ mph and clearly hear the radio. Best part is when i come to a light, i dont have to turn down the radio it does it itself, then when im back up to speed its turned itself back up. I can only imagine how it would sound with the 2 rear speakers also (these are in the mail as i just took measurements yesterday to make sure i could get them to fit in the rear ported box.

Oh, also for those that said the coaxial speakers had no bass apparently they didnt take advantage of the OEM ported box because with the speakers sealed off the bass out of these little speakers is unreal, I had to turn the equalizer bass down because it was just hitting to hard for how i like it. I know this write up is all over the place but if any questions arise just let me know. The images attached are how the bike looked while all this was going on (it was sad), an image of the two spacers connected to the OEM speaker mounts (if you look close you may see the 4 OEM mounting screws between the 2 spacers, the 5.25 connected to the spacers (you will have to take a razor knife and trim about an 1/8 or so off the backside diagonal support on the clip mount so the edge of the speaker doesnt push out the clip mount on the dash so the dash cover snaps back in place with no stress. Also image of the dash back in place to show no visual difference. Another image of the wiring harness with new connectors (the grey connectors) from removing the OEM amp (not for the faint at heart) and using the existing 4 front speaker output wires from headunit and also the amp trigger wire from headunit into one connector (4 wires total) and the other connector is to the 8 speakers wires that go to the actual OEM speaker wires into the other connector. The others stock wires were cut back a little in the harness and ends were sealed and wire shrink holds ever thing neatly together. The other image is where the Amp and the LC1i is mounted which neatly fits behind the front storage insert so that no space is lost and if you didnt know it had been upgraded you wouldnt until you heard it actually play at 70-85 + mph down the road.

[Hammerfyst]

Finally, a solution. Nice write up!