Door Speaker Installation Instructions

[Teon]

Howdy guys,

I just got done doing an installation of a set of splits into the doors. As far as I'm concerned this is the best possible way to install speakers, so I thought I'd post a guide.

As with my camera mount guide, this will basically be plenty of pictures with a little text, rather than a full step-by-step tutorial.

The process involves fully sound-deadening the doors (inner and outer skins), mounting the spilts, and running new cable. The result is much tighter sound and a nice heavy 'thud' when you shut the doors :-)



Part one, preparing the door

1. We are going to strip the door all the way down to allow us to start building it back up with the sound-deadaning, speaker mounts, and wiring.
   
2. Remove door trim (should be easy, just look for the few hidden screws)
3. Remove the plastic sheet, and as much of the bitumen as you can
   This is what the inside of a new door looks like, but if your supra is 12 years old like mine chances are it's a lot worse looking than that! Half of the plastic had already lifted off on my car
   (Stole this photo from MKIV.com)
   
   
   Just peel that all off and discard it - when you're done the door will be even better sealed than it is to start with. Scrape off as much of the bitumen as you can while you're at it.
   
4. Remove the factory speaker box, and discard.
5. Your door should now look something like this
   
6. Unscrew the black support from the door, and unclip the wires that it holds. This will give you better access to the outer skin of the door. Also unscrew the handle and just let it dangle.
7. Clean all surfaces with a degreaser, and then water. Keep cleaning until the cloth comes off clear. You want it as clean as possible to ensure that the sound-proofing sticks.

At this stage you should be left with a very bare and clean looking door. All that should be left attached is the power-window motor.



Part two, deadening the outer skin of the door


The purpose of this is to add bulk to the sheet metal and reduce it's resonant frequency out of the audible range. You can find explanations of why all over the internet, but the basic idea is that if the metal in the door vibrates it not only wastes energy from the speakers, but it can cause harmful distortions and interference with the sound. By adding the sound deadening we are not only reducing these vibrations, but we are also stopping the sound waves from reflecting off the door panel and interfering with the speaker, and lastly we are reducing the road-noise entering the car some.

We are going to line every flat part of sheet metal in the doors with the sound deadening. I bought a bulk pack of B-Quiet Ultimate from ebay, another popular brand is DynaMatt, but they are all essentially the same - a layer of bitumen or a synthetic 'bulk', with a layer of foil on the top. The better quality ones (B-Quiet and DnyaMatt are mostly synthetic, which apparently gives them better deadening with less mass)

You apply the material hot to make it stick. I'll refer to it as DynaMatt from here on as it's the most common brand and most people seem to use that as a generic name... but as mentioned, I didn't actually use DynaMatt

1. Park the car in the sun to let the door panel heat up
2. Cut strips/squares out of the DynaMatt - you want the largest panels that are easy enough to move into position inside the door.
3. Test fit each panel before removing the backing paper to make sure that it actually fits. Trim off any edges that don't sit flat against the metal, as if they are sticking up they might cause it to start to peel down the line.
4. Heat one panel at a time with a heat gun until it's HOT. You will need to wear thick leather gloves to handle the sheets. If you can touch the door panel or the Dynamatt with your hands without getting burnt, it's not hot enough! The bitumen should be nice and gooey
5. Peel back about 5cm of one edge of the dynamat, move it into position on the door, and stick down the edge. Then using your (gloved) hand to smooth out any bubbles or creases, slowly peel back the rest of the backing as you stick the panel to the door.
6. While using the heat gun on a low setting to keep the dynamatt warm, use a wooden roller to press it firmly into the door. Be careful not to actually distort the door panel (as this is the panel visible from the outside of the car), but use as much pressure as you think is reasonable to squash the dynamatt in. Pay particular attention to the edges to ensure they are well stuck down.
   
   
7. Continue this process, slighly overlapping each sheet, until the entire outer skin of the door is covered.
   
   

[Teon]

10) Apply another two layers of dynamatt to the area that will sit directly behind the speaker, to build it up to a total of three layers.
11) The dynamatt will take care of the vibrations, but we also want to add some sound absorbing or dispersing material directly behind the speaker to stop the sound waves from being reflected back. You can buy fancy foam squares, or just use some carpet tiles ($5 from a hardware store) like I did, if you're on a budget!
Cut out two pieces of the carpet tiles to fit behind the speaker - one goes above the intrusion bar, one below. Apply some liquid nails or other contact adhesive.


