Hit a snag with front speakers

[PeterMJ]

Took out the stock, tried to fit new ones, do not fit of course. Did some search and no real info on how to deal with this issue. I could actually fit my aftermarket mids in the OEM grills but... the OEM holes would require me to drill in the speaker surrounds.

I looked at the opening and there seems to be a speaker mounting ring that is attached to the door panel and the speakers mount to that ring, not to the panel directly. I took out the five screws in the speaker opening and the speaker mounting ring still would not budge a bit. I figured if I can get that ring out, I can mount my own speakers with enough clearance in the opening. How does ring come out? Is it glued to the door panel, door panel removal required to take it out? Not sure why there would be those screws there if this was the case. Anyone has some info on this?

 

[MoparMap]

Just so I can picture this better, you're saying that the three holes that mount the stock speaker are on a ring that then bolts on with 5 screws to something else in the door? Trying to remember when I saw in my car when I was messing with it. The previous speaker installation used an adapter ring that theoretically was supposed to convert the stock 3 bolt pattern to the more typical 4 bolt aftermarket, but they didn't even install that right because they drilled new holes for the adapter ring for some crazy reason. I'd guess that the ring would be attached to the door structure and not the panel in the stock setup or you might be more prone to rattle if the door panel wasn't secure. Maybe there's just some sealer or something between the ring and the door to help keep down any potential rattle? You'd probably have to take the whole door panel off to get at it better though unfortunately.

 

[PeterMJ]

Just so I can picture this better, you're saying that the three holes that mount the stock speaker are on a ring that then bolts on with 5 screws to something else in the door? Trying to remember when I saw in my car when I was messing with it. The previous speaker installation used an adapter ring that theoretically was supposed to convert the stock 3 bolt pattern to the more typical 4 bolt aftermarket, but they didn't even install that right because they drilled new holes for the adapter ring for some crazy reason. I'd guess that the ring would be attached to the door structure and not the panel in the stock setup or you might be more prone to rattle if the door panel wasn't secure. Maybe there's just some sealer or something between the ring and the door to help keep down any potential rattle? You'd probably have to take the whole door panel off to get at it better though unfortunately.

Yeah, I am getting a bit frustrated with this stuff, not because it is complicated but because I am trying not to break anything and I have seen threads about the edge strips breaking and cracking. When you take out the speaker, there are five screws, three Phillips and two torx, Phillips screws mount to the clips mounted in the door itself, the other two seem to be mounted between the outer vinyl and this stupid ring. I know for the fact that the door panel is just cardboard on the back, nothing else, thus, these rings must be removable. Seems like these rings alone prevent installing larger speakers. You cannot just grind off the edge to enlarge it because the effing mounting nuts are in this ring and stick out. If you take out these rings and replace them with your own, you are home free installing better speakers. The stock size limits choices to very mediocre stuff, all the good stuff is in 6.5, not 6.25 in variety. Now, I am frustrated because those speakers I found in my stash are very good sounding and pretty pricey and I already have them. Yet, I cannot fit them in the doors even though the general opening works just fine. I am very open to suggestions how to get the door panels off without messing anything up, LOL.

 

[08viperviolet]

If you take the two torx out the plastic ring will come out. Hope it helps. Just pulled my panels of yesterday not a big deal. Good luck.

 

[MoparMap]

Hmm, the adapter rings that convert the 3 to a 4 aren't terrible, but they do push the speakers out some. That's the main reason I swapped out the 6.5's that were in the car for the Kicker 6" straight drop ins. I didn't like having the grille stick out and hit my leg and it was all beat up from getting in and out of the car anyway. Just looked bad. Some of the new grille designs are more open though and wouldn't dent in like the standard wire mesh screens, so if they stick out some it wouldn't be quite as bad.

 

[PeterMJ]

If you take the two torx out the plastic ring will come out. Hope it helps. Just pulled my panels of yesterday not a big deal. Good luck.

