I’ve been dissatisfied with the way my stereo has sounded since I bought the car. So as a holiday gift to myself I picked up some upgraded speakers from Kee Audio that would fit in the stock locations and run fine off the monsoon amp and head unit. These consisted of:
- CDT EU-61.2 6.5″ component speaker systems for the doors
- CDT HD-6M DVC subwoofers for the sail panels
- CDT CL-4EX 4″ coaxials for the rear hatch
Here are a couple shots of the shiny new toys after UPS dropped them off.
The install started off well enough with removing the first door panel and pulling out the old stock component speaker and getting the new one int it’s place. The first problem I ran into however was that the new tweeter was not just a plug and play mounting solution. After an hour or so of trying various things to get it mounted to the old bracket using the stock grill cover I got fed up and just used it’s flush mounting pod and some body trim tape to stick it to the stock bracket. The only issue is that the new speaker is a little larger than the stock so the door panel was a little resistant to go back where it belonged.
When pulling the old parts out it was nice to see GM was thoughtful enough to include wiring pigtails for each speaker. They had however soldered the wires to the speaker terminals. The new ones had prongs for slide on connectors so I just snipped the wires off the old speaker and crimped on some connectors so that I could re-use the stock pigtails.
That is where my night took a turn for the worse. When I got to the back seat to replace the sail panel subs, this is what I was greeted by when pulling off the grill.
No wonder the sound quality was so crappy, there was no bass speaker. The wiring harness was clipped off at the body panel with absolutely no slack in it at all. What in the world possessed the previous owner to do something like this is beyond me. Why would you not just unplug the pigtail instead of just cutting wires? So, in order to fix this problem I had to start pulling body panels out of the car in order to get to the wiring harness. With that situation out of the way I moved on to the others. This is what I found.
The driver side hatch 4″ speaker had the wires also cut with what could only have been a butcher knife as the copper and plastic shielding was mangled, however the tweeter was left connected. Again, no rhyme or reason that I could see. Perhaps they did not understand how plug connectors worked? In addition to that, GM had riveted these speakers to the body panels so that had to be drilled out.
Moving over to the passenger hatch speaker it was again more of the same. With the exception that not only is the pigtail cut off but it was missing altogether. So at least we now know that the last owner was capable of unplugging the connection, just too stupid to do so except when it could get lost. And the tweeter wires look like they’ve been chewed on by rats or some other small rodents.
By the time I reached the other sail panel sub I was no longer surprised to see a mangled wiring harness.
So after many hours of cursing, removing & re-installing half the interior body panels and repairing all the wiring harnesses things are installed and running. The sound system actually sounds good now that I am not getting everything out of the component door speakers. I just have a rattle in one of the sail subs that I need to track down and correct along with finding another pigtail for that hatch speaker or finding the correct plug to make one of my own.
When I was putting everything back together I also decided to alter the stock grills a little as well. From the factory they had a felt backing on them that obscured the speakers from view.
I ripped out all the felt I could then sanded away the rest that was glued on and then re-installed them.
Over all I am much happier with the sound system now. Maybe I’ll start saving and shopping for a new head unit & amp sometime in the near future to round it out. Maybe a stealth sub box in the back hatch area.
Try a box like this one, leaves you a place for the t-tops.
http://subthump.com/Pontiac-Sub-Boxes/FirebirdTrans-Am/93-02-CamaroFirebird-T-top-Box.html
I was actually looking at that box not too long ago with maybe mounting an amp on the back deck. It is a really nice enclosure and I like how they will emboss logos into the box. In my opinion this is probably the nicest sub box on the market for the 4th gen f-bodies. I am just not sure if I want to lose all of the limited cargo space I have in the car or not. Another option would be to get an amp with a smaller footprint that can be hidden away in the wheel well and put a box in the driver side cubby that is next to the t-top storage area. I probably won’t have to make that decision any time soon however.