Wiring front door is not as intuitive as other cars I've installed in. I am used to being able to run the wire through the rubber boot straight into the door cavity. The FJ (stock) doesn't do that. I also wasn't to thrilled about drilling through the door, even if I put in a grommet to protect the wire. Here are the photos and explanations if anyone is interested.
I also had a problem paying $40 for the tacotunes adapter and fabbed my own out of industrial cutting board stock (about 3/8" thick). Worked like a charm. Explanation on how to do it is incorporated below.
Here is door with speaker.
Closeup on speaker opening.
Here's how I did the adapter.
A. Remove Speaker. 4 10mm bolts. Disconnect plug
B. Put old speaker down on stock. Trace outline. Mark holes
C. Cut out (I used plain old jig saw). cutting board stock cuts and drills like wood. very easy to work with. when you drill holes, bore them about 1/4" to give yourself some wiggle room to match up with stock holes. Take some sandpaper (I used a dremel with rotary sanding bit) to clean up edges and get off any burrs left. You can use the first as a template for the second (after making sure your holes match up), just remember which is front and which is back. Top and bottom are pretty easy...the tabs on top are smaller than the ones on the bottom.
Here is a pic of the cut out
I would recommend that you ditch stock 10mm bolts and get some that are slightly larger. The plastic housing can get overworked and stripped pretty easily. Also, by adding a thicker adapter, the screws are likely not long enough. I went with a large pan head phillips, about 1" long. Worked perfectly.
Now for the wiring.
A. Pull off rubber door seal. The clips are "T" clips. There are two just above and below the black metal bracket that holds the wiring boot as it comes to the door. Just pull down slightly and gently pull away from the door. (see photo above)
B. Pull out the 2 10mm bolts holding the black metal bracket to the door. Use shallow socket...deep set will likely cause you to hit the door. Pull bracket off door. (see photos above)
C. Underneath bracket is another metal bracket that holds the wires close to the larger bracket. It has plastic cover. Pull off tape at end of bracket to expose wires and two small white plastic tabs. Disengage tabs (see photos above). smaller bracket and plastic cover should fall off. there is a third tab at the other end. the last photo shows the cover fully removed.
D. Pull rubber boot off where it connects with the vehicle. Use your hands - it manipulates pretty easily. I always find it easier to run wire downhill, so I'd recommend you run wire from car towards door. Run through hole. Fish down boot (I often gently push small slender flat head screwdriver from bottom to top, then tape wire lead to screwdriver, and gentle pull back down). Then run next to stock wiring through the smaller bracket. Reattach small bracket to larger bracket. Re-tape the bundle. (See photo above). Reattach with 10mm bolts. Reattach rubber door seal.
E. Because toyota kept the wires on the outside of the metal, you now gotta figure out a way to get the speaker cable inside to attach to the speaker. On the stock set up, toyota ran a jumper to outside of the stock speaker frame. I just drilled a hole on the top part of the adapter (but not high enough to hit the metal underneath) and ran the wire back through that. Can't tell from the picture above, but I ran the wire along the outside of the adapter and then ran over the adapter and through the hole. I dynamatted everything on the door afterwards, so you can even the see the wire. I would suggest that you zip tie or somehow hold down the old speaker cable and plug...don't want it to rattle.
I used 12g belkin. I really like the stuff. I will say that on the driver's door, you are gonna have a hard time running anything bigger than tat through it, maybe 10g of the same (which I ran through the rear door boot...PITA but it fit).
I am running infinity separates in the front, 3.5 infinity coax in rear pillar, 10" cdt sub, with phoenix gold amps powering all. I am getting a set of CDT 3 way components for front with $$$ permits, and moving the infinities to the rear (either rear door/side panel, or to rear pillar (tweeters) and door (mids)).
I will say the the door area could easily house an 8 or 9" midbass. Not sure if I'd want a free air sub in there, though. The minimum depth with my adapters was 5 1/4". You also have an inch from the speaker front to the grill in the door panel (after you remove the 6x9 adapter from the door panel). So you've got over 6" of depth to run a nice size mid bass in there.).
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