Well, I pulled all screws off and nothing budged, does the door panel have to come off to get these things off?

 

[PeterMJ]

Hmm, the adapter rings that convert the 3 to a 4 aren't terrible, but they do push the speakers out some. That's the main reason I swapped out the 6.5's that were in the car for the Kicker 6" straight drop ins. I didn't like having the grille stick out and hit my leg and it was all beat up from getting in and out of the car anyway. Just looked bad. Some of the new grille designs are more open though and wouldn't dent in like the standard wire mesh screens, so if they stick out some it wouldn't be quite as bad.

Well, my point is that they do not have to stick out if new speakers are mounted correctly.

 

[MoparMap]

True, though you might have to open up the hole in the door panel a little based on what you're doing with grilles. If you can't mount your speakers with the stock ring you can't use the stock grille since it uses the same screws. I know the grilles on my aftermarket speakers were a fair deal larger than the pocket in the door panel, though I'm sure designs vary quite a bit. Just foor for thought. I agree that a good solution for mounting standard aftermarket speakers without hacking things up would probably be well received.

 

[ninjakris]

peter, you have me feeling pretty lucky that my coaxials were a direct drop in fit and could utilize the stock grill and 3 screws. Take a look at the ebay listing. It shows the inside of the door and how the ring is supported.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/03-06-Dodge...Parts_Accessories&hash=item484605198d&vxp=mtr

It does appear that there is only two screws holding it in place. Not sure if that helps, but its a good visual.

 

[PeterMJ]

peter, you have me feeling pretty lucky that my coaxials were a direct drop in fit and could utilize the stock grill and 3 screws. Take a look at the ebay listing. It shows the inside of the door and how the ring is supported.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/03-06-Dodge...Parts_Accessories&hash=item484605198d&vxp=mtr

It does appear that there is only two screws holding it in place. Not sure if that helps, but its a good visual.

I think you are correct, two torx screws holding the ring to the door panel and three holding it to the door itself, it is actually a pretty solid mount, preventing rattles, too bad it restricts the speaker selection.

I think the ring can come out with just bottom of the door panel being loose, at least I hope so. No way to use factory grill because the screw locations line up with the speaker surround, even though the overall diameter is only larger by 1/4 inch. Not using the factory grills is good IMO though, the better speakers will move considerably more than OEM, they would rub against the OEM grills which are very flat and with little clearance. I think I already figured out how to make new speakers mount flush, I have to round off the outer bottom edge of their own mounting rings, this way, they will fall into the speaker opening in the door panel which is rounded off itself. Should look pretty flush actually. Hopefully this will help others not to get limited with speaker selections which are very limited in OEM size.

Next step I guess will be tweeters, have some matching 28 mm Morel tweeters, they should fit without issues I hope.

I really appreciate the input from everyone, great help, considering I am very paranoid about breaking anything.

 

[PeterMJ]

True, though you might have to open up the hole in the door panel a little based on what you're doing with grilles. If you can't mount your speakers with the stock ring you can't use the stock grille since it uses the same screws. I know the grilles on my aftermarket speakers were a fair deal larger than the pocket in the door panel, though I'm sure designs vary quite a bit. Just foor for thought. I agree that a good solution for mounting standard aftermarket speakers without hacking things up would probably be well received.

I think the hole is good actually, it is that ring and the little metal stubs where speaker mounting screws go that cause problem. I guess we will find out soon.

 

[MoparMap]

I'm curious to see what you come up with regarding the mounting and grilles. I'm happy enough with my setup at this point. I can hear it fairly clearly with the top down on the highway. As a added bonus the wind noise masks the distortion in the sub at loud volume, lol.

