if anyone has installed their own aftermarket component system, please let me know what you used to mount the tweeters in the factory location. this is my first time installing components so any help would be greatly appreciated. btw, the tweeters are 1".

 

I've seen both, installed on the outside with adhesive and also behind the grilles in the stock locations. I believe they were both 1".

Mike

 

I installed diamond's 1" tweeter in the stock location. I simply used to stock bracket on the factory tweeter to mount the new one........i had to use some scrap material found in my toolbox to angle the new tweeters a little bit, but it fits just fine.......i also drilled two holes next to my back speakers for another pair of tweeters.

 

gixxerbb,

did u use the mesh grill that comes with your tweeters or did you have to take it off? also, there's like some kind of adhesive on the factory metal mounting bracket (middle screw). what did you use to remove it? let me know, thanks.

 

i took the mesh grille off of my new tweeters because the stock cover is restricting enough sound already.........as for the glue in the middle screw, i think i just used a regular screw driver to remove the screw......the glue really isn't that sticky......and the stock tweeters are going to waste anyways.......so i didn't care if i messed them up. Hope it helps.

 

GixxerBB,

How did you remove the sail panel from the doorframe to get behind the tweeters? Of all the 'how to' posts about disassembling the car to replace the HU and door/rear speakers, I haven't seen a single one that details how to remove the sail panel to replace the tweeters. Thanks!

Gary

 

Gary,

First, u gotta remove the door panel first.......because it overlaps the tweeter sail panel. The sail panel is held in place by a couple of plastic push-in screws........similar to the ones holding the door panel. Just pull out at the bottom of the sail panel and the screws should pop out, then just slide it out by pulling down after the screws are released. No tools are required to remove the sail panel, just pull w/ ur hands.

 

thanks for the help gixxerbb

 

GixxerBB,

Thanks for the info. It sounds simple enough to remove the sail panels.

I looked up your thread with your install pics (great looking install, by the way) and I'm curious how you fastened your door speaker crossover to the inside of your door. Did you screw it on or did you use glue or some type of adhesive?

Finally, do you know if the stock HU (non-Bose) contains an internal crossover with separate speaker outs for the tweeters, or is there an in-line crossover somewhere between the HU and the speakers that it used to make the split? I ask because I'd like to use the existing wiring as much as possible to connect my HU (planned Alpine 7894) to the door speakers (most likely Infinity components,) and I hope to avoid having excessive wiring running through the install area. Thanks again.

Gary

 

Gary,

The crossover was held tight w/ pretty long screws only, no glue. Let me tell you that the metal door panel is one tough part to drill through though.....as for the cross-over on the stock head unit, I wanna say it's internal, but i'm not sure, because i didn't see any in-line crossover used. But from an install standpoint, since it didn't sound like u will be running an external amplifier, and you will be installing an alpine HU. Simply buy one of those factory adapter harness, and just use the factory speaker wires. Try hooking up the speakers w/o using the crossover, see how it sounds, if it sounds crappy, then just run the mid-range wires to the crossover and split it from there. That's how i would try it. But hooking up an amp can really improve your system.

 

The factory head unit does ot have a crossover in it, and there is no factory amp in the non-Bose system. The crossover is inline in the factory wiring to the factory tweeter. If you replace the factory tweeter, just run new wire from your aftermarket tweeter crossover to the new tweeter, and you should be good to go.

 

how hard is it to run new wire through the door jam?

 

Thanks for the info, Jeffa. Where in the wiring's run is the factory inline crossover? I'm hoping that it's on the door itself, as that will make it MUCH easier to replace.

GixxerBB, I'm planning on doing an amp in the future, but for now I want to see how everything sounds with power off a new HU. That's one of the reasons that I'm going with the Alpine 7894, as it's got a 27 watts RMS/ 60 watts peak * 4 internal amp, along with 3 sets of RCA outs for future amp expansion. I'm trying to spread my mod budget between stereo, V1, and tint at the moment, and the external amp is something that can wait. Thanks for all the help!

Gary

 

Gary:
The crossover is in the door, in the speaker wire that goes to the factory tweeter.

 

Jeffa,

This sounds like it should be a pretty easy install with the crossover in the door. I only have one more question, and it may be a silly one but I've never done a speaker install before and I want to make sure that I go in with as few surprises as possible. Does the wire split off to the tweeter & the lower speaker at the crossover, or does it split before that, causing the lower speaker to get all of the frequencies, and the tweeter crossover between the split and the tweeter just limiting the tweeter's frequencies, but not sending anything to the other speaker? I hope that makes sense; I'm trying to get a good idea of whether I think I can do this and what to expect. Thanks!

Gary

 

In my car, with the Bose system, the only crossover type device I saw was a capacitor soldered directly onto the tweeter. I think the 6.5" was receiving a full range signal, minus whatever low bass the amp might have been cutting out.

A pair of wires is routed through the door jamb (sp?). These two wires immediately went into a white plastic "plug" that was just a junction for each of the two wires to be split, so that one pair could run to the tweeter and the other pair run to the 6.5". That white plastic plug was taped to the wire loom near the rubber grommet in the door.

JL

 

Desmo,

So could you just remove the 2 wires that came through the door jamb from the white plastic plug, hook them up to a component crossover, and then just run cable from the crossover to the tweeter and woofer? That sounds pretty straightforward. Thanks for the info.

Gary

 

Yep, that's pretty much what you do, but there are a couple snags. I wasn't able to figure out how to remove the wires from the plug without damaging the plug. I'm sure there are tools out there to do it, but I don't have them. Instead I just cut the wires (leaving enough to solder them back together if I ever had to reinstall the stock system later). The trouble with that is the three positive wires all look the same, and the three negative wires all look the same. If you spend some time thinking about it you can figure it out. There are some silver dots on the wire that helped me find the source wire, and also I paid attention to pairs of wire that were twisted together. I know that's a vague clue, but you'll see what I'm talking about when you take the door apart.

Here is some other info that you might find helpful. The wires we are talking about in the door are different colors back at the wiring harness for the Bose amp. For the driver's door it's black positive and white negative. For the passenger door it's brown positive and black/red negative. I ran speaker wire from my amp to the factory wiring harness, used the factory harness to get into the doors, and then spliced into the factory harness and added the crossovers like you described. I'm sure some people will scoff at using the small factory wire, but it really looked like a pain to run speaker wire through the door jamb harness.

Hmm, I just looked back and noticed that you are dealing with the non-Bose system. Let me try to decipher the wiring diagram for that one.... I think the driver side positive is blue/red and the negative is black/white. The passenger side positve is yellow/red and the negative is red/white. If you don't see those colors together, then it's driver side white positive and black negative and passenger side green positive and red negative. The two choices depend on whether you have power seats, VDC, and the navigation system. Those should be the colors right out of the factory head unit, but no guarantees since my experience is only with the Bose unit. The wire colors inside the door should be the same for Bose and non-Bose.

JL

 

Thanks Desmo, that's really helpful. This gives me all the info I need (I think) to do the install. Now I just have to decide which speakers to get and I'll be all set!

Gary