Fitted - Large Front Speakers as per the Group Buy

Hi all,

......and a lovely day for it too! Took me about 5 hours to do the front speaker upgrade using Richs' (TrickTT) brackets as per the Group Buy we have going.

The majority of the time taken was ensuring the connections were soldered properly, heatshrinked and then insulated with tape so I wouldn't have any issues with the speakers in the future - touch wood, unlike the rest of the wiring in the car!

Easy enough install. Use this guide to get your door cards off.

http://www.internetwork.org.uk/Dash%20Conversion/doorrem.htm

I bought the following Infinity Kappa 652.7i speakers that come with a cross-over that I mounted to the back of the bracket with double tape and they rock! Nice and loud, great mid sound, nice low bass and nothing OTT.

http://caraudiosecurity.com/shop/product/products_id/3921.html

Time to remove these little things!

It was a straight forward fit. Just make sure you cut off the standard wiring from the old speakers as near as possible to the multiplug that plugs into the black speaker housing. These are great sturdy brackets and they really are a flush fit. I mounted the speakers directly to the brackets without using any brackets in the box supplied as they don't fit with the door card on.

ONE ISSUE: The only issue is as follows. In the following picture you can see I've highlighted one of the fasteners in the door card.

The custom bracket fouls this hole, only just, and so you need to drill/trim away at the bracket a little bit so you can fit the fastener properly. You'll see what I mean when you do yours, just don't go securing the doorcard again until you've tried all fastening connections. Simple job, took about 2 minutes.

Good luck and any probs guys, give me a shout! Video also attached - well will be later!

Greg

well done mate i may get these.

Good job matey , I made my own brackets last year, the stock speakers are awful.

Hmm May be wanting some of these brackets now greg but didn't go in for the group buy like an idiot .

Anyone want to sell theres

Still time to add your name Matt See Group Buy section.

Looks good! I fitted my focal access direct to the door cards when I fitted them a few years back and to be honest they sound crap so I'm hoping this improves things!

i fitted one of mine over the xmas holidays. still to fit the other but they do make a good improvment

That trim clip thing that you highlighted fits into the stock speaker box. I just cut the back off and glued it to the door with superglue to fill the hole as it does not do anything with the stock speaker mount removed and it will fall out if not secured to somthing.

Also see this post: http://www.mkivsupra.net/vbb/showpost.php?p=1364596&postcount=217

Hi Greg,

are you still pleased with the speakers you bought? I'll be buying some myself very soon, and was thinking about the kappas too.

Hi Greg,

 

are you still pleased with the speakers you bought? I'll be buying some myself very soon, and was thinking about the kappas too.

Very happy buddy and a nice easy fit

Hi Greg,

Just read your first post again: what did you use the double-sided tape for? Presumably, you screwed the speakers into the new brackets....?

I'd guess the double sided tape is for the crossovers, which in the Kappa series are separate to the main speaker housing. Really crap design for the crossovers though (just got my Kappas in the mail) - curved back and no screw-holes - surely they realise that they need to be secured somewhere so they don't rattle around. Complete madness! Oh well - double backed sticky tape it is...

Greg - whereabouts on the brackets did you stick the crossovers - I haven't had my door cards out for a while so don't know where there's room.

looks great, cant wait to get mine from turbo fit:d

Greg - whereabouts on the brackets did you stick the crossovers - I haven't had my door cards out for a while so don't know where there's room.

I reckon there is probably room to mount them on the back of the bracket in the deep door liner section where the stock speaker casing used to live

This might be moving slightly off-topic, but do all speakers have cross-overs? Are they only needed if you have an external amplifier in your ICE system?

I reckon there is probably room to mount them on the back of the bracket in the deep door liner section where the stock speaker casing used to live

Yep. That's where I mounted my crossovers guys, the back of the bracket with some SUPER STRONG double sticky and a layer on insulating tape around it and the bracket to secure it in place. Plenty of room and no rattling.....yet

What size/type of screws do you need to mount the new brackets to the car door? I already have large speakers fitted but directly to the door cards.

> but do all speakers have cross-overs?

Nearly all speaker systems have crossovers to ensure the correct range of frequencies go to the appropriate speaker (woofer generally only handle low frequencies, tweeters generally only handle high frequencies). I'm no expert (someone else will correct me for sure!) but speakers generally fall into two camps:

* Multi-element - where both woofer and tweeter are in the same speaker housing, often with the tweeter mounted at the centre of the woofer. These normally have crossovers built in. That is, you connect a single pair of speaker cables to each speaker and internally the signal is split as appropriate (but see below).

* Component - where the woofer and tweeter are completely separate enclosures. In this case the crossover will almost certainly be external. You wire a single pair of speaker cables to each crossover, and then there are two pairs of speakers cables connecting each crossover to its matching woofer and tweeter.

The Kappas are a little unusual in that they are multi-element - both the woofer and tweeter are in the same speaker housing, but the crossover is external. I guess it reduces weight/size of the speaker housing itself and I'm sure there's some hi-fi reasoning (separation is nearly always good for minimising interference).

I don't think whether you have an external amplifier is necessarily related. As far as I know you can use both multi-element and component speakers with both single-head and external amplifier systems? Someone with more ICE experience than me will probably give you a better response!

Greg, do you still have the stock speaker grill on the door card with these units ?

I want to retain the stock look on the door card.

Thanks

I've fitted these units as well (good recommendation by the way, a little bass light compared to the Kenwoods I have in the rear but excellent sound quality) and have the stock door panel/speaker grills in place. All fits in fine.

The only thing you might want to do is clip a little off the back of the pins that hold the stock speaker grills in place. When you get the door panel off you'll see that they stick out quite far. On my setup one of them was sticking into the speaker surround rubber a little, so just clipped them all by a couple of millimetres to be safe.

Thanks for the tip