...was mentally retarded. Last night, I went to Ryknow's house to help him install some MB Quart components in his doors. We both expected it to be a pretty quick install. I had car audio experience and he has worked on cars before.

We pull off the door panel in record time, I grab a screwdriver and sit down to size-up the situation on the door speakers when I realized.. THEY ARE RIVETED IN. Who does that?!

So we place a call to Superfreestyle for some help. And he describes for us the game plan... we have to rip the speaker out and leave the "frame" so that we can use it as a bracket of sorts for the new speaker... ok. So I demolish the stock speaker... and since I was being extra careful no to damage things too badly, it took me 30-45 minutes. Trying to be as effective as possible, I was using pliars to rip and a box cutter to clean the rim (which wasn't really working), but we finally got enough off to mount the new speaker.

Then we saw another problem. There is a clip that the stock wires went to still attached on the top of the rim... and it wasn't coming out. I was pulling and pulling and nothing was going on. Ryknow couldn't do much with a broken collarbone... so we turn on "the compressor" and begin giggling at our evil plan. Moments later we pull out the impact wrench and air hammer and knock the junk out of that clip. That was easy/fun.

So next, we strip the positive and negative from the woofer and wire it up to the crossover. We go ahead and take the stock tweeter out too and plug up the new woofer to the crossover... then, nothing. We start freaking out. Quickly, we start to think about ways to check to see if the stock wires were even working... we pull the woofer off the crossover to check it straight onto the stock wires for the stock woofer... nothing again.

Our knowledge of electrical systems gave us two possibile scenarios... 1. The MB Quart components were defective (which is highly unlikely) or 2. The unplugged tweeter is required to complete the circuit. Sure enough... we plugged back the stock tweeter and then connected the woofer and it worked! We check the connector on the back of the tweeter when we realized that we had ANOTHER problem! As we all know, a speaker has a + and a - . Two speakers would therefore have 4 wires, 2+ and 2-. Simple right? THE tC HAS 3+ and 3-!!! Who would do that?! Another call goes out to Superfreestyle and even HE is baffled. So we start planning on hooking all 3+ and 3- to the input side of the crossover.. Ryknow strips off the tweeter connector and gets us ready to do that when I had an epiphony!

THE SIGNAL ENTERS THROUGH THE TWEETER AND PASSES TO THE WOOFER! ITS A SERIES CIRCUIT! We simply find the + and - pair of wires that worked from the tweeter and viola. Those were the only 2 wires we had to deal with. The remaining wires added up to a segment of cut wire, so we just let it be. Moments later, we had a working MB Quart component set.

We line the door back up... which is much harder than taking it off. And we cleaned up the area. A 30 minute install ended up taking 3 hours! Wow.

Tomorrow, we will have a writeup with pictures and video of the other door. Here is a list of what we used and why:

Screwdriver - to get the doors off and to connect the speakers/crossover
Box cutter - to strip wires and clean the adhesive off the stock speaker
Pliars - to pull the stock speaker out
Torque wrench - to use as hammer to get the plug off the stock speaker (ineffective)
Paint can opener - to gain access to the screw by the door handle (ineffective)
Precision screwdriver set - same as above (effective)
Hacksaw - to remove foam off door panel for crossover to fit
Air tools - to get the plug off the stock speaker (effective and quite humorous)
Duct tape - to make things stay
Velcro - to mount the tweeter
Drill - to make new holes to mount the woofer

 

Wow, interesting. It didnt take me anywhere near that long but the rivets do suck.

Howerver, toyota has been doiing that alot as well as other makers so its actually just as easy to remove as screws, lol

Im sure the speakers sound great

 

I'd suggest going back in and drilling out the stock bracket... make a bracket from MDF, it'll be more rigid, allowing less bass response to be lost in vibrations of the stock bracket...

 

lmao... that was an adventurous night last night. NM369 forgot to mention I have a broken clavicle and am working with one arm also lol.

But I'm on a rather (37 cent) tight budget right now, so any custom made bracketry is out of the question. But tonight we go in for the other panel, and are going to make a DIY for it.

Eventually I might buy the MDF baffles from ED, but not at the moment.

 

15 minutes to make the pair. And install them.


Work smarter, folks. ;)

 

Eh, we got sidetracked with another project, so we didn't do a photoshoot, but we got the other set in with alot less hassle tonight.

 

for real. reap out the speaker? you kidding me?

 

What was so hard about drilling out the rivets?
Am I missing something there?

 

thanks for the warning and ranting write-up. i'm going to wait until i have everything i need (amps, subs, speakers, screen, etc) before i do any installing. i wish car companies wouldn't use rivets to install speakers.

 

yea... I'm going to order some MDF baffles from ED once my clavicle is healed and I feel like attacking my door again... but until then I'm just going to deal with then normal mounts .

I would reccomend doing doors when you have everything you need to do them, but thats just me.

 

Uh yeah dude...u can just drill out rivets. IMO its sometimes even faster than unscrewing screws.