The Maintenance Files

Car Stereo Installation

 (Spring/Summer 2007)

Door Components

What's in the door, you may ask?  Here you go.  Remove the inner door panel.  Make sure you write down the wiring code for the window switches before you disconnect them.  Inside you'll find a vapor barrier of plastic that covers the innards.  There's also a small plastic bucket that your POS Blaupunkt speaker screwed to.  That's a rain shield.  There's also a thick foam gasket to bridge the gap between the door panel & the door metal. Rip it all off & throw it all away.

When you get to the raw door, you will see a bunch of holes.  That is Enemy #1 of good sound in a door.  You have to fill them all.  Your goal is to create a damped, sealed chamber for the mid/bass driver that is going in the door.  Enemy # 2 is the door itself.  It's made of metal & it will resonate & vibrate at various audible frequencies.  That's where the dampening comes in.  I used B-Tek's B-Quiet Ultimate dampening material.  See their website.  There are numerous choices:  Dynamat, B-Quiet, Cascade Audio etc but I chose the Ultimate because it is decent stuff - spec & review-wise & it was shipped within Canada & didn't have to cross the border & the wallet-vacuuming that happens when this occurs.

Put the window up.  Of course, you disconnected everything & you can't because it's a power window.  So, move the door panel into place & re-connect the window wires.  You wrote down the wire colors & position, didn't you?  And if you've already ripped the other door apart, you have to connect that one too.  Part of the circuit is in series.

With the window up, start applying your dampening material to the inner part of the outer door skin.  Just reach in & put small pieces in place to the areas you can reach.  That's only about 50% of the door but that will have to do.

Now, you're ready for the outside - well, actually inside . . . You need only one hole:  where the door opener rod comes through in the middle of the door - just in the upper left-hand portion of the big oval in the lower portion of the door in the photo above.  The only trouble spot, is the door lock rod that you can see disappearing into the top oval.  Tape a plastic sheet (some of the old vapor barrier perhaps) over the rod so it can still move after you put sticky dampening over it.  Also leave the thread & hole free on the door lock mechanism & the door handle bolt holes should be free of dampening so you can get the bolts on when you re-assemble the door.  I also left all of the door panel screw holes accessible.  Btw the foil backing makes an efficient vapor barrier, so you can skip replacing it.

When finished, cut out the speaker hole in preparation for the speaker spacer as per Peter Bull's great post on Pelican Parts see Mounting door speakers.  You can see it in the photo below attached to the speaker hole.  This accomplishes 2 things.  It lets you have the initial speaker hole big enough for your 6.5" driver although the door opening should also fit.  It also rigidly fills in the space that that lame foam gasket occupied, providing a flat screwable surface for proper driver fixing.  Finished door pictured below.

Peter Bull's drawing of the speaker spacer.  The Dremel is your friend for the red parts.

Dimensions of the speaker spacer.  Peter suggested & I used 1/2" MDF from Home Depot

With the door finished, it's time to attack the door panel.  For the mid-bass driver, remove the rain bucket & all screw fixings.  That includes those embedded things that will rip the board apart, so remove cautiously.  Remove the staples on the vinyl & mark out your required opening.  Then Dremel it using one of the barrel sanders.  It won't take long.  For the tweeter, mark your diameter & Dremel the hole that was pre-punched in the door to the dimensions of your tweeter.  The tweeter hole corresponds with a depression in the door, so depth should not be a problem.  Then carefully cut back the vinyl & glue it down for both openings.  The trim rings on the drivers allow a little leeway but not much.

Crossover placement now rears its head.  I positioned the Focal x-over in the pocket under the door handle.  That way, I can reach in to get at the 3 position switch for different frequency curves for the tweeter.  The wires are routed back through the door panel & through the dampening into the door cavity for hookup.

Mount your tweeter & connect it to the crossover.  Then use some dampening material to hold down the wires so they won't rattle once you get them back in the door.

The last job is to re-attach the door panel.  Before mounting your mid/bass driver, it's probably a good idea to rewire the system.  I used 14 gauge cable - big enough but also small enough.  Pull new speaker wire through to the cabin using the existing wires as a pull.  Just tape the new wire securely to the old, lubricate with Vaseline & yank away.  Attach the speaker wires & fix the mid/bass driver in place.  I also attached some plastic sheet to cover the top of the drivers as a rain shield before I screwed it down.

You're done the door components. Well maybe not . . . see Tuning for the final install.

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