 

[PeterMJ]

Well, I hit another snag, this time courtesy of Ebay seller. I ordered two Morel grills for the speakers and they are non matching. Grrrrh... I may just take a stab at the tweeters until this headache resolves itself somehow. If anyone has some pics and measurements of the tweeter plates, that would be greatly appreciated. I have so many speakers sitting around, it is not even funny. Maybe there is a way to fit a tweeter and supertweeter in the factory opening? I guess I could put a capacitor on the supertweeter and maybe coil on the tweeter to reduce the overlap. The grills look pretty big, maybe 28mm and 19 mm can coexist under this grill? LOL

 

[ACRucrazy]

Well, I hit another snag, this time courtesy of Ebay seller. I ordered two Morel grills for the speakers and they are non matching. Grrrrh... I may just take a stab at the tweeters until this headache resolves itself somehow. If anyone has some pics and measurements of the tweeter plates, that would be greatly appreciated. I have so many speakers sitting around, it is not even funny. Maybe there is a way to fit a tweeter and supertweeter in the factory opening? I guess I could put a capacitor on the supertweeter and maybe coil on the tweeter to reduce the overlap. The grills look pretty big, maybe 28mm and 19 mm can coexist under this grill? LOL

The factory tweets are quite small and there is not a whole lot of room under there unless you start cutting the dash.
I had Kenwood 28mm tweets in my '08 mounted to a bracket I fabbed without the Kenwood tweeter mounting system and it barely fit having them pointed towards the seating position like factory.

 

[MoparMap]

Yeah, I found out when I pulled my tweeter grilles that they had just glued a set of Focals in there more or less pointed at the driver. Don't know why they had Focal tweeters and crossover boxes but not the matching mid range speakers. Anyway, I ended up taking them out with the intention of making a little mounting bracket to mount them like stock, but they were too big to sit down under the stock grilles very well, so I cut up some foam in the shape of the cutout on the dash and pressed them into that so the face up and bounce off of the windshield now. I probably should have just left them, but I didn't like the glue and wanted a mounting solution that didn't involve cutting up the stock stuff.

 

[PeterMJ]

Hmmm, kinda gloomy news, LOL. I gotta check out the pillar trim, there seems to be a lot of opportunities there. I guess I should have thought about it in the first place. The trim is hard plastic and certainly has the room.

 

[PeterMJ]

Well, I am confused here... Are we looking at the same tweeter locations? I popped off one of the grills and there is a big cavity there, big enough to fit two tweeters and aim them better than the stock units (Chrysler aimed them right against the top edge of the opening and toward the center, most likely causing quite a bit of refraction. I gotta get myself sum capacitors to high pass the supertweeters and prevent severe overlap from two different drivers playing the same freqs but otherwise, I think this should be pretty straight forward.

 

[PeterMJ]

Ordered some 4.7 microfarad capacitors, that should be right around 9k Hz high pass for the supertweeters. This should be fun

 

[1bad540]

Interesting Peter pleaae post up more details and some pics wouldn't hurt.... I have a really nice set of polk/momo 6.5" components laying around from my vette and quite a bit of audio equiptment hmmmmmmm

 

[MoparMap]

The Focal tweeters in my car were huge, so that might have had something to do with it. If I tried to installed them so they fired horizontally the top edge would hit the bottom of the grille as I recall. Granted that was also just a tough place to work since the windshield was always in your way.

 

[PeterMJ]

The Focal tweeters in my car were huge, so that might have had something to do with it. If I tried to installed them so they fired horizontally the top edge would hit the bottom of the grille as I recall. Granted that was also just a tough place to work since the windshield was always in your way.

Which Focal tweeters? Most of the tweeters can be taken out of their mounting cups and then, they are quite small. Pointing them up is bad idea IMO, the reflections off the windshield will make them sound horrible, not to mention loss of imaging.

 

[MoparMap]

I'm pretty sure they're the TN47's based on what I can find on the internet and what I recall them looking like. The number sounds familiar too, so I'm pretty sure that's them. They didn't actually have any mounting cups on them to start with, they just stuck some epoxy on the frame of them and stuck them against the frame work in the dash where the stock clip nuts are attached. They sound okay to my ear for the most part, but I'm sure they're not optimized by any means. I get some pretty good clarity out of the system and actually have the crossovers turned down a tad because it was really almost too sharp and clear for my ears.

