Stealthy-One

well I just tried to drop in my Focals.... not happening. only tried the drivers side. the rear of the gauge cluster is about 1 inch to high. now seeing as how my dash pad is cracked, I am tempted to just cut a hole through the pad and have the speakers sticking out the top. they have some decent looking grills. But I dont know if I really want the sun beating the doo-doo out of them every day.

For those of you stating that they fit with NO MODS, did you get uber shallow speakers or something?

V6sucker

I ran boston 2 way 4X6's for years off the deck. I ran the rear 6X9 3 ways and two 12's off amp/crossover with 150 ea.

I also angled the rears slightly with spacers to face the front a little more. I thought it sounded great personally. But I am also not into the thumping, more heavier metal so mid-high had to be clear.

vorgath

I installed 4 inch Infinity Reference speakers in the dash, they were too tall, so I used spacers underneath (besides the wooden adapter). The tweeter pushed against the dash so I cut holes in it, and put in port tubes, looks custom now.

One warning though, really tough to cut the dash nicely, if you need to cut a hole where the speaker "grill" is, just cut the "fins" with wire cutters or sharp scissors. Use a holesaw, and it'll shatter and break up, creating a mess. I found out the hard way.

ScrapMaker

you even have to cut up the dash to get the infinity kappa 4x6 plates to fit... no surprise that 5.25" components don't fit without some work

Bluestorm

Right now I have my amp driving my 6x9s and a dual-twelve bazooka. I was planning on eventually bringing my dash speakers into the power mix but this thread makes me hesitant. Which sucks, because it sounds unbalanced when your music only comes from the rear.

dbrunner2

Well, being certifiably insane, I went in, mangled some things under the dash, and ended up being able to put a pair of Infinity Kappa 6.5" woofers in there. I hole-sawed the dash pad for the tweeter mounts. Aside from dropping the pad during reinstallation and cracking one of the tweeter mounts, it looks and sounds great.

The things I had to maul were: air ducts, which I basically notched like you would notch frame members and closed up with duct tape (what else?) the plastic behind the dash (much harder to cut than the air ducts, but I managed it), and the mounting brackets for the old 4x6's, each of which I separated into two brackets, which support the new speakers with one on the right and one on the left. They were in effect cut and drilled for new mounting holes so that the 6.5" speaker can drop in with its center in the same place as that of the 4x6.

A few caveats: I made myself a custom dash plate that holds a set of Auto-Meter gauges, and is not as deep as the factory dash. I don't know whether the 6.5" speaker on the driver's side would clear the factory unit. Also, the tweeter mounts do not fit very well; it was a struggle to get them in at all, and they still make contact with various things under the pad. I'm planning to make a new set of mounts, set up to require less clearance and mount with screws from the top, rather than a collar/nut on the bottom.

srdynamics1

iTrader: (10)

wow 6.5. I have 4" cerwin vegas mounted in the factory 4x6 location. Their large magnet size required cutting of the guage cluster among other things. My tweets are mounted in the dash pad aimed straight up. I would not recomend it though. The windshield causes makes em sound very harsh. I solved that problem by unplugging them and adding Q Logic door pods with a 6.5 component set.

rx7speed

all I have to say is it is sad when my little 2000lb 76 honda accord has more room in the back seat area with how tiny that car is compared to your big boat's of a thirdgen.

b's90cam

well i think im going to try putting in a 5.25 alpine type r in the dash and mount the tweeter in the pillar. It seems most of the problems occur when people try to stuff both in the dash. I'm hoping with the right shimming it'll fit. JUst need to hurry up and buy my camaro already. Then its on!

Jim85IROC

iTrader: (2)

That's because distortion will make your ears hurt long before clean undistorted sound will. Most people think their system cranks because it hurts their ears, when in reality, it's just because it's an unclean signal due to clipping, crap speakers, or some other factor.

With lower distortion, you'll be amazed at just how loud things can get without hurting your ears.

And when I'm referring to distortion, it's not necessarily something you can identify as audible distortion. It may sound clear to the untrained ear, but it's not.

Dash speakers are harsh and shrill, and this has a lot to do with the comb filtering effect you get when the direct sound wave combines with the wave that's reflecting off the glass. The result is a frequency response that, well, looks like a comb (hence the name). This is another thing that the untrained ear may not pick up on, but will result in a harsh, shrill sound, especially at high volumes. It's what makes your ears hurt. Combine that with the generally low quality that most 4x6s have, and it just gets worse.

rx7speed

amen to that. most distortion of speakers will occur at higher frequencies or rather cause frequencies higher then the sound that was being played. like distortion at 5khz might cause a 5khz tone and a 10khz tone

sometimes it's not very audible as you said.

another thing is distortion makes it seem louder then what it really is. something about the way it plays with the mind. kinda why tube amps are "known" to be louder for the same wattage versus a solid state transistor amp. it really isn't louder though it just seems that way due to the distortion

Jim85IROC

iTrader: (2)

The type of distortion that you're giving an example of is 2nd order distortion (distortion at 5k causes a 10k harmonic), and it actually isn't all that bad. Most people can't identify it, but it tends to give more "body" to the music, or to add pleasant overtones that an untrained person may actually percieve as pleasant. Odd order distortion is much more unpleasant, and is what you get when you get harmonics between the even order frequencies. Odd-order distortion is nasty.

Also, the highest levels of distortion in a typical speaker will be at the lower end of the tweeter's range. It takes a robust, well designed and well constructed tweeter to be able to play at lower frequencies without huge amounts of odd and even order distortion. Unfortunately, this is right within the range where human hearing is most sensitive. Also unfortunate is that 95% of the components on the market that cost under $800-1k have a tweeter that I would consider "cheap" and exhibit a lot of distortion below 3k. This is why you'll see most components cross at 3k or higher, which in itself is unfortunate, because any driver larger than 4" probably doesn't have good off-axis response characteristics, nor good distortion characteristics in the case of virtually all rigid and semi-rigid cone materials.

rx7speed

that distortio yes is second order but do you really want me to go through and say something like a 1khz wave can produce distortion wave forms at 2kz,3khz,4khz,5khz and so forth? thats a lot of work to go through and list all of them

83 Crossfire TA

iTrader: (2)

6.5’s can be made to work in a camaro, but anything with a bigger magnet will require you doing something with the ducts (instead of cutting, heat them with a heat gun and bend them out of the way) and anything protruding too much out of the front face will require some clearnacing of the grilles.

‘birds are just different enough that there is no chance in hell you’ll pull it off in them, but the grille assembly on some of them will allow for a taller tweeter without much if any cutting.