New Speakers.

I forgot to record the exact date, but at some point in January I swapped out all four door speakers in favor of Polk Mobile Monitor 5"x7" - MM571. Apparently they are now discontinued, which must be why I got such a great price from crutchfield.com!

I have the "audiophile" trim level, which is a stretch, though it was definitely better than the standard trim I'm sure. There is an 8" sub in the rear passenger wall (which I might upgrade as well at some point), and the front 5x7 stock speakers did have a real tweeter in them.

I also picked up some Peel-and-Seal at Lowe's, the budget dynamat alternative. It felt cool when I was putting it on, like I was really optimizing things, but in the end I'm not sure how much difference it really makes. Ford actually did a fairly decent job of padding the doors under the plastic door panels, and the door panels were very straightforward to remove. There's the obvious 3 screws, plus a larger torx head hidden behind the door lever. As usually, Crutchfield's install kit was spot on, and made everything a breeze to install.

The Polks sound much better though, as expected. The highs are clear and noticeably brighter than stock, and the bass is tighter and hits better. These Mobile Monitor dual drivers included an external crossover network, which I wired inside the doors. One nice thing about these Polks is that they handle water and moisture really well. You wouldn't think about water inside your car door, but enough of the water that hits your window ends up dripping inside for this to be a concern long term.