 

[PeterMJ]

I'm pretty sure they're the TN47's based on what I can find on the internet and what I recall them looking like. The number sounds familiar too, so I'm pretty sure that's them. They didn't actually have any mounting cups on them to start with, they just stuck some epoxy on the frame of them and stuck them against the frame work in the dash where the stock clip nuts are attached. They sound okay to my ear for the most part, but I'm sure they're not optimized by any means. I get some pretty good clarity out of the system and actually have the crossovers turned down a tad because it was really almost too sharp and clear for my ears.

You do realize they are titanium domes and 8 Ohm, right? I think you would benefit from running OEM 4 Ohm tweeters in their place. The OEM tweets are silk domes and will sound smoother. Very faint difference between them and MB Quart tweets, except they are not as bulky and MBQ have way higher sensitivity. Incidentally, I use MBQ tweets as my supertweeters, they are good for upper end extension but horrible at lower frequencies, same size actually (3/4 inch) but with way smaller housings. I would not use them below 8k Hz, that should give you a good idea how I feel about them, LOL.

 

[MoparMap]

Haha, consider me learned then. I really have fairly little knowledge when it comes to some of the components in stereo systems, only what I manage to teach myself from research. They were just already in the car so I really didn't have any other choices. I've debated trying to find a set of stock tweeters to go back in their spot so they would be correctly mounted, but most people seem to just toss the stock stuff when the upgrade. If you've got a set sitting around I'd be interested in taking them off your hands. Also, any advice on the circuitry to hook them up (guessing I'd probably be dumping the Focal crossover boxes when the tweeters go, which I'd be okay with since they eat up space under the seat). Since I'm no longer running the stock amp I assume I'd still need some form of crossover in the system to keep from hurting them.

 

[PeterMJ]

Haha, consider me learned then. I really have fairly little knowledge when it comes to some of the components in stereo systems, only what I manage to teach myself from research. They were just already in the car so I really didn't have any other choices. I've debated trying to find a set of stock tweeters to go back in their spot so they would be correctly mounted, but most people seem to just toss the stock stuff when the upgrade. If you've got a set sitting around I'd be interested in taking them off your hands. Also, any advice on the circuitry to hook them up (guessing I'd probably be dumping the Focal crossover boxes when the tweeters go, which I'd be okay with since they eat up space under the seat). Since I'm no longer running the stock amp I assume I'd still need some form of crossover in the system to keep from hurting them.

If someone swapped your amps and you have an aftermarket amp, you cannot just swap the tweeters. The OEM amp has onboard filters, you would running OEM tweeters full range (unless aftermarket amp has an adequate crossover). I bet you have those Focal passive crossovers there for this reason. I would not get hung up on the OEM mounts, you can mount other tweeters in that hole relatively easily. As soon as my capacitors show up, I'll get busy and take some pictures.

 

[MoparMap]

That's what I was getting at. The factory amp was gone when I bought the car and I've since replaced the aftermarket amp that was in the car with another one that's smaller and fits under the seat like the stock one instead of in the trunk like the one that was in the car. I figured if I went back to stock tweeters I'd dump the Focal crossovers (or keep them with the tweeters as a package for another car depending on how you want to look at it) and build my own to work with the stockers and my new amp. Didn't know if you had any suggestions as to the circuitry needed to run the stock tweeters with the new amp since I don't have the factory crossover control. I'll be curious to see what you come up with though. I had the best intentions of using the stock mounting with the Focals, but once I got in there it looked like a little more than I was willing to tackle at the time.

 

[PeterMJ]

Sounds like someone hacked up your car. Since you have the amp already there (I assume it is 5 channel amp if you do not run the rear speakers?), the best way would be to use active crossover to sort out the frequencies fed to all speakers you use, this would allow you to gain flexibility in tuning and maximize whichever speakers you will go with. The alternative is to use passive filters on the speakers and gains on the amp top set it up. The passive filters you can use are pretty simple, first order consists of cheap capacitors on tweeters and coils on the woofers and subwoofer. Not as precise and flexible as active but cheap and easy to do. The only problem is you set the frequencies and cannot change them-major drawback for me.

