How to fit rear speakers

How to fit rear speakers

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paul-wh

Original Poster:

378 posts

264 months

Tuesday 4th June 2002
quotequote all
For anyone interested in fitting additional speakers in the rear here is my attempt.

I considered cutting holes in the rear panel but wasn't convinced I could fit a pair of 6x9s in so opted to make a "box" of MDF Its not too deep and tilted upwards to direct the speaker to head height. Its wedged in tight and held in place by a long strip of velcro on the back batten.

The whole thing is covered in matching carpet although it looks darker due to the shadow of the overhang above it.



This coupled to an amp in the boot and I can have the stereo at full volume with very minimal distortion.

Next project is to see if I can fit in some mid-range/tweeters in the front somewhere to bring the music forward as it does now sound all behind me.



Rear view showing batten (at an angle) with velcro strip.

Paul

ps. Ever wondered why TVR put in those 4inch speakers?
Its to provide a convenient hole for when you want to pull wires through from the back of the car to the front.




>>> Edited by paul-wh on Tuesday 4th June 23:47

bizzbozz

40 posts

262 months

Friday 7th June 2002
quotequote all
that looks pretty damn good.
I'm loathed to give my car to an audio dealer - dont trust them. Im due for a delivery from the factory soon and was hoping they could knock something up for me if I give them the equipment. Incidentally, what amp and speakers are you using? are you planning on running the front speakers off the head unit?

You make it sound quite simple - how do you know where to feed the wires through? do you not need to take up carpet etc?? (i might give it a go, but this puts me off)

BTW, have you used any sound deadening?

sorry about all the Qs, but I'm currently looking into all this for a new car!

Thanks!

paul-wh

Original Poster:

378 posts

264 months

Saturday 8th June 2002
quotequote all
Thanks Bizzbozz,

It wasn't too arduous a task to make or fit. I havent bothered with any sound deadening material. Not sure if I need to.

The amp is a Genesis Profile amp which has 2 channels so I am limited to just running the rear speakers off this. The speakers are MB Quart DTC169 - 6x9s
which are 3-way speakers. The amp and speakers were recommended by the car audio shop and I had no reason to doubt them. I am impressed with the sound from them. The other day I was listening to an Alanis Morisette song and I could hear a background noise which I first thought was yet another creak from the car but was actually a bit of background guitar I hadnt been able to hear before.

The only bits of carpet that need pulling away are a small part of the top right corner of the upright piece at the back of the rear shelf so that you can drill a hole to pass the speaker cables through to the boot. You also need to pull away the piece behind the lift up flap in the boot to expose the drilled hole. Lastly, the right side of the piece at the front of the passenger well to expose the entry to the battery compartment and to feed the remote switch-on/RCA wires up to the head unit.

The amp is held in place by 3 big pieces of velcro at the bottom of the front wall of the boot to the left of the fuel tank. The speaker wires can then be hidden behind the carpet covering the fuel tank. The power/ground/remote switch-on/RCA cables can be fed behind the edge of the carpet that covers the left side of the boot. They can then be fed over the left wheel arch and by removing the rear left speaker you can then direct them down behind the panel through which the seat belt runs (and disconnect the speaker at the same time!). Next, undo the allen bolt at the bottom of this panel and put the wires behind this (my last pic was taken before I did this) to make sure the wires were tight to the wheel arch so as not to risk getting in the way of the seat belt. This then puts them in an ideal position to feed them to the floor slightly behind the carpet to pass along under the edge of the floor carpet to the left of the passenger seat. If you lift the floor carpet in the passenger footwell which is held on by a velcro strip then there are a couple of grooves along which you can run the cables and tape in place using insulation tape. This means no bumps in the carpet. Lastly you can run the wires up behind the carpet in the passenger footwell, pass the ground and power through the rubber bung to the battery compartment and the rest up behind the shelf, twist them once around the corrugated heater tubing to stop them falling down and then along to the hole behind the stereo. Fitting to the stereo depends on your head unit.

Back to making the MDF box front, following the advice of a thread on the Yahoo Tuscan Owners forum I made a template out of cardboard and then asked a cabinet maker friend to cut the shape out of MDF but to cut the top and bottom lines at an angle of about 30 degrees so that when in place it was angled upwards. If you go for the same method of securing the box to the rear wall using a batten screwed to a piece of wood either side of the speakers and one in the middle then when you put it in place you will probably find that the rear wall is concave and so you will need to screw a smaller batten to the main on to fill the gap. You can then attach the velcro to this.

