This weekend I installed 5 ¼” Eclipse SE8253 and 4” Eclipse SE824 speakers in my 94 FZJ-80 with the stock head unit and here are some of my observations and techniques I used.
On the fronts: the hole diameter was 5” and the depths at the top of the hole was 1 3/8” and 1 9/16” at the bottom. To mount the 5 ¼” SE8253 I cut ½” pieces of ¼” fuel line (thanks for the tip DRTDuck) as spacers. I then used 3/8” thick x ¾ width self adhesive marine and auto weather-stripping tape cut in half and stacked to file in the gap between speaker and the door. I picked up #14 x 1” “metal” screws from Home Depot to replace the stock screws that were too short to use with the spacers.
With the window rolled down and the door panel off you can look down the in the door to see how far to tighten the speakers before the magnet on the back of the speaker hits the window track. This is the beauty of using the fuel line, it can be compressed. On the drivers side the door panel fit back on with very little bowing of the door panel so I just popped it back into place. On the passenger side this was not the case. I had to trim part of the particle board to fit over one of the mounting screws that was causing the panel to bulge out too far. I was a little concerned about cutting too deep and cutting through the vinyl on the door panel. Luckily you can just scour half way through the particle board and tear the rest out with needle nose pliers.
On the rears: the hole diameter was 3 ¼” and 1 3/8” deep. On top of that is a spacer that adds 13/16” to the depth 3 13/16” in diameter. Per DRTDuck’s instructions in the Speaker Sizing post in the FAQs section you have to cut the back the space off to allow other speakers to fit and you also have to cut one of the four corners off the new speaker to allow the speaker cover to clip back onto the spacer (on the rears the speaker cover is not attached to the door panel). Once the new speaker is in place it is held in place by the speaker cover, I guess you could glue it to the spacer like the factory speaker was but I saw no need for that.
A few hints to removing the door panels, the door switches are held on by a single clip on the forward leading edge. Pop that with a tape covered screw driver, then push the switch panel forward and the whole thing will pull out. There are three mounting screw holding the door on. One visible under the top of the pull handle and two under the arm rest. Use the tape cover screw driver to pop the arm rest off. The only real tricky part is getting the rear door panel back on under the rubber trim at the rear of the door. I stuck an envelope under the rubber trim before putting the panel into place and then pulled the envelope up that popped part of the rubber trim above the door panel. I was then able to pull the rest of the rubber trim over the door panel. There is probably an easier was to do this.
If I were to do it over again I would have put 6 ½” speakers in the front. There is room as I hade an old cheap pair around and they did fit. The speaker grills for the 5 ¼” Eclipse were identical in size to two different 6 ½” speaker grills I had laying around. So as long as they fit a 5” cut out and mounting depth doesn’t exceed 1 7/8” they should fit.
My impression of the Eclipse speakers is very good especially since my total price for the speakers delivered was less than $75 delivered from
Ebay. They are much crisper then the stock speakers and handle a lot more load. This may have had a lot to do with the fact the ¾ of the rubber ring around the old speakers were gone. All in all I can’t beat it for $75, now I can’t wait to replace the head unit and find a reasonable solution for a sub woofer in the stock location.
job.