By now, I am livid with the dirtbag fleabay seller who sold me the mismatched grills. Should my capacitors arrive, I'll swap the tweeters this weekend and deal with the crooked seller. I actually do not expect major improvements but hoping for a bit more tonality and clarity. I would like to upgrade the amp but this means spending some serious money on decent five channel full range class D. Unlike with the speakers, all my amps are huge, no way I could fit anything under the seat, LOL.

 

[MoparMap]

Oh yeah, my car was a mess when I bought it. Polk DXI 6500's in the doors, Alpine S type (I think) 6.5's in the subwoofer enclosure, JL Audio 8v3 sub in the footwell, Focal TN47 tweeters in the dash with crossover boxes where the stock amp was mounted, no rear speakers behind the headrests, and a JL Audio 500/5 (or something like that, can't remember the exact model off the top of my head), with a several year old flip out head unit that I wasn't a fan of. I've since pretty much replaced it all myself. Kicker 6's in the door (fit under factory grilles with factory 3 bolt mounting), Earthquake Sound SWS 6.5 sub in the stock location in a new MDF box I made myself, Alpine CDE-HD137BT head unit, and an Alpine FRP-M300 4 channel amp under the seat where the stock one normally goes. Have the front channels wired to the Focal crossover boxes (still running the TN47's for now) and the rear channels bridged to the sub (so I'm only running it as a 3 channel amp). They now make the amp in a class D setup, which is probably why I got mine on sale seeing as it's still the old class A/B type. The little Kickers are actually pretty impressive and I've been pleased with them. The sub was not quite what I was hoping for, it rattles a bit at higher volumes and doesn't have too much punch (not that I was expecting too much from a 6.5, but still).

 

[PeterMJ]

Oh yeah, my car was a mess when I bought it. Polk DXI 6500's in the doors, Alpine S type (I think) 6.5's in the subwoofer enclosure, JL Audio 8v3 sub in the footwell, Focal TN47 tweeters in the dash with crossover boxes where the stock amp was mounted, no rear speakers behind the headrests, and a JL Audio 500/5 (or something like that, can't remember the exact model off the top of my head), with a several year old flip out head unit that I wasn't a fan of. I've since pretty much replaced it all myself. Kicker 6's in the door (fit under factory grilles with factory 3 bolt mounting), Earthquake Sound SWS 6.5 sub in the stock location in a new MDF box I made myself, Alpine CDE-HD137BT head unit, and an Alpine FRP-M300 4 channel amp under the seat where the stock one normally goes. Have the front channels wired to the Focal crossover boxes (still running the TN47's for now) and the rear channels bridged to the sub (so I'm only running it as a 3 channel amp). They now make the amp in a class D setup, which is probably why I got mine on sale seeing as it's still the old class A/B type. The little Kickers are actually pretty impressive and I've been pleased with them. The sub was not quite what I was hoping for, it rattles a bit at higher volumes and doesn't have too much punch (not that I was expecting too much from a 6.5, but still).

I can see why I got out of car and home audio a few years ago, LOL. I think I really need to cool it before getting back to my old bad habits, remodeling my cars.

 

[MoparMap]

I certainly found it interesting when I started taking things aparts. I was told there was $1500 worth of stereo in it, and for that money I was assuming it was a professional install. Either the shop that did it was not really qualified to deal with this kind of car or the person that did it didn't get much for deals on the parts. I figured it was just left over parts that someone put together to make the full system since nothing matched. It's worked out okay though, sold the old head unit and almost got enough to make the new one "free". Ended up using the amp and sub in my old Dart for fun since I had it laying around instead of selling it. The Alpine 6.5's got a new life in my mom's 94.