Replaced the speakers in our '03 100. Write-up including sub replacement (2 Viewers)

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Hello all.

I replaced the speakers/sub in our 100 this past weekend, and thought I would do a brief write-up since I had some questions after reading other speaker threads.

I used the following speakers:

Front doors: Infiniti 6030CS
Rear doors: Infiniti 6032CF
Rear sub: Pyle PLPW6D

When I started, I wasn't sure what to expect since most of the threads I read were for '98-'02's.

The front and rear door speakers, were pretty easy to install. I am not going to cover the door panel removal because that has been well documented elsewhere.

Once you pull the door panel, you will likely find a blown speaker like I did.

Removal is straight forward, unplug the plug and remove the 3 gold screws that secure the speaker/bracket to the door. Once you have the entire assembly out of the truck, remove the four screws securing the speaker to the plastic bracket.

Then pry the speaker away from the plastic. There is a double-sided adhesive holding them together that just requires a little steady force to split the two pieces.

Once you have the speaker and housing apart, you will need to unplug the wiring harness connecting them. This will leave you with 3 pieces.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Now when you try to put the new speakers into the plastic housing, you will notice two pegs that keep it from sitting flush.

Although not ideal, I used a simple hand file to remove these as all my power tools are at the cabin I'm building.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Now that those are out of the way, we need to remove the wiring connector that is built into the stock plastic housing. This is because on the fronts we need to route the woofer's wires out from behind the woofer to the crossover unit. You can see where I have inserted the screwdriver to release the retainer clip. There are actually two clips, one on each side. I just couldn't hold the camera and 2 screwdrivers at the same time.

Now we can set about installing the actual woofer. The speakers include a spacer/adapter ring. This is a critical piece because the new speakers are slightly smaller than the old ones and the holes in the speaker do not line up with the stock plastic housing. The first step is to apply the included foam to either side of the adapter to eliminate the potential for rattles. Here you can see the thin foam installed and as it comes. This thin foam gets installed on the "speaker side" of the adapter as indicated in the speaker's installation instructions.

Next flip the ring over and install the wide circular foam on the opposite side.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Now it's time to attach the adapter to the stock plastic housing. I generally don't like to use drywall screws in anything I do, but they were pretty much the perfect fit for this application. I used (4) 1" drywall screws to attach the adapter ring to the plastic housing. 3/4" drywall screws would have been perfect, but 1" are acceptable.

Then take the stock screws that held the speaker to the plastic housing and secure the woofer to the plastic housing.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Now that the woofer is installed in the plastic housing, route the wires that come with the speakers through the hole in the top of the housing to the speaker and connect it to the speaker.

Finally remount the speaker/housing assembly back into the door.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Next up is the crossover unit. This is what determines which signals are sent to the woofers and which are sent to the tweeters.

I generally try to avoid modifying any wiring harness that is a permanent part of the truck. For that reason, I decided to cannibalize the stock speakers' wiring system to connect the new speakers to the permanent door harness. The short pigtail in the picture above is what connected the stock speaker to the connector in the stock plastic housing. I modified that to allow the door harness to connect to the crossover.

I mounted the crossover itself using 3M body moulding tape.

Using the piece we removed from the stock plastic housing, we can now plug the stock door harness into the cannibalized harness that is connected to the crossover.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Now, with just a little bit of the tape exposed stick the crossover on the door where you think it will clear the door panel. You will probably have to play around with it a bit, so don't go sticking it on permanently. You will also see that I have put a protective packing ring over the woofer. This is to protect the woofer when I test fit the door panel in case there is any interference.

Once you have the crossover stuck on and the protective ring in place, remove the speaker grill from the door panel and do a test fit of the door panel. Once the panel was hanging loosely in place I reached behind it and removed the protective ring from the woofer. You will notice that the door panel is actually making contact with the foam of the woofer.

I removed the door panel and flipped it over. All of the white you see is just excess material that has no purpose. Carefully trim it away back to the hard board material until you have enough clearance for the woofer with no contact.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

With that done, I refit the door panel to check clearance. With everything looking good/fitting properly, I marked the crossover location so that I could remove the rest of the tape backing and fully adhere it to the door.

Time to move on to the tweeter. Remove the tweeter from the door panel and dismantle it from its bracket.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

With the stock tweeter out of the way, we look at the Infiniti tweeter.

