Front door speaker

Hi Mitch found this in the forum

I have replaced the speakers in my Gen 1. It was a lot of work, because the original speakers are molded into housings designed to specifically fit into the irregularly shaped holes - both on the rear deck and the front door panels. So, big job.

I was able to get 6.5" coaxial speakers into both locations. For the rear deck I found nearby holes that I was able to use - along with nuts, bolts, large fender washers, and foam tape - to secure the speakers into place. The door mountings were more involved. The holes there are irregularly shaped. I had to craft mounting plates out of cabinet grade 3/8" plywood that would overlap the existing holes, and mount the speakers to the plates before installing the plates on the doors.

Before you tackle doing something similar, I discovered a downside from this upgrade. The additional bass energy leads to vibration, and the vibration leads to resonant noise. I have re-checked the mountings and they are secure, but without additional insulation and sound dampening you will very likely hear annoying resonant buzzing.

So, I'm preparing to do the job over, and am installing only midrange speakers in the door and rear deck. I already have some small 1" tweaters mounted above the dash. For the bass, I will install the Kenwood KSC-SW10 subwoofer I have read about in these forums under a front seat. It's the only one that I found that has low enough power requirements to trust with my Prius 1's inverter.

Hope this helps,

Scott C.
ScottChi, Mar 10, 2012Report
#13Like+ QuoteReply


Hope that helps

I think the topic was Gen 1 audio upgrade