i have decided to get rid of the stock speaker covers and put my alpine ones on the front. but the area where you screw the covers on is a warped shape and i cant screw the new cover on flush.
what have others done to fix this? :confused:

You could leave the covers off for a stealth install, (maybe a bit tricky with a screen installed already :D )

or get some MDF and a hacksaw and go crazy!

did you just build a new bracket for the speaker to be attached to that is stuck to the door?
because when u line the door mould up to the door the actual speaker is higher......what to do here?
i need the speaker, the speaker cover and the door mould all to line up and at the moment they dont and it is really annoying me.

You wont be able to get them to line up without making some gaping holes in your skin.
Your better off installing the speakers, then having the grill covering the other hole as best you can.
It will be hard to do it any other way.

I like stealth, means il keep my gear for longer :)

What Mulga has done is freaky and damn talented.

I cant figure out how the heck he has done it. I'm guessing a lot of patience, time and frustration.

My advice is just install your speakers and use the stock covers on the doors. Does'nt look as rice, but its a lot easier and has no effect on the sound of your new speakers either :P
Also, if you ever sell your car and want to put the stock stuff back in you can do it.

I sort of agree with mark, you are probobly better of using your stock covers as the job will look much neater in the end. A nice trick I used. Buy some jaycar 100mm neons and put them above the splits. At night they will light up your speaker and looks fantastic :D

thats a great idea but can u explain in a bit more detail please?
how do you mount it?
do u put it behind the cover so it shines through it?

Basically you have to mount a tiny 100mm neon which has a circumference of about 3mm plus the inverter. The best way to mount it is to tape the neon to the back of the door trim at the top of the speaker cover. You might need to use a hacksaw blade and cut a small recess into the plastic behind the stock speaker cover for the neon to sit nicely.

The idea is to position the neon so that its invisible when looking at the speaker cover but glows on the speaker itself. Then its just a matter of sticking the inverter nearby and there you go. For your power source you can either use the power window circut (if your lucky enough to have them) or the door open light. Remember the door open caution lights will only illuminate when the door is actually open whereas the power window circuit is constant.

I used a blue neon which shine onto pioneer bullet splits which looks fantastic at night. Simple, cheap and effective. Gota love these mods :D

Sorry i don't have a pic :doubt:

i pulled apart the door trim today with my bf and lined the hole where the cover goes up against the speaker and when the door trim is mounted on the door you cant see my speaker , it is not directly behind the hole so i dont know whether the neons would look good showing through to the plastic linning and revealing half a speaker...........ill give it a go . :D

You "could" remove the standard plastic mount and makeup a customer MDF mount in order get the speaker in the right place. Its not a hard job to do but if your going for something like Mulga did, then thats a damn hard job.

Also, if your doing this, then you need to make sure the rear of the speaker (i.e. the magnet) does not interfere with the window when its all the way down.

Forgetting all this, if your happy to settle with the speaker being a bit out of line to the stock cover, you could go for a matt black spray paint on the plastic mounts which would effectively hide them if you decided to put the lighting in behind the door trim :D

The way I did it was take the trims off and hacksaw the hole. Cut the hole a few mm in to allow for a bit of filing to ensure a good fit. I cut mine right to the edge of the hole shape and consequently have some gaps between the speaker grill and the trim. :cry:

Then put the trim back on and trace the hole onto the white plastic mount, because as mentioned it doesn't line up with the original speaker location.

Remove trim and mount. Hacksaw traced hole out of mount.

Then, trace outline of mount onto cardboard, including mount holes, and cut it out.

Get mdf speaker spacers from Autobarn or wherever (about $10).

Take cardboard outline and spacer to your local freaky and talented cabinet maker. :D

Get him/her to recreate two of your cardboard outlines in MDF and screw and glue the spacers onto them. You can also get them to drill mount holes and speaker mount holes.

Now you will have 2 baffles to attach new speakers to. The spacers should ensure that your new speakers don't foul the windows, and will sit reasonably flush with the trim.

Get some long, coarse thread screws to attach baffles to door. They screw into plastic clip type things which sit in small square holes in the door.

To attach the speakers to the baffles, I used hex bolts and t-nuts. Bunnings etc. have no clues about these so go to a Bolt Bloke outlet or something similar.

A couple of things:

1. The speakers spacers are 15mm thick, the baffles should be about 12mm from memory. The cabinet maker had to build about 3 sets for me till I got it right. :rant:
2. Put some Clark Rubber black foamy rubber stuff between the baffles and the door to create a good seal and absorb some vibrations. If you want to do it properly, sound deaden the doors and seal the service holes like this (http://www.caraudioaustralia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35571)
3. If you do the MDF thing, be sure to paint them before installing. MDF absorbs water and swells then rots, so this will make you cry/swear when this happens.

That about covers it. It is time consuming and can be expensive for MDF and sound deadening, but I wanted to do it right first time, without spewing about vibrating doors and crap sounding speakers later on. :D

That VHT Vinyl and Carpet dye is the best s**t going. I've used it to some extent on every car that i've owned. Gave a new lease of life to both my 78 TE Cortina and my 76 HJ One Tonner. Just when I thought it had served it's purpose I used to dye my grey dash matt to black to fit in with the interior of my TJ Sports.
I say again "Best S**T Going" :thumbsup:

Fix up those huge service holes Mulga! :)

Wow!!! Nice work. :thumbsup:

Yeah, I cut out MDF to fill those bits up, and ended up doing the lower half of that huge hole but ran out of SD.

Plus the tutorial on CAA was done on a Lancer, similar door, and he's pretty much left that big hole open :nuts:

The theory seems to be that you can never have a fully sealed enclosure. The service hole sealing near the speaker supposedly stops sound waves from behind the speaker interfering with the waves coming out the front. Or whatever .:rant:
SD adds mass to the metal to stop panels vibrating.

Good effort to get the lock rods sorted out without fouling on the SD. :cool:

Is that Dynamat you've used?

Cheers. :D

just been out and checkd my speakers in the door. The trm doesnt cover any of the cone of the speaker. Seems my tf is a freak of nature ;)

I'd give it a shot. I think it was pretty important. But I didnt hear it without it, so can't compare. I used stinger roadkill, very easy to use and solid as a rock. BUt would have been quite happy to use the gspot/dynamat. They're all pretty good.
When i pump my fronts now without the door trim, you can feel heaps of pressure coming out of the little service holes where the trim plugs into. (of course these are filled up with the trim on. Besides that its pretty airtight. The trim does a good job of sealing the window edge. But Magna doors are HUGE!, I had to use more than a full two door pack to cover it all. And the service holes take up a lot of space.

I put acoustic tiles in to stop reflections, but the main aim is to stop the front speakers energy interfering with the rear speakers energy. I guess if you dont want to fill up the service hole you could ensure a nice tight sealed fit between your trim and your speaker, this would have the same effect.

Was a bit of a hassle to get the lockrods through without fouling. But they work a treat now. Had to take them right out to cover them with tape. Now the car is soo quiet. I think I'll buy another 2 door kit, and do one side of the rear doors and the boot lid which I still havent got around to doing.

How do you stop your door handles from rattling? The deadener itself did a good job (doesnt pass the resonation through now, but I still get a bit of noise. I use rubber bands but the break every week.

Cheers

Thats good work there Mulga!

Sound deadening the doors up is awesome for sound quality and less rattles - until the electric window motor needs replacing. And to think it's happened twice to me :(