I haven't fitted front speakers yet as this is proving a problem but Andy Moore has fitted Bose cube speakers which fit on the shelf. Once I have sorted out a low frequency filter I shall try an experiment with my Bose speakers.

Paul

philshort

8,293 posts

276 months

Sunday 9th June 2002
quotequote all
quote:
I'm loathed to give my car to an audio dealer - dont trust them
Don't blame you, some "professionals" made a complete mess of my Chimaera a few years ago, ripping the carpets left right and centre to pull wires through. They were even recommended by a TVR dealer and had done TVR's before. Seems they didn;t think ripped carpets a problem. They are six months later when all the ripped edges have frayed.

Do it yourself if you want your interior to stay pristine!

bizzbozz

40 posts

262 months

Tuesday 11th June 2002
quotequote all
Thanks paul for all the info. Very useful indeed. I think its certainly worth doing things like this yourself, rather than leave your pride and joy with someone who's likely to rip you off and leave your car worse off, as phil points out.

Jarrett

100 posts

283 months

Thursday 13th June 2002
quotequote all








This installation was recently done by my local audio guys who have looked after all three of my TVR's and done an awesome job on them all. On the Tuscan they have;

- installed sat-nav
- hard wired the radar detector
- upgraded the pioneer head unit
- added a 12 disk cd multi-changer in the boot
- wired in a Nokia handsfree car-kit
- installed hidden 6x9 speakers in a fake rear panel
- installed 1" tune-ups in the dash tray

All the work is done to an excellant level and unless you knew the car from new, you would think that it is all factory fit. I think that their prices have been pretty good too. It all sounds and looks great.

In mobile audio, just as in TVR dealers, there are good ones and bad ones. When you find the good ones you stick with them.

paul-wh

Original Poster:

378 posts

264 months

Thursday 13th June 2002
quotequote all
Very nice jarrett,

Do the tweeters in the front have a good effect? When I visited a local car audio shop to get some the guy there said that it wouldnt really bring vocals forward, just the higher notes.

Paul

Jarrett

100 posts

283 months

Thursday 13th June 2002
quotequote all
Paul,

I had my doubts about how effective they would be when I saw them too. But, to my surprise, they really help bring the sound forward in the cabin. Both high frequencies and vocals are reproduced well.

They are infinity 105's and come with a crossover module.

Very impressed with your rear panel. I am afraid that I am just not competant enough in the DIY department to have risked trying this myself. It would have cost me more to fix my balls-ups than it did to get the audio guys to do it for me!

Jarrett

paul-wh

Original Poster:

378 posts

264 months

Friday 14th June 2002
quotequote all
Jarrett,

Very interesting.

Just had a look at the infinity site.

REF105T Sounds like the ones you have. Do you have them coming staight of the head unit?

If you dont mind me asking, who fited your system as I wouldnt mind finding out a bit more about them.

Cheers

Paul



Paul

phips

48 posts

282 months

Sunday 16th June 2002
quotequote all
quote:

This installation was recently done by my local audio guys



Hi Jarrett,

Looks really neat. Who are your local guys? (cheap
advertising for them, I'm looking for somebody to
sort the audio in my Tuscan!)

Thanks,

--Phips

Jarrett

100 posts

283 months

Monday 17th June 2002
quotequote all
Paul & Phips,

The guys that have done all my installation work are Mobile Audio in Worcester (Tel. 01905 23315). They are excellant. Just mention the ice grey violet tuscan that they fitted rear speakers to recently and they'll know who sent you their way (probably swear a lot too for being asked about yet another TVR install!! And at me for recommending them!).

Hope this helps.

Jarrett

P.S. Paul, those are the infinity's that I have. They are powered straight off the head unit (more or less due to complications with the Nokia car kit) through their own crossover module (which provides the midrange/high split which goes to the original Pioneer speakers and the infinity's respectively).

paul-wh

Original Poster:

378 posts

264 months

Monday 17th June 2002
quotequote all
Cheers Jarrett,

I bought a pair on Friday. I wired them straight off the head unit and they sounded very good however they distorted at about half volume so I put one on the amp and this was much better. Doesnt look like my head unit is up to it so I am going to have to get an amp.

Cheers

Paul

Jarrett

100 posts

283 months

Monday 17th June 2002
quotequote all
Paul,

Glad to have helped. Hope that you enjoy them lots. My Pioneer head unit is 4x45 and cost just short of 1K a couple of years ago so I'm rather glad that it is handling them ok. Might replace it soon with the new Pioneer with the hard disk but waiting to see a review. Anyone heard anything about this bit of kit?

