Hello all,
I am slowly getting my 1996 LX450 back in shape and my speakers were the next item on the list. I wasn't looking for an award winning sound, just an OEM look with decent sound. The PO used some crap-tastic Walmart front door speakers that stuck out too far so I replaced those with Retrosound 6.5" speakers and reinstalled my factory grills. They sound pretty good and certainly fit well.
My rears were the original Pioneer speakers and the foam surrounds were toast as you can see here:
I didn't like the idea of destroying the frames to house new speakers so I looked into replacing just the speaker surrounds. I had some previous experience with replacing the foam on a VERY hard to find subwoofer for an older Suburban, so I checked out www.simplyspeakers.com and found this 4" Pioneer Surround Kit. It was $24.99 for the kit with new surrounds, glue, and a small brush. Since I had done this before on the Suburban, I already had the glue so I looked for alternatives to the kit and ended up finding 4" Rubber Speaker Surrounds on Amazon for $6 a pair.
I cleaned off what was left of the old surround glue from both the metal basket and the edge of the speaker cone with an x-acto knife, blew off the dust, and test fit the surround. I turned the surround upside down in the speaker so I could apply glue to the inner ring of the surround first, turned it back over and attached it to the speaker cone. I let it dry for an hour and then gently lifted the outer edge, applied glue to the metal cage, and then set the outer edge of the surround in the basket. After drying for an hour it looked like this:
Even though I got a bit too much glue on one section I'm pretty pleased with the results. I reinstalled it and it sounds perfect...
In then end I only spend $6 and it was less work than hacking the basket to fit aftermarket speakers. Total time, minus gluing drying, was only about 30 minutes per side... I now wish I still had the factory front speakers that I could fix instead of having used the RetroSound ones for $60, but I'm just glad it's all done now.
I am slowly getting my 1996 LX450 back in shape and my speakers were the next item on the list. I wasn't looking for an award winning sound, just an OEM look with decent sound. The PO used some crap-tastic Walmart front door speakers that stuck out too far so I replaced those with Retrosound 6.5" speakers and reinstalled my factory grills. They sound pretty good and certainly fit well.
My rears were the original Pioneer speakers and the foam surrounds were toast as you can see here:
I didn't like the idea of destroying the frames to house new speakers so I looked into replacing just the speaker surrounds. I had some previous experience with replacing the foam on a VERY hard to find subwoofer for an older Suburban, so I checked out www.simplyspeakers.com and found this 4" Pioneer Surround Kit. It was $24.99 for the kit with new surrounds, glue, and a small brush. Since I had done this before on the Suburban, I already had the glue so I looked for alternatives to the kit and ended up finding 4" Rubber Speaker Surrounds on Amazon for $6 a pair.
I cleaned off what was left of the old surround glue from both the metal basket and the edge of the speaker cone with an x-acto knife, blew off the dust, and test fit the surround. I turned the surround upside down in the speaker so I could apply glue to the inner ring of the surround first, turned it back over and attached it to the speaker cone. I let it dry for an hour and then gently lifted the outer edge, applied glue to the metal cage, and then set the outer edge of the surround in the basket. After drying for an hour it looked like this:
Even though I got a bit too much glue on one section I'm pretty pleased with the results. I reinstalled it and it sounds perfect...
In then end I only spend $6 and it was less work than hacking the basket to fit aftermarket speakers. Total time, minus gluing drying, was only about 30 minutes per side... I now wish I still had the factory front speakers that I could fix instead of having used the RetroSound ones for $60, but I'm just glad it's all done now.
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