Speaker Replacement Pt 1

OK, quick confession.  I haven't posted here for ages but need to put up the info for the stuff I did last year.  This job was actually done last July so I'm putting the original dates on the posts.  Sorry it's taken so long.

I'm the type of guy that would put music on to drive to the supermarket.  I love having music on while I'm driving.  I'd been tolerating the VW speakers but the whole time thinking that replacing the factory speakers with something a bit more meaty might need to be escalated up the list a bit.

The majority of forum users seem to highly recommend the Pioneer speakers. Unfortunately at the time Absolute Audio in Wiltshire didn't have any of these in stock and wasn't sure when he could get some more.  After a relatively short conversation, settled on a set of Hertz speakers for the front which are a similar spec to the Pioneers and a set of Pioneer 3-way speakers for the back.  Also bought the required speaker collars for mounting onto the inner door skin (MDF jobbies supplied by Absolute Audio) and some DynaMat sound proofing on recommendation to stop the door cards rattling and to deaden the inner skin.  Final thing needed were some converters from Amazon that convert the VW speaker connectors - nice tip off from Dave.

In order to fit these I was going to use the VW cabling but would still need to run cables through the door hinges for the crossovers and run the cabling for the tweeters that would replace the factory tweeters at the back of the dashboard.

Door cards come off quite easily, now that I have a set of car trim removal tools and the fact that I've done it before and know about the pesky VW clips that require "resetting" before you can put them back on.

Next job was to drill out the factory speakers as these are riveted into the door skins - easy enough.

The MDF collars then screw into the aperture left by the factory speakers and the speakers mount onto the collars.

Click, click with the converters.  A bit of cable crimping to fit connectors onto the crossovers.  That to there, that to there and that to there.  Done.  Sound coming from all the speakers so time to put everything back together.


Quick note here...   ...be careful to allow enough cable so that when the window is wound down the cables don't pull out!!  I know this now - I thought I'd allowed enough but clearly hadn't. 

Not particularly exciting photographs for the van jobs at the moment but here's a couple of pics before the door cards went back on.

I guess it goes without saying but I'm going to say it anyway - massive improvement over the standard VW speakers.  Will hopefully sound even better with the rear speakers fitted.