How-To: Replace door speakers

78716 Views 34 Replies 20 Participants Last post by Miguelcon74, Mar 23, 2020

chuck5330

Discussion Starter · Apr 8, 2012

Here is my first how to so i hope it comes out well. I took numerous photos and anyone having questions feel free to ask. On with the show...

Land vehicle Vehicle Car Vehicle door Family car

Here we have our right rear door. Basic at this point.

Here's what's going in. Polk Audio components and Crutchfield speaker adapters.

Here's a close up of the speaker adapters.

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Here's a close up of one of the two torx bolts holding on the door. They are size T15 btw. This one is in the arm rest, the other is behind a plate by the door handle.

Here is the door panel removed. You can see two cables. The one with the yellow is the door latch, the other is the plug for the power window switch.

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A close up of the latch connector.

A close up of the harness for the window switch. Push the button on the side, and it pops right off

Vehicle Motor vehicle Vehicle door Car Automotive exterior

The door with the interior panel removed.

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The backside of the interior panel. You can see where the connectors are that hold it to the door.

Audio equipment Loudspeaker Car subwoofer Subwoofer Auto part

Here is the door speaker. This one is the Pioneer upgrade system. More to come in the next post.

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This confirms my suspicion that the with the pioneer system, the amplifier has a high pass filter on the front and door speakers in order to limit bass to the rear 6x9 speakers.

Did you also replace the tweeters and run the included crossovers? What changes or improvements were you expecting or looking for?

Can someone get me a pinout diagram of the head unit used in both the base and pioneer head units?

Great writeup btw.

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XtremeRevolution

· #7 · Apr 9, 2012

chuck5330 said:
No, with not seeing a change in volume with the rear, I held off with changing the front ones. Until I can find a fix, I'm holding off with any more upgrades. I can say this though, the rear speakers with the component tweeters were a very nice upgrade. Brought the highs out very cleanly and the were sharp and bright. Sadly, the volume level to the rear was awful, so much so that the front speakers totally wash out the rear doors.

So these were an upgrade to your rear door speakers? There's a very simple explanation for this. It is likely that the factory speakers are 2ohm speakers, and the Polk DB speakers present a 4ohm load. The end result is that the 4ohm speakers will actually pull half the power from the amplifier than the 2ohm speakers will, which will make them about 3db quieter. Since it take a 10db increase for the human ear to perceive a 2x increase in loudness, a 3db decrease is a decrease in volume of 30%. There's also the issue of sensitivity. From what I can tell, the original speakers are paper cones, which in general are more sensitive than the aluminum cones you have in your Polk DB speakers. If you were to play a test tone through both of them at 2.83V (which would be independent of impedance), you would probably measure a higher sensitivity with the paper cones. I wouldn't expect any different from GM; getting the most noise out of the least amount of power possible.

Install the Polks both front and rear and you'll discover 2 things:

A. It will sound great at low and "moderate" volumes
B. You'll need an aftermarket 4-channel amp to get them to play at their true potential.

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XtremeRevolution

· #9 · Apr 9, 2012

SkullCruzeRS said:
According to his pictures the rear door speakers say they are 6ohm.

Just noticed that. I'm guessing the real reason behind this is the higher sensitivity.

Try running them both front and rear and see what your impressions are.

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XtremeRevolution

· #13 · Apr 13, 2012

Set up a new thread in the electronics section so we don't crowd this write-up thread, and I'll help you get a nice system put together.

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XtremeRevolution

· #16 · May 4, 2012

SkullCruzeRS said:
Thanks for the write up. Just got done installing my Polks today, panels came off nice and easy. Driver side door was a little tricky with the added plug for the mirrors but not horrible. Definitely an improvement over stock, deeper bass which is what I wanted and just better sounding speakers. I should note the standard system speakers are 4 ohm 20 watt speakers.

Just so people get an understanding of what these mean, wattage ratings for speakers are always thermal ratings, not mechanical. They test the speaker to determine how much power they can put through it before they melt the voice coil. It is important to understand that you will reach disturbing levels of distortion long before the they reach their thermal limits.

The Polk MM series are excellent sounding speakers. Good to hear these worked well for you.

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