Prius 2016 4th Generation: How to remove door panel" and my speaker install.

I bought some speakers to upgrade my 2016 3 Touring.

Couldn't even find a photo blog or video on removing the door panel so I made a crap one for anyone that wants to try it.

There's already an awesome thread on upgrading speakers by member NguyenCB7 here that motivated me to do this, and it's basically the same on my end except I didn't do the powered sub. I did all the work myself though, his work looks a lot cleaner than mine, and his speakers are better.

Here's some photos.

Had to drill out the rivets holding in factory door speaker.

Look at the difference between the new Rockford Fosgate Prime and the factory. These RF were only $49 a pair. Yes, the right speaker (factory) has a magnet the size of a marshmallow. It is absolutely useless.



I ordered everything from Crutchfield because they include the harness and spacer. I priced it out on Amazon prime and it's close, so I just bought from Crutchfield as after getting their catalogue for 25 years, I might as well finally order something from them. I owe em one. LOL

The dash speakers are Crutchfield brand speakers that are from the same factory the Fosgate Primes are sourced from. They were $29. They're actually called Sound Ordnance, and it's got a military theme packaging to it. Perfect fit height and width wise. I could have gone for a much deeper speaker, but these are a perfect factory drop in. I used the factory harness and bypassed the capacitor to free up the full range of sound. If you leave the cap on itll cut off low frequency. Once again, the factory 3.5" dash speaker on the left looks nothing like a real speaker, the one on the right, also 3.5". The white piece in the upper left corner is soldered and clipped onto the back of the factory dash speaker.
Also, I hadn't soldered in 20 years. I bought a $27 Stahl station from Amazon Prime. It works fine, but the guy doing the actual work is TERRIBLE at soldering. Lol. Either that or I just bought the wrong kind of solder.

dash speaker. I actually dropped the whole thing down the hole when I was putting it into place. It dropped so deep, I had to pull it up by the wires. That dash goes a long way down. LOL Also, while I had it open, I shoved some stuff in between the dash and steel because I was getting an annoying buzzing/rattling when the gas engine kicked on between 15-40 mph. Not cool for a brand new car. It happened the moment I drove off the lot. (I never test drove my car).


Door speaker. Note the bracket/spacer holding the speaker in place only hits two of the stock mounted holes. After that, I had to use a self tapping screw for the last one (the bottom one). Note the factory hole is to the left of the new screw. After this picture I covered the hole in ductape, just as a moisture barrier.

I'm doing the rears tomorrow. Same Fosgate Primes, only in 2 way. Honestly I've never bought into the 3 way coax deal...I always thought it was a selling gimmick, but the price was the same so I mixed it up this time around.

With just the fronts put in running straight off the head unit, it's twice as loud (technically, maybe just a single digit increase in decibel level, but metaphorically it's twice as loud), and from a scale of 1-10, 1 being factory (non JBL stereo), this is now a solid 6. I'm tempted to add the powered sub now. I really am. I'm very happy with it, but I come from a car audio competition background. I built and installed systems when i was 19-21, professionally. My 20 year old self would have thought the sound quality was garbage and there's no way any self respecting audiophile would run coaxes off a head unit with no amp and sub. Instead, I'm very pleased with how my upgrade sounded today, and short of jumping in with multiple amps and custom kick panels and trunk enclosures, I love it for what it is.

 

Once you pull off the dash speaker, you'll notice the white bracket afixed to the backside of the factory speaker. You'll have to break that off. Part of it the plastic tabs, part of it is soldered on. If you want to keep using the wiring harness and not cut into the factory wiring, you'll have to salvage this piece because they don't make an aftermarket harness for this yet. I'm soldering leads onto the white clip, as well as removing that little black capacitor on the white clip. That bypasses the lower frequency cut off (the purpose of the capacitor is to act as a very basic filter/crossover) and opens up the full spectrum of sound input to the speaker. Once again, only copying what CBnguyen did. .

 

Man, it's too late now. Lol

 

what did you end up getting?

I've had the system in for 10 days or so now, and I really want to do the powered sub.

 

Here's the problem. You're going to want an amp to run those JL's, simply because they can handle it, and they'll sound so much better. For less than the cost of a pair of those speakers you can get a decent 4 channel alpine amp to push those babies. But you'll definitely want a sub once you get used to your speakers. I just imagine how much better my car will sound with that bass filling out the system.

 

You're telling me! That's why I bought cheap speakers! It only makes me think about how good it can REALLY sound. Lol.
I'll be honest. I want those JL's you have. And I want them running off an amp. Add the sub, and I think it'll be gold. I'm going to actually wait another month or two before I upgrade, just to see if I can get used to it. I have the upgrade bug right now, I need to cool it a bit.