New Speakers

Now that the engine noise is under control, it makes sense to add some speakers to go with the Sony Receiver. My first effort was to mount Blaupunkt 4 in. two way speakers under the dash which puts them out of sight, looses the high frequencies and muffles the mid-range. There is no bass from 4 in. speakers that are not in an enclosure.

After a conversation with my brother Pete who was facing a similar problem on a new Honda that did not come with any radio, I purchased a pair of 5752cf Infiniti Reference speakers to put behind the front seats and the Infiniti 505cs components for the front. The latter consists of 5 1/4 in. for the low end, a 1 in. diameter tweeter for the high end and a companion crossover. The former are 5 x 7 in. two way speakers.

The 5 1/4 in. replaced the old 4 in. under the dash. I mounted the 1 in. tweeters at each end of the aluminum dash panel.

The 5 x 7 in. were mounted in custom boxes that I designed to set on the floor behind the front seats.

The results are quite good according to my old ears, which I guess is not much of a testimonial. Sitting in the car with the engine off it sounds just as good to me as the factory upgrade radios in either the Boxster or the Disco. Full range and clean from distortion. Flat frequency response? How could that be true?

	The rear speakers were designed to fit in the foot well behind the front seats, leading to sealed boxes made from 3/4 in. plywood covered with some carpet. Grills did not come with these speakers, so I made my own.
	Here are the two rear speakers in place behind the front seats. To keep the speaker boxes from sliding around on the floor, a metal bar is screwed to the box. The bar is bent so that the loose end will slide into the package tie-down strap fitting in at the back of the foot well.
	The old 4 in. speaker mounting boards were modified for the new 5 1/4 in. speakers by adding a wooden ring made from 3/4 in. plywood. These speakers point toward the floor which is certainly not optimum placement. However, there are few choices that do not involve cutting upholstery.
	Here is the left side 5 1/4 in. speaker mounted under the dash. Best practice says to keep the sound from the back of the speaker from meeting and canceling the sound from the front of the speaker. This is a bit tough to accomplish for this mounting technique. As a result the sound can not be optimum.
	And finally here is the left side 1 in. tweeter mounted on the end of the dash with a piece of Velcro. The high frequency music from the old speakers beamed to the floor was largely lost. These little speakers help that problem considerably. There is a crossover included with each of the front speaker pairs that was mounted under the dash.

Last modified: Sun, 02 Jul 2000

Links

Inventory - Topic Pages - Brakes - Electrical - Engine - Events - Gallery - Interior - Maintenance - Racing - Restoration - Rust Repair - Suspension - Wheels & Tires - Rust research - Recommendations - Porsche Models

Site Details. Disclaimer. Comments? Questions? Dave Hillman
Content attribted to others remains their property. Otherwise the text and images are licensed under a Creative Commons License.