Rear speaker covers - a grand experiment.

[ADVMax]

Early metal backed rear speaker covers - 1985 in this case.

Somewhere there is a brand new old stock set sitting on a shelf. They've never seen the light of day and you know damn well the upholstery is folding up on them.

How many of us for how many years have glued and clamped and fiddled and worried - doing the same thing over and over expecting different results....................

So, somewhere in a thread I saw where someone had stripped the vinyl off and painted them. Not a terrible idea except for the fact the metal pans have that big indent in the back for the hinge nuts.

Phase 1 began this way, strip the pans and paint them. As a futile stab at covering that ugly indent I decided to add some fake carbon fiber wrap - after all this was a temporary step in a deeper more involved dive into insanity.

They weren't terrible.


The adhesive in the wrap had gone south so there were some wrinkles. In this photo the edging that I had put around the rim has been removed in prep for further insanity.

First I cut some patch panels out of good German sheet metal, a Betterman cable tray cover relieved of the galvanizing with a flap wheel and marked to an exact shape.


The purpose of which is to cover that dent that no one was supposed to ever see.


All prepped for welding - yes, I am about to lay siege upon these defiant stampings with a welder.


Patch plates spot welded into place.


And lay on the Do, BON Do that is


After some (a lot) of working down with a DA they smoothed up nice. There are also some small round indents that I filled.



A little rattle can magic and they are looking better. Krylon Camo Desert Tan or Khaki is a decent match for the pearl beige in my car.


Not terrible.


Now, if you think this is over then you give me too much credit, I'm not that smart.

Next step begins with a set of Rockford Fosgate 6 1/2 inch full range speakers. They are actually a big too large in diameter possibly to surface mount. If they will fit under the covers I plan to make a frame to mount them in under the covers. The covers will have a rectangle opening cut in the top as large as possible and stainless mesh fit in from the under side, not sure yet if grills will remain bare stainless or if they will get the tan/khaki rattle can magic.

So, there are possibly other options at less that the admission of a new or nice used pair of speaker covers that inevitably will in a few years look as crappy as the ones you are replacing. I'm thinking the bondo and paint will hang in there. The covers are lower in profile with the vinyl removed, I have toyed with the idea of adding a skirt around the bottom to raise them up to be more even with the seat backs. I even had the thought of having them covered with a matching vinyl top material and padding but - vinyl, glue, padding - that sounds familiar. A familiar sound of something that didn't work the first time when some German interior engineer had the brain fart to design the original covers as they are.

oh well, stay tuned. More insanity to follow.

[6inarow]

Way to go. I cut a hole in my 633 speaker pods for some 6 inch speakers and put an e28 speaker grill onto the pod.

I like your idea far more.

[dcains]

Nice idea, and I'm working on something similar with mine. I just got a pair of these B&W wall-mount speakers off eBay:



That inner black panel and grille is just the right size to inlay in the rear speaker housing (I've got a pair each of both the old and new styles), and since my car's interior is black, color-matching everything should be easy. The B&W's are surely very inefficient, but I'll use them as satellites with a good amp, and a separately-amp'd 10" subwoofer mounted in the trunk. Not sure what to do up front, yet, but I'll probably try something similar to what was used in the later cars, with a tweeter in the upper front edge of the door panel and a small woofer in each kick panel. One of my rules for this install is to not do anything which isn't easily removed and leaves no damage behind.

[DesktopDave]

That's awesome...way over the top! 10 of 10 AFAIC!

[bimas]

Very nice job.

[WWW89E24]

Nice job and entertaining writeup.

FWIW, I did a little of this a couple of years ago: http://bigcoupe.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=17522

Ended up having to make room for the tweeter.

[pino635csi]

Great Idea for the rear pods, here is what I did with premium speakers

[6inarow]

Great Idea for the rear pods, here is what I did with premium speakers

Very nice!

The hunt is on, cause I prefer that style setup in the rear, and jut replace components with high quality units.

Way to go. Thanks.

[1986series6]

[QUOTE=pino635csi;28112819]Great Idea for the rear pods, here is what I did with premium speakers


Pino

Very nice fabricating. Are speakers available that just plug to stock speaker harness? I don't want to rewire.

[ADVMax]

Well, as it turned out the speakers actually just did fit surface mount. I really wanted to put them under and fab in a flush grill over them, it would have looked better. Cutting the 140mm holes was enough fun and it doesn't look terrible, the Rockford Fosgates do sound better than the small stock speakers. Haven't decided if I'm going to paint the grills to match, for right now it's done and there's yard work at hand. Can't remember if I mentioned it but the stock speaker connectors plugged right up to these.

[pino635csi]

[QUOTE=1986series6;28117005]

Great Idea for the rear pods, here is what I did with premium speakers


Pino

Very nice fabricating. Are speakers available that just plug to stock speaker harness? I don't want to rewire.

Thank you !

You could use the factory speaker harness, I actually rewired the rear speakers from the head unit back to the speakers, I wanted to bypass the fader dial,

Pino

[1986series6]

thanks
Pino