Hit a snag with front speakers

[PeterMJ]

Well ok, my capacitors showed up, I guess I'll give the tweeters a shot tomorrow. I am really getting p'oed with the fleabay crook stalling me with the grills. Tomorrow, I can do the tweeters and escalate my dispute with this ****, should be a good day, LOL.

According to my calcs, one supertweet will give me 2.4 Ohm when wired up with 6 Ohm main tweeter, I think I'll try to use two supertweets and bump up the impedance to 3.5 to keep that OEM amp cool

 

[PeterMJ]

K... So I got my donor... I think one side should be enough for the Viper, LOL. If I ever feel like doing anything to the Vette, the other side is there to cover that project.

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And after extraction. Morel MT23 6 Ohm which are kinda pricey but sound like nothing else out there. The little guys are the titanium MB Quart TC19 which are perfect for upper end extension. If you try to play them lower, they will make your ears bleed. I used to run arrays in a car and one pillar was getting 2x300 real watts of power for lots of dynamic headroom. Pretty sad to see how I have lowered my aspirations...

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[PeterMJ]

What a bummer. I hit a bigger snag, one that will require some serious work. I wired up everything and installed it on the driver side, it really sounded so much better than the stock. Then I proceeded to the passenger side and there is no way to fit anything beyond super tiny tweeters. So now, I guess I gotta figure out how to go about it, either raise the dash grills somehow or do the install in the pillars. I guess I gotta think about it which one will look better.

One thing I learned why the audio sounds so crappy, the dash tweeters use 4.7uF capacitors as the first order high pass filters. Since the tweeters are 4 Ohm, this translate to about 8500 Hz meaning that with stock system, most highs and vocals come from the door speakers. I made my own filters, lowering the high pass to 4500 Hz and things changed a lot, the music plays out now on the dash, in front and does not sound all that bad actually, except the door speakers play too high and there is overlap that can be heard. Interesting, at least to me.

 

[ACRucrazy]

Yea there is not a whole lot of room. I plan on making new grills when I get around to installing different tweets in my car. As of now I have Kenwood 5.25 in the door with the 28mm tweets in the stock location that just fit.

 

[PeterMJ]

Yea there is not a whole lot of room. I plan on making new grills when I get around to installing different tweets in my car. As of now I have Kenwood 5.25 in the door with the 28mm tweets in the stock location that just fit.

I do not think Kenwood makes any tweeters of this size, I already heard what my set up would sound like, I have no choice but to press on, LOL.

 

[PeterMJ]

The door speakers are doable, I finally figured out what to do and reusing factory grills is the best option. However, cannot use the screws going through those grills, this should be interesting, LOL.

I'll post some pics later, have to make replacement spacers to swap the OEM mounting rings, this is all what is needed. Half inch rings to be precise.

 

[ACRucrazy]

I do not think Kenwood makes any tweeters of this size, I already heard what my set up would sound like, I have no choice but to press on, LOL.

These are the speakers I had in my '08, just installed them into my '09 last night.

http://www.crutchfield.com/p_113KFCP509/Kenwood-KFC-P509PS.html

When I looked them up on Crutchfield they had them listed as 28mm tweeters, however looking in the manual Kenwood had them listed as 25mm.

 

[PeterMJ]

These are the speakers I had in my '08, just installed them into my '09 last night.

http://www.crutchfield.com/p_113KFCP509/Kenwood-KFC-P509PS.html

When I looked them up on Crutchfield they had them listed as 28mm tweeters, however looking in the manual they Kenwood had them listed as 25mm.

Yeah, I was wondering since not too many manufs use 28mm. Did you aim them or lay them flat? I see the slot in the bottom of the opening make things very difficult. Not sure what is up with this since there is plenty of room on the driver side.

 

[PeterMJ]

So... here is a few pics of my door explorations. I used the stock mounting rings as a template. I'll be messing with MDF tomorrow...

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[PeterMJ]

Yea there is not a whole lot of room. I plan on making new grills when I get around to installing different tweets in my car. just fit.

So what are you thinking regarding the grills? I need to do something so this will fit because it sounds very good to me...

