The Doors

This part was done on two different occasions. to get the system up and running, i put in my front comps, diamond audio motorsports and left the rear door speakers in place. I took a road trip to chicago and didnt do the matting until i was back. But that is irrelevant, here are the pix, in chronological order:

Taking it off is easier this way...

See...factory speakers suck

Factory spacer was used to mount the mid.

prepping the spacer for aftermarket use...this really saves time in making one out of wood and you get a perfect fit.

countersinking baffle that i already had in my previous install.

test fitting...looks good

closeup of whats going on

the crossover is always hard to decide...show off or hide. well, im lazy and like things easy, so i hid it.

the door...!

The door revisited:
I added a kicker zx600.4 for my doors and changed out the diamond audio mids since one of them broke apart. So i also got kicker resolution 6.5 components. I decided to only use the mids and kept using the diamond xover and tweet.

Here are the pix

the finished product. i had to use 3/8" mdf, but didnt have any so i used 5/8" and cut it w/a utility knife. this was pretty easy, but i cut myself pretty badly once.

can you tell i cut the door? no....jejeje

another close up look

you still cant tell the i cut sheetmetal. btw, i initially used plastic to shield the mid from rain water. bad idea. here's a tip, before you put the panel back on, test the mids to verify there arent any strange noises. once i was done, i was eager to put it bad together and found a nasty buzz. at first i thought it was the mid being overdriven. after messing w/different volume levels, i found that it wasnt the mid. i guessed that it might be the plastic, so these pix were taken as i investigated the noise. yep, i was right, this plastic was making all that nasty noise.

closeup of the trim ring. notice the red tab at the bottom. the ring was so thin that i didnt cut the sheet metal any bigger than the inside diameter hole. since it was a tight fit to install the mids, the terminals could easily contact the sheetmetal and ground out. the tab is red cardboard that i folded and used to shield the terminals from the metal. on the mid itself, i also added a few layers of tape to be safe.

another pic of that cardboard tab

you can see i didnt cut the sheetmetal perfectly, although i tried. hey, it was hard enough to not overcut, which is the last thing u want to do. either way, it worked out pretty good!

see, this is the factory rain shield/speaker mount. with it back in its place, you cant tell the metal behind it has been cut, woohooooo...

since the plastic shield i made was making all that noise, i got rid of it. i couldnt find my xtc foam that i know is laying around somewhere in my garage, so i used left over raammat to shield the mids from water. i made sure it wouldnt surpass the magnet, since there isnt much clearance behind the magnet to the window.

two layers, nice...!

hope this helps ya get the same project done when you have to cut in order to get the mids you want in the door, instead of fitting whatever the manufacturer allowed for =)

Matting the door is not fun...ok, on that note...here is the finished product after alot of pain...

Make sure to try using the plastic since it protects your door panel from moisture.

ugh...and i still have alot to do...

alot of ppl ask where did i install the tweeter...well, i forgot to take pix, so i made sure to do so when installing the rear door comps.

the crossover doesnt have screw downs. so i took the time to solder the speaker wires correctly.

I saw a picture of someone's install in the doors and noticed that he didn't use anything to protect the back of the mid from water damage. here you can see that i used left over raamat to cover the back part of the opening to protect the speaker. since this is a freeair model, i left an opening towards the bottom, which seems to work fine.

As you can see from the mid basket, it isnt a cheap throw in speaker...magnesium cast basket, butyl rubber surround..24db linkwitz xover, and neodymium 1" silk dome tweets..!!!

Machined front and back plate, these mids are nice...they have been in my possession for over 4 yrs now, and have had some serious power going to them in the past, with only one mid failing in all that time...now they are relegated to rear fill duties and hopefully dolby digital surround in the near future.

For those of you who asked where i mounted my tweeters in the front doors. well here is a pick of my doing the same thing for the rear doors. you have to cut, but w/a little patience and a sharp utility knife, you can do this once the panel is taken off. The hardest thing to do is pulling the grille cloth w/one hand while you try to cut the thick plastic w/the other...since the tweet sits right in the middle of that opening, you have to cut some of the plastic to let the sound through completely. if you're lazy, you can get away w/only cutting the ridge where the tweet fits into.

You can't tell that I did anything to the door, yet the soundstage is higher and the sound quality just jumped up alot from what the bose were capable of.

that should help ya get this part of the install done....!

main thing is to take your time.

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