12) Stick the tiles on to the door, and the outer-skin is now finished! That's the hardest part of the project, so go have a beer!

[Teon]

Part 3: Making the speaker mounts

This step involves building some mounts for the speakers out of 6mm thick MDF. You may also use marine grade plywood or perspex - the same steps apply.

1. Print out a copy of the template (template.pdf thanks to AlxRSPTT from SupraForums.com) and line it all up to make sure it fits
   
   
   
   Because we are totally sealing the doors we actually need a different shape, so the template is just used to get the position of the speaker hole and the screw holes accurate. Once you've checked that that holes all line up, stick the template down on some cardboard and draw out a rough 'cloud' shape that you think will come close to all of the edges of the hole in the door. Keep trimming and refining this shape until it's a good fit. It doesn't need to be perfect, as long as it doesn't foul on anything.
   I don't have any photos of this step, but you can see the final shape I used in the following photos.
   
   
   
2. The next step is to cut out a ring to mount the speaker on to. This will strengthen the MDF, and also space the speaker out from the path of the window.
   
   Use some spray adhesive to stick the template that came with your speakers onto the MDF
   
   
   
   
3. Next use a jigsaw to cut out the ring.
   
   
   **It is important that you use the template that came with your speakers, not the one on the door template, as even speakers of the same size (6.5" in this case) will have slightly different mounting sizes.
   
   
4. I forgot to take photos of this part too, but the next step is to cut out the main (cloud shaped) mount, and glue the ring on. To cut out the mount, do the same as for the ring - stick your template on with some spray adhesive and cut it out with a jigsaw.
   
   
   
5. The trick to aligning the cut out and the ring with the template is to poke a hole through the centre of both a photocopy of the speaker template and the door template - then you can line up the centre of the holes and stick it down.
   
   
6. Once you've got both the door mount and the ring cut out, stick them together with some wood glue. (Obviously you should remove the paper from the template first to allow the glue to bind to the wood.)
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Now test fit the mount. It may require small spacers behind some of the screw points. With the mount in place, try putting the speaker in, and winding down the window (CAREFULLY AND SLOWLY!!). I found there wasn't enough clearance behind the speaker for the window to move, so I added another piece of MDF behind each screw to space it out by 6mm. When it all lines up nicely, pull it off and glue any spacers onto the mount.
   
8. Finally give the mount a generous coating of a water-proof sealant, as MDF deteriorates quickly in damp environments, and it will get some moisture in the door when it rains!

Still to come: Running wires, and sealing the inner skin.

[Teon]

Part 4: Running the wires inside the door

Now is the time to run the speaker wiring to the doors. First you should choose the type of wiring you're going to use. Some people claim that you should buy expensive Monster or other brand wiring. In my opinion copper is copper, and buying an expensive brand gets you nothing more than fancy packaging and an empty wallet. However there are a few things that are important to look for....

• You might as well go for oxygen-free coper (OFC). I'm yet to see any evidence that it makes a difference to sound quality, but it doesn't make much difference to price, so why not.
• Speaker wire is made up of many individual strands of copper wire braided together. So two wires that might seem the same, and be the same gauge (cross-sectional area) might be very different depending on the thickness of the individual strands. For audio applications more thin strands is better then fewer thick strands, for a given total thickness of wire.

I opted to use wire that was overkill for my application, mainly because once the wiring is in place I'll have plenty of scope to upgrade my system later without redoing the wiring. It cost me a little more now, and actually ended up a significant cost in the total budget, but it's the only component that I don't regard as replaceable.

I opted for figure-8 speaker cable from Jaycar with 259 0.12mm strands in each side. That's more than twice as many strands as most speaker wire of the same total gauge. (the catalogue number at Jaycar is WB1732).

The aim when wiring the car is to have no joins, cuts, or interruptions between the amps and the speakers. This requires careful planing to ensure that you have the correct length of cable available. I also decided to run seperate cabling for the mids and the tweeters all the way back to the amp (rather than mounting the crossover in the door), so that if I decided to use an active crossover system in the future I could.

I ran the speaker wires and the audio-cables down the passenger side door sill, and the power wires and remote (amp switching) wires down the driver's side sill. Remember that you need two lengths of speaker wire for each door (one for woofers, one for tweeters), for four in total.


Running wires to the door

The first step is pulling the wires through the rubber grommet between the door and the car.

