removing front door 6x9 speakers

[zenMachine]

Good thread. Probably will become a sticky someday.

How much area does the sound deadening material cover? And is that white sheet some sort of heat or sound insulation? The G2 doesn't have that.

BTW, those speakers look terrible...

[radioprius1]

Looking forward to seeing your 6x9 MDF rings!

[WaterbedWarrior]

Originally Posted by FireEngineer

Nice job Brian. Can you photograph the wiring harness and connections for the side mirror? When the lighted mirror covers become available these will be a great asset to assist in the install.

Wayne

The connector has an outer diameter of 0.45" and below is a pic of it. Sorry poor lighting in the garage and flash made it just one large white blob.


Pic below of wiring harness attached


Pic of the access hole that the mirror wiring goes thru with plastic panel removed.


Fair warning, the door gasket that all the wiring comes thru makes a bend that will be damn near impossible to fish additional wiring through without removing all the current wiring. I was unable to get a new set of speaker wire through it because of the sharp bend. If someone knows a fix to this let me know, cuz I'm stumped.

[WaterbedWarrior]

So a quick update. My jigsaw is broken, friend is lending me his this weekend, so will have to wait on the MDF rings. So I decided to run my wires. Ran 3 sets of RCa cables, only planning on running two sets at the moment, but the 3rd is ran incase I want to install and additional amplifier later to run the rear door speakers. Easier to get the cables to the head unit now. I ran new speaker cables from the rear amp up to the doors to power the 6x9's but as stated in the previous post can't get the cables through the door gasket/wiring enclosure. So will tie on to the old wires before they enter the gasket area.

Also installed sound deadening in the passenger door, doesn't sound like tin now when you tap it.

The brackets off the stock head unit will tie directly onto my Pioneer head unit, just need to go get some screws to attach it with. Taking the stock head unit to a guy I know who does stereo installation for a living, as I'm clueless as to what all the back connections are for. Hoping it will take a standard Toyota wiring adapter kit. With a little luck, I may have the 6x9's and head unit install completed this weekend except for making a custom faceplate to fill the gap left by the stock radio.

[spiderman]

Originally Posted by WaterbedWarrior

The brackets off the stock head unit will tie directly onto my Pioneer head unit

Brain, could you take a picture of the rear of the stock head unit and or tell me if it has any RCA plugs for an external amp on it? Thanks again for documenting all this.

Peter

[WaterbedWarrior]

Originally Posted by spiderman

Brain, could you take a picture of the rear of the stock head unit and or tell me if it has any RCA plugs for an external amp on it? Thanks again for documenting all this.

Peter

Drunkin Master posted a nice pic of the back, here it is and there are no RCA connectors on the stock unit there is however quite a bit of space behind/below it that could be used to sneak a line level converter in.

[spiderman]

Originally Posted by WaterbedWarrior

Drunkin Master posted a nice pic of the back, here it is and there are no RCA connectors on the stock unit there is however quite a bit of space behind/below it that could be used to sneak a line level converter in.

Bummer. Thank you and Drunkin Master for the picture. I am not too much in the Autophile thing but what is a "line level converter" anyway? Thanks,

Peter

[radioprius1]

Originally Posted by spiderman

Bummer. Thank you and Drunkin Master for the picture. I am not too much in the Autophile thing but what is a "line level converter" anyway? Thanks,

Peter

Hi!

A line level converter takes speaker level inputs and converts them to RCA inputs. So, (I think), behind the radio there will be (at least) six pairs of speaker wires (one pair for each speaker) that exit the radio (they go from radio to speaker.) You would end up running the wires from the radio to the line level converter, instead of the speaker, and that would give you some RCA inputs that you can run to your amplifier.

[MikeDS]

Really curious about the sqwuakers...don't know of a 2.5" drop in replacement, but it'd be nice to just put a decent tweeter up there...usually tweeters pointed at the glass give a nice diffused sound field. Can you tell if the wiring goes from the door to the sqwuaker, or is the sqwuaker fed directly from the head unit? The former seems more likely...thanks for taking the time to document all this...

While we're at it, where are you mounting you amps? Under seats? That seems like a good space...the storage compartment is so useful whereas the under seat area is sort of wasted space...

[WaterbedWarrior]

Originally Posted by MikeDS

Really curious about the sqwuakers...don't know of a 2.5" drop in replacement, but it'd be nice to just put a decent tweeter up there...usually tweeters pointed at the glass give a nice diffused sound field. Can you tell if the wiring goes from the door to the sqwuaker, or is the sqwuaker fed directly from the head unit? The former seems more likely...thanks for taking the time to document all this...

While we're at it, where are you mounting you amps? Under seats? That seems like a good space...the storage compartment is so useful whereas the under seat area is sort of wasted space...

I was planning on mounting in the rear storage compartment, but as you mention it is very handy. I may change my mind and check how well the amps fit under the front seats. Why couldn't you have posted that BEFORE I ran my RCA cables. DOH! . (Edit: Amps fit nicely under the front seats, looks like I'll be rerouting some wires/cables today. Thanks for the great input Mike)

It looks like the front squawkers separate from the wiring prior to the wires entering the doors. I'll have to test further to determine this to be true. I'm thinking it should be as simple as disconnecting the door speaker and playing music to see if the squaker still plays.

Should be several more updates this weekend.