The tweeter will actually want to stick to the bracket just because of its magnetic properties, but that is not enough to secure it. Some more 3M tape was added.

I wanted the tweeter to be positioned perfectly centered behind the stock grill, so centering the tweeter on the bracket was imperative. The speakers came with generic tweeter mounts which I used to mark the center of the tweeter.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Center mark on the tweeter.

The stock tweeter was mounted with a stud that was in the center of it, so there is a corresponding hole in the center of the bracket.

Make sure to orient the tweeter on the bracket so that neither of the contacts are touching the bracket or the door when installed.

Finally reisntall the tweeter.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

The wiring for the tweeter had male spade connectors about 9" from the tweeter. I opted to just hardwire the tweeter to the crossover as I had used the supplied corresponding female spade connectors to connect the woofer to the crossover.

I extended the tweeter wiring with the left over wire from the woofer via some heat-shring butt connectors.

Once the wiring is extended, trim off any excess and connect it to the crossover unit. Tidy up your wires and that's it. Just reinstall the door panel.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

The process for installing the rear speakers is exactly the same with regards to the plastic housing, so I am not going to bore you with all of that detail again. The only difference is the lack of a crossover and the wiring.

The rear speakers get wired very similarly to the stock speakers. The only real difference is the connection to the speaker itself. I cannibalized the same portion of the stock speaker to make the connection to the new speaker. All that is required is to cut the speaker's connector off and add the appropriate sized spade connectors for the new speaker.

Then just connect the newly modified harness and install the speaker into the housing.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

The same process of trimming the door panel must be repeated on the rear doors. On the rear doors, I actually had to trim back the hard board panel itself about an 1/8" to clear the speaker.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Now, when I got to the sub, I lost all sense of picture taking and got in a hurry.

What I felt was important to share is that I have confirmed that the Pyle PLPW6D(~$13 on Amazon) is in fact a very close match spec wise to the stock woofer. Both coils on the stock speaker ohm'ed out in the 3.4-3.7 range. The Pyle sub ohm'ed out at 3.4 on both coils.

The Pyle sub is slightly larger in diameter than the recessed mounting flange in the stock sub enclosure. I chose the unorthodox method of trimming the actual flange of the speaker until it fit into the enclosure. I am not endorsing this method yet until it has been proven a bit more long term.

Once the sub fit in the enclosure, I simply copied the wiring orientation of the stock sub(cut the wires off the stock sub and added spade connectors to connect to the Pyle) and reinstalled everything.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

So....

How does it sound??

It sounds a HELL OF A LOT BETTER than stock. Both of the stock front woofers and the sub were completely missing all foam. The rear speakers were actually perfect looking, but I went ahead and replaced them anyway since I had purchased the speakers and figured out the install by the time I got to them.

It still doesn't sound like a concert hall inside, but for $180 in materials and 4-6 hours of work(took longer because of documenting the process, etc) I am VERY happy with the upgrade.

Please feel free to hit me up with any questions. I'm no audio expert by any means, this is just how I did my install.

 

[mcgaskins]

Nice job! I've been meaning to do this for about...two years

 

[TwiceWithHair]

I beat you to the speaker replacement in my 04. I'm now digging deeper into this Pyle sub. My front speakers handle bass ok, but I'm sure a sub would be better. Even a cheapo! I'm confused on what you trimmed to make it fit. Speaker, or box? I might just pull the $13 trigger and monkey with it myself.


...via IH8MUD app

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

I trimmed the speaker itself. The stock sub's flange is sort of a rounded square if you will. Also, the stock sub is recessed into the box so that the outermost portion of the speaker is flush with the face of the box. The recess in the box is in the same shape/size as the stock sub. The Pyle was larger and had a good 1/2"+ flange on it that I trimmed as needed so that it would fit down into the recess of the box.

When you get everything in front of you it will all make sense. I'm sorry, I should have taken pictures, but I'm not going to tear the whole back of the truck apart again just to take a couple now.

 

[kelly saad]

That's sweet. I did a stereo remodel also recently. https://forum.ih8mud.com/threads/my-new-98.819647/ Check it out. I did a different thing with my door speakers. Sounds amazing.

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Kelly, can you provide some detail as to how you wired the amp? Were you able to tap into the stock harness fairly easily somewhere for the speaker wires? Did you run a fused cable to the battery for power? Or get it from somewhere else?

Thanks