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[MoparMap]

I heard you on the driver's side tweeter business. You get all excited because things are working out well and then you get to the other side and just get annoyed. Tried repositioning my Focals to point more at me instead of up and could do it on the driver's side pretty easy. Not sure how the passenger side turned out. The tweeter was really close to the front tab on the grille that snaps into the dash. May have knocked the tweeter off of my little sheet metal mount, but it does sound better. Moved the sound up some and I tweaked my equalizer and crossover settings to help clear things up.

 

[PeterMJ]

I heard you on the driver's side tweeter business. You get all excited because things are working out well and then you get to the other side and just get annoyed. Tried repositioning my Focals to point more at me instead of up and could do it on the driver's side pretty easy. Not sure how the passenger side turned out. The tweeter was really close to the front tab on the grille that snaps into the dash. May have knocked the tweeter off of my little sheet metal mount, but it does sound better. Moved the sound up some and I tweaked my equalizer and crossover settings to help clear things up.

LOL, you said it. Yes, it is very frustrating that there is no room at all on passenger side. Since the locations are very good and factory aiming is almost spot on, the most logical solution is to make risers for the dash pods and set the grills higher, to allow for sufficient clearance. It is actually not all that complicated, just tedious and I do need extra grills to pull it off. I am thinking about molding some glass bases, trimming off the tabs on the factory grills and setting them permanently in the bases. I think should probably make a mold of the inside of the tweeter locations and then set some mounting cups inside to make the aiming part easy. Sounds like an interesting project.

 

[MoparMap]

I'd wonder if you couldn't cut away into the structure under where they mount a little to give some extra room, but then you'd be masking the face of the tweeter some if you bury it in there too far. I think mine are a little covered at the moment, but they still sound pretty good to my ears.

 

[PeterMJ]

I'd wonder if you couldn't cut away into the structure under where they mount a little to give some extra room, but then you'd be masking the face of the tweeter some if you bury it in there too far. I think mine are a little covered at the moment, but they still sound pretty good to my ears.

I would not cut, as you said, you will end up recessing the speakers even more while they really should be raised. If you ditched the factory filters that were in the tweeter harnesses, yes, it should sound better since you effectively raised your stage and allowed the imaging to play out closer to your ears instead of your knees

 

[PeterMJ]

So where was I? Oh, trying to figure out how to install larger door speakers flush just like the factory. Seems like I finally am set to do it, gotta wait for more capacitors for the door speakers to high pass them at 100 Hz to reduce distortion and put the available power to better use.

I made the needed adaptors today, I think this will work to get the job done. Luckily, I was able to figure out a way to use the factory grills by modding the speaker baskets a bit and being able to snap the grills on the new speakers, they are super tight, just like they were on the OEM speakers. I cannot use the factory screw locations but it is not a big deal, I can use some dummy screws or caps to cover these holes.

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[PeterMJ]

Hah, I guess I do not have to modify the tweeter pods after all. I had a solution sitting in one of my cabinets for all this time and apparently all I had to do was to go through my stuff once again. This time, I made sure the passenger side will work which it does, including correct aiming. This should work pretty good as a matter of fact. I forgot I had these tweeters completely, LOL. Seems I should be done with both the doors and dashboard in a matter of few days (still waiting for some capacitors for the door speakers).

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[PeterMJ]

Seems like there is no snag anymore. Can "normal size" 6.5 inch drivers be fitted flush in the doors and without hacking up anything? Yes, it can be done. The only permanent modification that had to be done were four holes in the door panel in the speaker opening,

Speaker opening with new mounting rings. I think it is actually hard to tell this is not stock, the only give away is lack of the metal stubs where the OEM speakers mount.

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Morel driver, with passive crossover and 100Hz high pass filter to keep sound clear and distortion and rattles at bay.

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The driver wired up and installed in the door, seems like it fits real good and thin spacer assures good seal with the door panel, the OEM driver appeared to have some air leaks around it.

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And with OEM grill, seems pretty flush to me and looks completely stock, except for Morel logo on the driver. I left it visible on purpose. I made little plugs to cover the screw holes, seems to look pretty good to me.

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And passenger side tweeters installed. With the OEM grill on, looks fully stock.

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Since it got pretty toasty in my garage, I'll do the driver side tomorrow.

 

[PeterMJ]

Driver side is now done as well. No more audio work for me.