Replacing speakers in front doors

I replaced stock front door speakers in my 2005 Prius myself. My car has standard (non JBL) audio system. Not very difficult, but does require some basic skills and a bit of creativitity :wink:

Main caveats:

1. Stock speakers are in custom enclosure and held in place by three aluminum rivets. You have to drill them in order to remove stock speakers.

2. Speaker opening is 6 3/4". There are very few 6 3/4" speakers. Most high quality speakers (Focal, Diamond, a/d/s, etc) are 6 1/2". Therefore you'll need an adapter. Crutchfield sells some here

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-zw5qlbA85x4/c...?g=103200&avf=N

These ones

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-zw5qlbA85x4/c...200&I=120817801

look very close (although they are marked as Honda - go figure).

I didn't use Crutfield adapters. I purchased pair of 2 way component speakers

a/s/d 346cs

on eBay. Very good sounding speakers, not bright at all. Actually I first perceived sound like there were not enough highs. However, when I went and listened to the same CD on my high end system, it sounded pretty much the same.

a/d/s comes with grille and a ring that hold the grille. The ring is wide enough to cover 6 3/4" opening. I didn't need grilles so I mounted the ring under the speaker and used it as datapter. It also helped to raise the speaker a bit since mounting depth in Prius is quite shallow.

3. You can mount 3" deep speaker if you raise it slightly. There is not much depth in the door, but plenty of space between door metal and the plastic door panel. Verify that you can raise and lower window before you mount the speaker.

4. The biggest hassle is crossover. Stock Prius system uses small capacitor mounted directly on the tweeter as a primitive crossover. High quality speakers come with complex crossovers which are quite large. a/d/s crossover box is about 6"x3"x1.5". I mounted it on the door under the handle. There is some space there, but it is partially filled by large piece of foam. I had to cut out approximately half of it in order to fit crossover box. Try to find speakers with small crossover if possible.

5. It was relatively easy to mount tweeter. I had to cut a bit of plastic out of tweeter panel and then I just placed a/d/s tweeter there and hel it in place with some silicon-based glue.

6. It may be a bit humid in the door (rain water does leak a bit into the door. If you are concerned, you may consider purchasing foam speaker baffles (I didn't)

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-zw5qlbA85x4/c...asp?g=762&avf=N

7. In order to run wires you may have to open plastic seal that separates door space from plastic panel. Don't forget to seal it back.

[ADDED]
8. Check speaker phase. In Prius wiring there is no clear indication which wire is +. In passenger door speaker signal comes on blue and green wires. Green is +. In the driver doop wires were purple and red. Red was +. To err on a safe side, leave panel open when you connect speakers and play some music with bass. Slowly rotate balance from side to side. If amount of bass increases in the middle then speaker polarity is ok. In order to check tweeter polarity (a/d/s tweeter didn't have indication which connector was +) play CD with clear instrument positions and check imaging: you should be able to tell where players are and where singer is.

It took me about 4 hours to do passenger door and about 1.5 hours to finish driver side door (experiece counts)

I didn't take pictures, I was busy enough and my hands were too dirty to handle digital camera

:wink:

 

In basic system there is only one pair of wires. It is connected to both woofer and tweeter. Tweeter has capacitor connected sequentially which forms simple high-pass filter for the tweeter. You can look at the diagram here

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_...ghpass/hpf.html

With JBL system, as far as I know, crossover is in the amplifier so there may be two pairs of wires. Which makes things both simpler and complex depending on how you look at it. You can use amplifier crossover and just install new tweeter and woofer. However, stock crossover frequency and phase characteristics may not be optimal for new speakers. Or you can reconnect wire at the amplifier bypassing crossover (I am not sure if it is possible) and use crossover supplied with the speakers. Or you can install new amplifier.