You will need to feed something through the grommet that you can attach your wires to and then pull them through. I used a long cable tie. Just be careful that whatever you use doesn't puncture the grommet. If you have existing speaker wire you can cut that and use it to pull the new stuff through.

1. Feed your 'puller' through the grommet from the door side into the car.
2. Take a 10m length of speaker wire and hold the two ends together and tape them up with electrical tape
   
3. Tape the wires very securely to the end of the 'puller' (on the car interior side)
4. Coat the ends of the wire with lots of talcum powder -this will act as a dry-lubricant and allow you to pull the wires through the rubber grommet
5. Slowly pull the wires through with one hand while feeding them with the other, taking care that you don't damage the existing wires in the grommet

With large speaker wire it might seem impossible, but if you use plenty of talcum powder it should slide fairly easily.

You should now have your speaker wire passing through the grommet into the door.

(note, I also fed through some extra wires to use for future projects, such as lighting inside the door)


Pull through about 80cm of the wire into the door. You will then need to send one end of it along the factory loom and through the second grommet so that it exits near the bottom of the door. The other end should go up, around the back of the window track and come out the hole in your speaker mount.

You can see that I've wrapped the wire in a plastic loom to protect it and stop it moving around and getting in the way of the window


One wire goes up, one goes down


Passing behind the window track


Here you can see the two wires, one inside a plastic loom coming out from where the speaker will mount, and one coming out with the factory loom at the bottom.

• Put the speaker mount in position and then attach the wire to the back of it to hold it in place and out of the way of the window

The wiring inside the door is now done!

[Teon]

Part 5: Running the wires inside the car

This step is simple so I won't go into too much detail, but basically you need to run your speaker cables and audio-cables from the head deck down one side of the car to the amps (I mounted them in the back), and the power cable and amp signal wire down the other side.

1. Take the speaker cable coming out of the driver's door and run it behind the dash all the way along to where the wires from the other side come out of the door, taking care not to run it close to any power wires
2. You should now have all four speaker wires together in the corner of the passenger side foot well
   
3. Take your RCA's from the head-deck and run them out to the same point
4. Pull off the plastic door-sills, and pull back the carpet to expose the wire-channel
5. Use cable ties to join all the cables together and neatly run them down the inside of the door-trim in the wire-channel
   
   
   
6. Now do the same thing on the other side using your power cable and remote wire - use cable ties to secure it to the existing loom
   
   
   
7. Replace the carpet and door-sills and you're done!

I'll leave the rest of the wiring to you to figure out as it will depend on the placement of your amplifiers etc. But basically hold off on cutting the speaker wires until you know exactly how long you need them to be.

[Teon]

Step 6: Sealing the door

Now is the time to finish sealing the door - this is the easiest part, so relax!

1. Unbolt the power-window motor and apply some dynamat to the area behind it
   
   
2. Bolt it back on, then start to apply dynamat over the top of everything on the door, covering up any gaps and holes (it is ok for the dynamat to span some gaps)
   
   
3. Keep going until you have the entire door sealed. Cover right over the top of the speaker hole, then use a sharp knife to cut out the hole again. This will ensure that the dynamat goes right up to the edges You will actually attach the speaker on top of the dynamat to finish the seal.
   
   It should look something like this when you're done
   
   
   
   
4. Secure the speaker wire in place just near the hole
   
   
   
   
5. You can now cut the speaker wire to length and solder it onto the speaker terminals
   
6. Screw the speaker into place, making sure it slightly squashes the edges of the dynamat to finish the seal
   
   
   

You now have fully sealed doors and will enjoy much better sound quality from your speakers. What's left is attaching the tweeters (I mounted them on the door trim), wiring up the amp, and putting the door back together.

When it's all done and back together it will look just like any other stereo installation - but it will sound much, much better!

[Lawson]

Top write-up Teon!

Question on the sound proofing you apply to the inner skin of the doors. Have you heard any reports of it accelerating corrosion in the doors by doing this? That would be my bigest worry.

[onggie]

Hey mate, was just wondering if you have a copy of the PDF file on your computer? Do you reckon you can upload it to this forum as today I went to print out the PDF files that are on supraforums.com and the files are now missing!

Cheers

[nic]

Print out a copy of the template (template.pdf thanks to AlxRSPTT from SupraForums.com) and line it all up to make sure it fits

Credit for the template should go to Rob on mkivsupra.net who did the original drawings.

You download the files here

http://mkivsupra.net/vbb/showthread.php?t=35019