VANAGON archives -- October 2010, week 2 (#56)

Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2010 16:38:44 -0700 Reply-To: Richard Koerner <rjkinpb@SBCGLOBAL.NET> Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com> From: Richard Koerner <rjkinpb@SBCGLOBAL.NET> Subject: Cheap front door speakers sound Great! Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

After the last few roadtrips, noticed that the front factory door speakers (25 year old Blaupunkt) were sounding weak and fuzzy. I have a second pair of 5 1/4" speakers mounted down by the footwell, but the fuzzy speakers were annoying. Did hardly any research to find 3 1/2" speakers for to replace the factory ones (I'm not a serious audiophile...just want it to sound "pretty good"). Found these Legacy 3 1/2" 120 Watt Co-axial speakers on Amazon; bought from CarAudioDeals, $11.23 + $3.73 shipping.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002M792S/ref=oss_product

Removed old Blaupunkts...sure enough, the paper cones were split. Installed the new Legacy's...NOW we're talking!!! I think they sound really good, amazing actually. Plenty of base, good highs, look like solid speakers....especially for under $15 for the pair.

Some installation caveats:

1. The speakers come with side mounting tabs.....no problem, just fold these back. 2. The tweeter extends beyond the rim of the main speaker by about 1/4". The original speaker grills are slightly convex...but not enough...the tweeter will rest on the interior of the grill. So I made a "spacer washer" out of an old neoprene wetsuit, about 3.5" OD and 3.2" ID, and used 2 layers of 1/8" thick wetsuit, glued together. I epoxied this spacer washer to the mounting face of the new speakers, and then applied more epoxy to the face of the spacer washer and placed inside the speaker grill enclosure and let it cure to mount the speaker in the grill enclosure. I think you can buy spacer washers if you want; or, you could probably build up thicknesses of cardboard or something to achieve the same effect. Anyway, it all worked just fine, solid, no buzzing. And it fits the factory plastic shell on the door panel. Of course no problem with the window cranks either since using the factory grill.

Very impressed by the sound...can really turn it UP if I want to...and I do a lot of driving with windows rolled down. By the way, my radio is from a Honda Civic that I got on ebay for about $10...nothing fancy but a good unit, LCD display matches the instrument cluster clock, looks "factory" except that it says Honda on the cassette tape door (need some black paint and an artist's brush to take care of that I guess).

Extremely pleased with the final result....should last for years.

Rich 85 Vanagon GL San Diego

Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main VANAGON page

Please note - During the past 17 years of operation, several gigabytes of Vanagon mail messages have been archived. Searching the entire collection will take up to five minutes to complete. Please be patient!

Return to the archives @ gerry.vanagon.com

The vanagon mailing list archives are copyright (c) 1994-2011, and may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the list administrators. Posting messages to this mailing list grants a license to the mailing list administrators to reproduce the message in a compilation, either printed or electronic. All compilations will be not-for-profit, with any excess proceeds going to the Vanagon mailing list.

Any profits from list compilations go exclusively towards the management and operation of the Vanagon mailing list and vanagon mailing list web site.