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Has anyone installed 6.5 or 6.75-inch loudspeakers in the front doors of a 9000? When my 1990 CDT was new and again 4 years ago when I got my "new" 93 Aero, I looked into the possibility of modifying the front door panels to accommodate 6.5-inch loudspeakers, but didn't have the nerve to do such drastic surgery on a new car. Back in 1993 when I ordered 4-inch component speakers from Crutchfield.com, they sent instructions that showed a drawing of 6.5-inch speakers mounted near the lower front edge of the front door. It showed the speaker partially blocked by the door storage pocket, yuk.
After trying a number of different 4-inch speakers in the dash and rear doors, and 6x9-ers in the rear side panels and trunk mounted subwoofers for bass, I have concluded that this does not produce enough natural bass near the front of the car and overhelms the rear passengers with unreal bass. Even though it is still a compromise, the best place for mounting main "full" range speakers (6.5-6.75 inchers)in most cars is near the lower front edges of all four doors, as far from the listeners' ears as possible. Note, some automakers didn't discover this until the early 1990s. For example, the 1990 Lexus LS-400, 1992-93 MB S-class, and finally the Saab 9-5 in 1999.
I've pulled off my front door panels to see what modifications are necessary to accommodate 6.75-inch speakers in the front doors. It seems that I can do this by (a) removing a 5-inch piece from the center of the door storage pockets to shorten them and to leave enough room ahead for the speakers, (b) cutting out a hole in the lower front door panels for mounting the speakers, (c) using fiberglass, filling in the door panel from the backside to make the area around the cutout flat and to reshape the area around the new front edge of the door storage pocket, and (d) reshaping the vinyl finish on both the panel and the storage pocket. Then, I can fit a piece of fiberboard also containing a cutout to the door's sheetmetal using screws. This heavy fiberboard, combined with any necessary butyl rubber spacers and the door panels will provide a vibration free mounting surface for the 6.75-inch door speakers. I plan to use 6.5-inch component separates such as MB Quart PSC-216's or the old QM218.03CXs (I have some of the latter in the stock door locations in my Nissan Frontier, and they are fantastic). Another choice will be MB Quart PSC-316 three-way components that have 6.5-inch drivers for the front doors, 4-inchers for the stock dash locations and tweeters that can be mounted either behind the stock grills or on almost any surface.
Before I do these mods, probably several months away, I'd like to hear of other experiences, thoughts and speculation.
posted by 204.29.11...
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