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Installation date: 10/8/01

If you’re looking to improve the sound system in your TJ, well, you need to check out the ModPod by Select Increments. These nifty speaker boxes mount snugly to the kick panel just under the door. Despite how it might look, we have yet to hit these things with our feet, so there’s really no loss in foot room and the difference in the sound system is great.

The pods themselves are pretty simple, just some smallish molded speaker boxes made from 1/8″ plastic. They fit 5.25″ round speakers, and you can order them with or without a set of Profile 5.25″ coax poly speakers. We opted to go ahead and get the Profile speakers.

Installation is pretty straight forward. First thing to do is remove the wire bundle guard on the driver’s side, it just pops off. It doesn’t get reused, so if you break it, no big deal. The bar from our roll cage got in the way of the guard, so I ended up snapping it in half trying to get it out, whoops!

The wiring bundle is clipped to the back of the guard with pop-in clips, just pop the clips out.

The funny thing is, the clips are just the right distance and size to snap into the mounting holes on the door sill for the guard! So, you can use the clips to clip the wiring bundle to the rocker panel. Why Jeep doesn’t just do this to begin with and skip the plastic guard completely is beyond me…

Next you’ll want to hold the ModPod in position and mark the 2 mounting holes. The bolts supplied are supposedly self drilling and tapping, but I found it to work a lot easier if I marked the holes, moved the ModPod, and used a drill to drill a couple of pilot holes. The bolts when right in then.

Now you’ll need to run the speaker wires up to the factory speakers in the dash. A couple of screws later than the speaker grill in the dash pops right off. I used some inline wire splices and left the factory dash speaker plugged in. This doesn’t seem to have any negative effects on either the dash speaker or the ModPod, and helps boost the sound up front.

Now that the speaker leads are hooked up, put the nylon baffle material back in the ModPod and mount the speaker.

Clip on the speaker grill and you’re ready to rock (pun intended). The ModPods run about $90 a pair without speakers, and $150 a pair with the Profile coax speakers. They really sit pretty snug under the door sill, even though it’s hard to tell from the photos, and as I said above, they have yet to get in our way.

The improvement in the sound was huge though, definitely a welcome improvement. They’re angled up at the driver and passenger to increase the sound coming from the front of the vehicle. Now, when we’re driving around, especially with the top down, it doesn’t just sound like the overhead speaker bar blaring in our ears, it’s much more full and balanced front to rear, just the way a car, er, Jeep, stereo should be!

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