"Sometimes the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others"
So I thought it appropriate to share.
In my never-ending quest to always do things the cheapest, hardest way possible, I decided to "improve" on the millions BMW spent developing their premium speakers, by buying closeout components from mail order houses.
In the interest of sanity, don't stop to ask why. I didn't, and here we are.
Step one was picking up a set of cheap 6" (5.25 really) woofers from parts express that don't come anywhere near the frequency cutoff of the factory tweeters.
Step two was to find a set of tweeters that would cover the oops of the woofers without spending more money than a reputable set of car speakers would cost. I settled on a set of $9 vifas:
I took a pair of factory pods with broken speakers and using advice from the forum, I gently pried away at the old tweeters until they worked free.
Immediately there was a problem.
Seems the speaker pod is a 4 piece affair: Pod, speaker, mounting ring and grill. One speaker came out alone, the other brought the mounting ring out with it and refuses to this day to let go of it. So, I have one pod with a mounting ring and one without. I figured I would deal with the difference in depth on the speaker mount.
The vifas are bare tweeters, no mounting holes or protection, so I needed to come up with a way to mount them in the oem pods. I found a pvc reducer fitting in the electrical section at Lowes that has a 2" OD, a 1.5" inside diameter, and a 1.25 inch opening at one end. Looks like this:
It holds the vifa perfectly, and the recess on the reducing end is just deep enough to protect the dome. I had to sand down the OD a bit as the pods are just under 2" ID, and cut the excess off the back. I also sanded down the reducing opening to make the edge softer. To cope with the mounting ring, I shaved 1/8" off the face of one with a power miter saw to compensate for the depth difference. To do this I attached the reducer fitting to a much larger piece of PVC tube (Be very, very, careful with the power miter, unless you find having a nickname like "Three fingers" appealing). It took much less sanding of the OD to fit than the side without the mounting ring. A dremel with a sanding disk makes trimming the OD pretty painless - I used a razor and sandpaper.
A quick coat of paint and they are ready:
The tweeters drop in like they were made to:
and test mounted in the pods:
This is the pod without the mounting ring
Now I just need to hot glue it all together and give it a test drive
So I thought it appropriate to share.
In my never-ending quest to always do things the cheapest, hardest way possible, I decided to "improve" on the millions BMW spent developing their premium speakers, by buying closeout components from mail order houses.
In the interest of sanity, don't stop to ask why. I didn't, and here we are.
Step one was picking up a set of cheap 6" (5.25 really) woofers from parts express that don't come anywhere near the frequency cutoff of the factory tweeters.
Step two was to find a set of tweeters that would cover the oops of the woofers without spending more money than a reputable set of car speakers would cost. I settled on a set of $9 vifas:
I took a pair of factory pods with broken speakers and using advice from the forum, I gently pried away at the old tweeters until they worked free.
Immediately there was a problem.
Seems the speaker pod is a 4 piece affair: Pod, speaker, mounting ring and grill. One speaker came out alone, the other brought the mounting ring out with it and refuses to this day to let go of it. So, I have one pod with a mounting ring and one without. I figured I would deal with the difference in depth on the speaker mount.
The vifas are bare tweeters, no mounting holes or protection, so I needed to come up with a way to mount them in the oem pods. I found a pvc reducer fitting in the electrical section at Lowes that has a 2" OD, a 1.5" inside diameter, and a 1.25 inch opening at one end. Looks like this:
It holds the vifa perfectly, and the recess on the reducing end is just deep enough to protect the dome. I had to sand down the OD a bit as the pods are just under 2" ID, and cut the excess off the back. I also sanded down the reducing opening to make the edge softer. To cope with the mounting ring, I shaved 1/8" off the face of one with a power miter saw to compensate for the depth difference. To do this I attached the reducer fitting to a much larger piece of PVC tube (Be very, very, careful with the power miter, unless you find having a nickname like "Three fingers" appealing). It took much less sanding of the OD to fit than the side without the mounting ring. A dremel with a sanding disk makes trimming the OD pretty painless - I used a razor and sandpaper.
A quick coat of paint and they are ready:
The tweeters drop in like they were made to:
and test mounted in the pods:
This is the pod without the mounting ring
Now I just need to hot glue it all together and give it a test drive
[IMG]http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/
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