Front door upper tweeter install w/pics
Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2010 6:18 pm
A long time ago I was at the junkyard, and scored the plastic speaker grill domes that match my interior. They replace the blank plugs that everyone always asks "what are these for", or "what goes there?"
I was at the junkyard recently for a power window motor, while there I thought I might as well look around for speakers to fit, since I was already going to be in there replacing the motor, and it was going to be raining all day. Here is some of what I went home with.
The upper left speaker is Nokia, out of a newer (late 90's?) BMW dashboard
lower left is OEM AC Delco
left middle is Bose, out of a 2001 Mazda Millenia
right middle is Clarion, out of a 90's? Lexus door pillars
far right is not branded out of a honda, can't remember the make or model I think they were in the dashboard
I wanted to use the factory wiring harness/plug in the door, so I tried to find the matching plugs from another GM vehicle. I found what i thought were matching plugs from a Grand Am, and Grand Prix. After I got home I tried them out and they didn't fit, they were close, but didn't fit. After closer examination I noticed that a simple mod with an old rusty hacksaw would allow them to fit
Now that I had the wiring part squared away, I went about testing all the speakers professionally in my garage by putting in different types of music I listen to in the CD player, and turning it up real loud, and the speaker that sounds the best to me wins!
Nokia- nice range, sounds great, very loud compared to the others, not a tweeter but highs are pretty crisp in my system already
OEM AC Delco- pretty low volume, hissy sounding
Bose- Louder than oem highs, a little hiss, pretty good sounding
Clarion- basically in between the AC Delco and Bose for everything, which is pretty damn good given the tiny size of it
Honda- barely audible complete crap
For the types of music I listen to and volumes I like it at, the Nokia speaker was it for me, yeah Nokia as in the gigantic telephone manufacturer! The Bose was really close, but as I said, I have crisp highs already, and the Nokia speaker had a much fuller range of sound, and was much louder
Now all I had to do was figure out how to mount it, was like twice the size of the other speakers. Here is some pics of it next to the OEM AC Delco
It seemed to me that it would fit by eyeballin it, so I started the process of cutting up the mounting area to make it fit. Dremel is your friend here
First I traced the area I wanted to cut out so that it would set flush against the felt ring mounting surface
I ran into a problem, the mounting holes on the speaker are too wide to mount, they hit the edge of the mounting area, so I drilled more holes since there appeared to be pilot holes already there!
then just mark the holes to mount and drill
Found 4 matching screws, and mounted them
put everything back together, and it all fit with no clearance issues
I'm no audiophile, and I know I didn't install tweeters, I just put in what sounds good to me. I've gotten all my speakers out of the junkyard and have had pretty good luck. I've got Sony X-plod in the front doors, Boston Acoustics in the rear pillars, and Polk Audio in the dutch doors running out of an Alpine head unit, system sounds pretty good to me but could use a little more bass. I may install an amp since I have 2 in the garage, and see what that does for low end I just didn't want to lose any space, and I may still mount those other tweets, either the Clarions or Bose, in that plastic triangle piece behind the side view mirrors, more projects for a rainy day.
I was at the junkyard recently for a power window motor, while there I thought I might as well look around for speakers to fit, since I was already going to be in there replacing the motor, and it was going to be raining all day. Here is some of what I went home with.
The upper left speaker is Nokia, out of a newer (late 90's?) BMW dashboard
lower left is OEM AC Delco
left middle is Bose, out of a 2001 Mazda Millenia
right middle is Clarion, out of a 90's? Lexus door pillars
far right is not branded out of a honda, can't remember the make or model I think they were in the dashboard
I wanted to use the factory wiring harness/plug in the door, so I tried to find the matching plugs from another GM vehicle. I found what i thought were matching plugs from a Grand Am, and Grand Prix. After I got home I tried them out and they didn't fit, they were close, but didn't fit. After closer examination I noticed that a simple mod with an old rusty hacksaw would allow them to fit
Now that I had the wiring part squared away, I went about testing all the speakers professionally in my garage by putting in different types of music I listen to in the CD player, and turning it up real loud, and the speaker that sounds the best to me wins!
Nokia- nice range, sounds great, very loud compared to the others, not a tweeter but highs are pretty crisp in my system already
OEM AC Delco- pretty low volume, hissy sounding
Bose- Louder than oem highs, a little hiss, pretty good sounding
Clarion- basically in between the AC Delco and Bose for everything, which is pretty damn good given the tiny size of it
Honda- barely audible complete crap
For the types of music I listen to and volumes I like it at, the Nokia speaker was it for me, yeah Nokia as in the gigantic telephone manufacturer! The Bose was really close, but as I said, I have crisp highs already, and the Nokia speaker had a much fuller range of sound, and was much louder
Now all I had to do was figure out how to mount it, was like twice the size of the other speakers. Here is some pics of it next to the OEM AC Delco
It seemed to me that it would fit by eyeballin it, so I started the process of cutting up the mounting area to make it fit. Dremel is your friend here
First I traced the area I wanted to cut out so that it would set flush against the felt ring mounting surface
I ran into a problem, the mounting holes on the speaker are too wide to mount, they hit the edge of the mounting area, so I drilled more holes since there appeared to be pilot holes already there!
then just mark the holes to mount and drill
Found 4 matching screws, and mounted them
put everything back together, and it all fit with no clearance issues
I'm no audiophile, and I know I didn't install tweeters, I just put in what sounds good to me. I've gotten all my speakers out of the junkyard and have had pretty good luck. I've got Sony X-plod in the front doors, Boston Acoustics in the rear pillars, and Polk Audio in the dutch doors running out of an Alpine head unit, system sounds pretty good to me but could use a little more bass. I may install an amp since I have 2 in the garage, and see what that does for low end I just didn't want to lose any space, and I may still mount those other tweets, either the Clarions or Bose, in that plastic triangle piece behind the side view mirrors, more projects for a rainy day.
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