Stereo Upgrade - Notes and findings

Hello all. I have been upgrading the stereo in my F430 and thought I would post my findings. I have done many searches and some of this info was either hard to find or I could not find it at all. I am posting in the general area as I know some of this stuff crosses over into other models.

High Level-
Wanted to upgrade the factory stereo. My car came with the 'hifi' upgrade which included the ASK amplifier and center console subwoofer enclosure. Goal was to replace the door speakers, replace the subwoofer enclosure with normal full range speakers, add an amplifier and new subwoofer enclosure for a larger sub.

Purchases-
-Focal 165KX2 for the door replacements. These are 6.5 inch drivers with separate tweeters.
-Focal PC130F for replacing the speakers in the center console subwoofer enclosure. These are 5 inch drivers with a coaxial tweeter in them.
-JL Audio 10TW3-D4 Subwoofer. This is a 10inch driver that is designed for small spaces. My plan was to build a box to go behind the passenger seat.
-JL Audio XD700 5 channel amp. My plan was to use this to power the 4 focal drivers and 5th channel for the sub

Details / findings on the door speakers
-There is no easy way to run new speaker cabling into the doors. I read many posts on this, there are no direct cables / conduit to the doors. They use a 'molex' connector and there is no room in the rubber conduit for additional cables. This is not normally a problem, and connecting into the speaker cables from the head unit or amp would suffice. But, with the Focal 165KX2 series, you have to wire in a crossover. My solution to this was to mount the crossover inside the doors, just above the foam padding surrounding the factory speakers. This allowed me to use the existing cabling and then used the crossover to 'split' the signals to the driver vs tweeter
-The focal 6.5 in driver fits PERFECTLY in the factory mounting bracket. Only advice is to ensure the speaker connectors on the focal are facing away from the door hinge. On my first one, the connectors ended up bumping the internal of the door cavity. So on the drivers side, point them to 9 o'clock and on the passenger side to 3 o'clock
-The tweeters install nicely into the factory holes. You have to cut the interior plastic from behind the hole to allow the tweeter to be installed
-The speaker cables in the doors are purple/green on both sides, and do NOT correlate to the coloring on the amp. This was a bit confusing at first, more on this in the cabling section below

Details / findings on the center console subwoofer enclosure speakers
-The focal 5 inch drivers require some work to get installed. First, the speaker is slightly larger that the factory. This requires you to make the holes a bit larger. I used a air sanding tool to remove a couple mm on the openings. It makes a mess in the car. Second, the screw holes are slightly larger on the focal. I was able to use the screws that came with the speakers to screw into the factory holes.
-I was able to use the grills & plastic ring that came with the focal's instead of re-using the factory grills. The factory grills DO fit, but I liked the look of the focal over the factory
-The cabling is a bit strange, as the colors in the box (red/black & yellow/blue) do NOT align with what is on the amp.
-If you are not going to replace the factory amplifier, be aware that all of the crossover's happen inside that amp. So only low band frequencies are being sent to the enclosure

Amp Cabling (this was by far the hardest part)
-I studied for hours on where to install the amp. At first I was going to install it in the 'trunk' in the front of the car. But I could not find a suitable place to run power, 6 RCA's, and 5 sets of speaker cable without drilling. My goal was no drilling. If you can find an amp that will fit in the existing cradle that would be ideal. But I could not find a 5 channel amp with enough power to fit in there. I actually took the amp I purchased, disassembled it, cut the case with an angle grinder, reassembled it and tried to install into the cradle. When I turned it on I saw a poof of smoke (thinking back that was a pretty dumb idea)
-I ended up installing the amp behind the driver seat on the 'shelf' that is behind it. This worked out well as there are some good locations for power/ground under the shelf lid. I ended up running the power feed all the way back to the battery, I did not want to mess with the stuff under the shelf lid. But there was an easy location for ground. The shelf lid also provided for some easy cable hiding to run through the center console
-In order to get the cabling to that location, I partially disassembled the center console and remove the front cover that sits underneath the factory amp cradle. This made running the cables from the front of the car to the amp area relatively easy

Cabling in general
-In order to successfully 'tap' into the correct speaker cabling, you have to connect at the amp connector. I found that if I connected to the wiring harness at the head unit, nothing passes without the amp being plugged in. I was not able (or patient enough) to find a male harness to couple to the amp connector. I used T-Taps so I did not have to cut any cabling.
-Speaker cabling goes as follows:
--Yellow = Front Left
--White = Front Right
--Blue = Sub enclosure 1 (now rear left)
--Orange = Sub enclosure 2 (now rear right)
-I ended up using the original amp cradle as a cable holder

I hope this info helps someone out there. I took some pictures, so if you are interested let me know.