Update time!
So, Saturday was spent installing some tunes into the 'F as I've not had a stereo in it since I've owned it.
Removing the door cards and inspecting what was there, I found the standard speakers were perished and the cable leading to them thin and frankly, crap. Wont be using those then...
I started by removing the standard speaker from the plastic basket to see if it could be adapted to take a new speaker, and whilst it could it would leave me limited space between speaker and the door panel grille so I decided to break out the MDF and make a new one. I checked mounting depths and with a 12mm thick mdf baffle it gave me enough room at the back of the speaker to clear the window mechanism, and enough for that clearance at the front.
I started by tracing the profile of the orginal basket onto my MDF:-
Which I then cut with the Jigsaw and sprayed with black car paint so it would look a bit more OEM.
Looking at the doors, there was no sound deadening at all on or in them. Not even the bit of cursory foam that manufacturers often chuck into doors to give them more of a 'thunk' when you shut them. So, I broke out my Sound-Deadening-On-The-Cheap. I'll be the first to admit that Dynamat Sound Deadening is class leading and very nice stuff, etc, but it is pricey.
This is what I used instead:-
It's flashing tape from any good (or bad) DIY-type place which is basically a foil backed bitumen, like car specific sound deadening but a third of the price! Also in the pic is the stuff I used to cut and attach it with; note the roller and heat gun which are very useful for getting it to bond really well to the panel.
I cut it into sections and applied it to anywhere on the door where there was a largish surface area, like behind the speaker baffle and inside the door:-
So, what to fit in the hole then? I though these would do the job:-
They are CDT audio (used to be known as Cliff Design) tweeter and 5.25" Mid bass which I bought a couple of years ago but never got around to fitting into anything.
They look like this:-
If you see above, the cool thing about them is that the tweeter can either be mounted stand-alone in the door panel somewhere or centrally on a pole that scres into the centre of the mid-bass which is what I've done.
I also needed some cable which I had spare in the shed. A bit of soldering and heatshrinking and I had this:-
The other job was to find somewhere to put the crossover. I decided that inside the bottom of the door was as good as any place, but it does get damp in there so I bagged and tagged it:-
With that done it was a case or routing the new cable through the existing cable grommet in the door, and under the dash to the centre console. To make this look factory, I wrapped the cable in black tape, anywhere where it was visible. With that, I could fit the new speakers in place:-
I then soldered the new cables to a spare ISO loom that I had (therefore avoiding cutting the car or the stereos original loom), and plonked the radio in.
The finished system looks like this:-
As you can see, the new speakers are hidden and other than my trusty JVC headunit (bluetooth and ipod control)it looks nice and stock in there.
It also sounds pretty good, despite being in a noisy convertible. Punchy, with a decent volume but not harsh at all. Simple too, with no amps, etc.