Jarrett

P.S. DVD could be good too. Then there's 5.1 ....! There are just too many good toys out there!

Graham and Rosie

850 posts

283 months

Thursday 20th June 2002
quotequote all
Jarrett

Where is the right hand tweater fitted? Is it hidden in the parcel shelf? Can you hear it?
That is the best solution yet to the lack of front speakers, I might just have to copy that

Graham

Jarrett

100 posts

283 months

Thursday 20th June 2002
quotequote all
Hello Mr. Continental,

Did you have fun at Le Mans? Quite a good run in trip for that new engine eh!

The right hand speaker is in the same place on the drivers side. It's a little more obstructed than the left one but is still quite hearable.

All credit to this goes to Mobile Audio not me. They be damn good at this stuff!

Jarrett

paul-wh

Original Poster:

378 posts

264 months

Thursday 20th June 2002
quotequote all
Hi Jarrett,

After visiting the car audio shop to see about getting another amp to power the tweeters, the guy there suggested wiring them across the rear 9x6 speakers running off the amp rather that buy another amp. I am glad to say that they worked however when I placed them in the same position as yours they wernt very audible.

As they are running on the same channel as the rears I am not able to fade to the front tweeters to make them louder so I have ended up moving the tweeters to the right of the radio for the left channel and at the front of the parcel shelf to the right of the steering wheel for the right channel. Bringing them closer to me compensates for the lack of fader control and as most of the time it is just me in the car, I am not that bothered if sound isnt going to be as good to anyone sitting in the passenger seat.

Obviously, if the head unit can power the speakers on its own without distortion then it will be possible to fade to the front to increase their volume if required.


Paul

>> Edited by paul-wh on Thursday 20th June 18:15

Jarrett

100 posts

283 months

Thursday 20th June 2002
quotequote all
Paul,

The Pioneer head unit that I have has DSP. Within this there is an auto-equalisation setting that uses a mike that you hookup to the head unit and place in the car where you want the best possible sound field. It then plays white noise at various frequencies through each of the speakers and picks up the return. This allows it to tune itself to the cars acoustics.

Having run this against the new setup the results have been excellant. Guess that the head unit has ironed out all the settings for me.

I hope that you are happy with your new setup. The weather today was certainly up for some top-off motoring with a decent background soundtrack (other than the sports exhaust pop and crackle anyway!).

Jarrett

paul-wh

Original Poster:

378 posts

264 months

Friday 21st June 2002
quotequote all
Jarrett,

I can see why your stereo cost just under a grand now.

I sometimes wonder about power ratings. My head unit is 30w per channel so I cant understand why the tweeters, which are rated at 50w, distort at around 50% volume. I would have expected it at a much higher volume.

The main reason for going for my Clarion head unit was because it is metal (the dashboard in my Chimaera was aluminium) and it is MP3 compatible, although it is only the CD player in the head unit which will play MP3. The changer in the boot can only take normal CDs. I have been told that Kenwood systems can take MP3 CDs in the CD changer so I guess in time most manufacturers will go down this route so if I ever upgrade my stereo, I shall make sure that it can power the tweeters sufficently

Paul

Graham and Rosie

850 posts

283 months

Friday 21st June 2002
quotequote all
Ahhh, MP3, now we are talking!

My Tuscan has a nice Empeg MP3 player in it, this doesnt use CD's but laptop hard drives, currently I have 60GB of disk space, so have my complete CD collection ripped to MP3 and every track I own with me at all times! No more need to stop to change the 6 CD's you have got bored of, and even the girlie can find something she likes

The down side is having to rip a new CD before you can play it and the fact the head unit has no built in amp, but it can also run as an external input to a standard head unit, or take an exteranl input of its own, such as a CD changer or CD head unit. I also have the radio module so can listen to the radio if I get bored of my MP3 collection or when at Le Mans to get the race

It is a cool set up, it was v expensive when they launched it, like 1,300 gbp, but I bought during their close down sale and got it for 340 gbp!!

Graham
PS- Yes Jarrett, Le Mans was great, car is now waiting for the 1k service then I can complete the running in and see what the S engine is like!

paul-wh

Original Poster:

378 posts

264 months

Friday 21st June 2002
quotequote all
Dohhhhh! Gadget boy here.

Had a look at the mStation at www.6thplanet.com and couldnt resist it. By next week I will be the owner of the 60gb version too.

Graham, Where did you fit your hard drive?

Paul