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I wonder if the door panels play any role in keep the car door water tight? My car has not had one door panel on now for a few weeks and I noticed that there is a lot of water coming down the door window into the door cavity. Or maybe that is normal except we don't see it.
Also don't know if I should get just the woofers or buy the component sets with the tweeter and then attempt to swap the tweeter out too. I am running no tweeters in the fronts. The mid/tweeters are being handled by the Faitalpros in the dashboard.
Also don't know if I should get just the woofers or buy the component sets with the tweeter and then attempt to swap the tweeter out too. I am running no tweeters in the fronts. The mid/tweeters are being handled by the Faitalpros in the dashboard.
I wouldn't mess with components for the rear door speaker, unless it provides the bass driver you want to use. The high frequencies are very directional, so not much benefit for tweeters in the rear doors, unless one is sitting in the back seat. The front & rear pillars are a better location for tweeters.
One might consider water repellent speaker cones for door installation, which would eliminate both the Hertz MP 165.3 pressed-pulp cone with cotton fibers & Audison voce AV 6.5 with a cotton-fibre pressed paper cone.
The AP 6.5 Primahas a "water-repellent treated paper cone". An alternative Hertz woofer is the EV 165.5 modelwhich has "water-repellent treated paper cone; butyl rubber surround."
Maybe I will just stick with the Prima and match the fronts and rear. Just don't know if I should bother changing the rear tweeters or not I has quite a unique mounting bracket. I have no idea if the rear tweeter has a sensible crossover point, or something silly like the B&O has for the front tweeter.
While I wait for my Audison AP8 to arrive from Italy, my Audison AP6.5 have arrived, so I might as well make a start on the rear doors.
Took out one panel on the Rear doors. In comparison, to the front, the car is now complaining of a Side Assist failure without the rear door panel installed. So I better hurry up with this install in the back because my wife is not going to be happy driving with that error.
The rear door speaker is a normal 165mm (6.5inch) 4ohm speaker. The door card opening is 6inchs diameter. So little point in putting in anything larger than a 6.5inch here.
You are spoilt for choice in this size. So pick any driver you want. When I connected an RTA directly and played some Pink Noise there was quite a roll off lower than 100Hz. So again, no point putting in some really low end woofers.
The 1.5inch tweeters are 4ohms with a 4.7uf capacitor, which means they are crossing over at 8KHz. This means the tweeters will definitely have to be changed. The issue is that the OEM tweeters have a unique, twist and lock mount. And the OEM tweeters are very thin.
I am thinking of trying the Focal TWU 1.5 because its quite flat but again, if people have a better suggestions, let me know. One tweeter that I really like is the Dayton Audio ND25FA-4. The Focal has the strange frequency response which is almost ideal for our cars. There is a very gradual roll off which starts at 10KHz.
The biggest issue with the door woofers is the speaker spacer. The OEM woofer is 2 inchs tall. All the spacers available for the Audi A3/A4 are 50 or 55mm tall. We need a 1 1/2inch spacer, so that the speaker sitting on it, with the foam etc will make up the 2 1/4inch to get to the door card.
Fortunately there are spacers made for the VW that have the right height and hole spacing. However its the wrong shape, so you need to shape the outer circumference as per the OEM subwoofer. A really quick method might simply be to sacrifice your old speaker and use it as a spacer. The 8W5035411 *** speakers aren't too expensive on the bay.
The SAVW651, ACV 271320-24 and CT25VW16 are all examples of spacer that are suitable.
I am going to be using a Waterproof Cover that acts as both a drip guard as well as an speaker baffle seal to the door card.
You need connectors for the door woofers. You either use 191972712 which uses the correct 3.5mm and remove the center slot or Metra 72-9002.
Check these links for all the measurements you need for the rear door woofers. I will cover the rear tweeters in another post.
The rear door tweeters are quite a standard size but they have a unique twist locking mechanism to secure them to the door card.
They are 4ohm drivers with a 4.7uf capacitor installed.
The door card itself has a 33mm hole for the tweeter. The tweeter grill clips into the door card from the front.
There is a small 6mm gap between the tweeter grill and the inner surface of the door card. This gap could prove useful for any dome tweeter where the cone projects over the mounting surface (many do).
From the inside if you ignore the mounting brackets, you can quite easily fit a tweeter with a face as wide as 59mm. But if you don't want to lose the factory mounts, then you only fit a 48mm as your tweeter face plate diameter.
The tweeter itself is shown below in terms of measurements etc. Although the tweeter itself is quite thin, I am sure a thicker tweeter will be fine because the connector both on the tweeter and from the car, project vertically in the Z axis from the back plane of the tweeter.
Hit my first few snags today when trying to mount the 8inch speakers in the front. Firstly the Connect2 CT25AU07 is too tall for the A5 front door. It brings the speaker nice and close to the door car opening. But because the speaker frame is wider than the door car speaker opening, the speaker frame clips will get in the way. There is also a small plastic bit of the door card at the bottom that hits the speaker when it is so close to the door card. Also because the speaker frame is so wide, there is no enough space for the washers on the Hexagonal setscrews to sit flat on the speaker mount. So now I need to find screws with smaller washers or will have to file off one edge of the washer.
Anyone even considered putting in an 8inch speaker, should STOP and just put in a standard 6.5inch speaker.
Having learnt that the CT25AU07 was too tall at 45mm, I moved to the CT25AU10 which is 34mm. This time, I think the speaker sits further away from the speaker grill which is good. The mounts have their screw holes so close to the speaker frame, that it's impossible to use the factory M5 hex washer nuts because the washers are too wide. Bought some new M5 stainless steel screws and what luck the door uses the standard course 0.8mm thread pitch.
Bobby had said that he needed to shave off a plastic fin at the bottom of the door card. I didn't know if I needed to or not, but took off some in any case, because its not an important piece.
However its not the bottom that is a problem, its actually the top! The door card has the door handle which forms a curvature over the speaker. That curve isn't designed to take an 8inch speaker. So I am either millimeter perfect or I need to adjust the screw mounts of the speaker adapter so that the speaker and frame sit as low as possible.
The 209mm diameter of my Audison AP8 is proving to be a real headache.
A few photos to show you what the issue is.
That's what an 8inch speaker on a 34mm spacer looks like. Thats the door card opening See the bottom fin that I thought needed to go. Just took off a little, with no idea if I needed to or not. Another angle to show the middle fin at the bottom cut out. See the curve of the door handle and rest that is causing the problem That's how the OEM speaker would sit on the door card. See the gap between the top of the speaker and that curve. There is hardly any. Another angle trying to show the gap. The OEM speaker sitting over the 8inch speaker. It's the bits that's wider that is causing the real issue. I should've just stuck to a 6.5inch speaker.
Last edited by bruce_miranda; 09-16-2020 at 10:24 AM.
09-06-2020, 11:03 AM
