I have some infinity 4x6 coaxials and am working on getting them in, i know it can be done. But upon inspection I noticed how the speaker grill on the dash pad only has a like a tiny rectangular opening, some of the speaker is undoubtily going to be covered and the sound is going to be restriced. Do you guys know of any good mods to get around this and open up the grills so my speakers can breathheee...?

 

My 4x6s aren't covered, but if yours are then just start trimming, shouldn't be hard.

 

max I know exactly what you are talking about... my kappa plates are DESTROYED by these grilles.

my tweeter is almost entirely covered, and it makes them sound harsh, because I think the autoEQ compensates for that.

the only way I can see to do it, is to pull the dash pad off, and get an exact-o knife and trim off the plastic inbetween the 'grilles'... basically just continue the orginal pattern all the way across... if you are good with the knife, I bet it wouldn't be that hard...

just don't remove the grilles, because that looks like total crap, and attracts theives.

 

By the way scrapmaker how did you get your 4x6s in on the drivers side? i was thinking about grinding some of the plastic on the dash on the left side to make room for the tweeter and shift the whole plate over. The screw holes wont be lined up but i can probably make new ones.

 

I had some coaxials for my bird a long time ago and noticed that restriction you're talking about. For the money, time, and sound quality I just took them back and got some comparable single cone speakers that were two way or better (had the extra little speaker(s) on top of the the big cone). Fits perfect and no hacking on these hard to find and expensive dashes

 

I put a pair of 5-1/2" (or maybe 6") in the front dash. I had to remove the instrument cluster and go at the dash with an X-acto knife. After everything was finished, I had to just barely cut out a little arc in the top left side of the cluster to clear the magnet.

 

Try finding some earlier dash grills. The eariler ones with the small holes are much better then the later slotted ones.

 

just take an exact-o knife to the plastic that is in the way, Max, until the speaker fits in at least two of the stock screw holes... I made sure that the speaker laid perfectly flat, because the shop that originally installed my first pair bent the hell out of them and I was very upset.

once you trim it, if you've gone into the A/C ducting (really defrost ducting for the driver's side window,) you can repair it with duct tape. I found it's unnecessary as the speaker seals the hole by itself and my defrost works fine.

the good ol' days.... oh yeah, please don't install them like this... thank you.

 

Man looking at that pic, I would expect there to be a set of Sony home stereo speakers in the cargo area wired into an amp. I have seen this done many times.

 

well this is my car, that a company installed these speakers, and I didn't find out for over a year, when I decided to take off my (cracked BY them,) dashboard.



and in the back, you won't find sony anything, although I used to have some of their stuff back in the day, and I was rather impressed by it.

 

Alright Ive got my kappas in nice and flat now. I put the dash pad back on and yup, the only thing visible through the speaker grill opening is the woofer. the tweeter is entirely covered. I couldnt cut with an xacto knife along the grill lines. It didnt work out right. I was thinking about going at it with a very small dremmel tool. But I dont want to butcher the car

 

In my old firebird I cut out the entire center portion of the grills. I used a skill saw, but a rotary tool will work fine too. Once I had nothing left except the outer frame, I wrapped them with grill cloth and reinstalled them. They looked stock, but had absolutely no restrictions. This mod will also give you more clearance for speakers whose tweeters stick up a little bit.

 

what kind of cloth did you have, and how on earth did it look stock?? you'd have to use black vinyl for that to work.

 

better optioned firebirds come with cloth grills, so although it didn't look "stock" in the sense of being the same as what I had, it still looked stock in the sense that it could have come from the factory that way.

Anyway, I just used grill cloth. Parts Express sells it, and even radio shack used to sell it. Stretch it around the edges and glue it to the frame with spray adhesive.

 

hrm, I bet there is a way of just exact-o-knifing some more 'slits' into the grilles... but also...

do they make dashes with NO speaker openings at all? if I get kickpanels setups, I'd like to get rid of the 4x6s... if I can't find another dash I will probably just leave them in there on some sort of switchable setup... like I flip a switch and then they come on with the kickpanels... (only when the amp is off)

 

I've never seen a dash without the speaker openings, but I've got a spare dash pad that's waiting for me to fill in the slots and recover it with vinyl.

 

when you say "dash pad," do you mean the whole cardboard/vinyl piece that screws into the metal of the dash?

I've heard confusing terms before. For instance, everywhere I've looked to get a dash for my bird has been something that goes OVER your old dash, not an actual replacement.

I wish I could find a good dash somewhere.

 

I refer to the dash pad as the vinyl piece on the top. I usually refer to the whole entity that's bolted to the firewall to be the dash. That's just me. Your milage may vary.

 

ok