Paredes

I have all the ingredients to have an awesome stereo system in my 1995 A6. It came with the Audi Bose 4 speaker system ( 1 4" in each door w/ space for tweeter in top of door-although the guy I bought it from was too cheap to have this option-, and 6X9"'s in the rear deck). I have a Blaupunkt MD head-unit, a Blaupunkt 10-disc CD changer for the trunk, Diamond Audio Hex 4" component speakers w/ 1" silk dome tweeter and Hex crossovers, Focal(JM labs) 6X9"'s for the rear deck, and to power it all...an Orion XTR 4 channel amp. Now if you know car audio you guys know what I'm talking about-sweet. The firs problem I ran into was with the head unit. I bought that first, and it seems that with the stock Bose amp, the head unit wasn't compatibe and would clip out, or the amp would overheat and shut off. The second problem I ran into was the Focal 6X9"'s, when I wanted to see how they sounded opposed to the stock ones on the stock head unit(a tape deck). It turns out that in order to remove the 6X9" speaker from the deck, you must unscrew 3 screws from underneath the deck inside the trunk, luckily it's roomy enough to climb right into. When you remove these screws, the entire speaker, grill cover and all is easily removed from inside the cabin in the rear deck. Unfortunately, the grill cover is fused to the plastic mounting fixture-which the 6X9 is neatly held inside. Now just so everyone understands, I will be redundant. In other words, in order to mount any aftermarket speaker, one would have to break or crack off the Audi/Bose speaker cover from the mounting assembly in order to retrieve the stock 6X9. If one simply removes the entire assembly, there are only 3 screw holes in the actual frame of the car, which the mounting assembly screws nicely onto. Now to be perfectly honest, this really pisses me off. I have been waiting earnestly for about 4 months to acquire all the pieces to my dream car stereo system-minus subwoofer. Now for the questions.....

Has anyone ever installed their own stereo in their Audi (1995-ish). And have you run into the same problem?

I haven't even attempted to pull off the door panel yet. Any tips on how not to ruin or break my front door panel while removing it?

Can I order just the mounting assembly for the 6X9"'s from Audi/Bose? That would make everything soooo simple.

As a last resort, anyone have ideas on how to remove the fused mounting assembly and speaker grill guard with harming anything?

Also, it looks as though the mounting assembly was cut on one side to accommodate the fit.

I have awesome audi components that I cannot wait to put in. But I will because I want it done right. I was going to take it somewhere, but after discovering this speaker problem, I'd rather do it myself knowing I can reverse it if need be. I'm also thinking about running Kimber speaker cable from the woofers to crossovers and to my amp. A little extreme? maybe, but who cares?

Any experience, help, advice, or constructive criticism would be extremely appreciated. I apologize for the length of this article but I am at a loss.

THANK YOU!