I just finished installing 5.25" Tang band subs in the doors, and Alpine SPS 410 4" coaxial speakers all around in my 99 C2. I'm still using the stock amp that came with the Hi-fi package. The sound is much improved. Low end is filled out, and goes louder before distorting. A good upgrade for $200 total for all 6 speakers. The little subs do better than the OEM woofers, but don't expect earth shattering bass.

Subwoofer install

1. Pick up some 5.25" tang band subwoofers. I looked around, these seem to be the best you can find in this size without shelling out for the focals. They are 4 ohms impedance, whereas my OEM door speakers where 2 ohm. Still, they seem to be driven fine by the stock amp. They are a little lighter than OEM due to the neodymium magnet. I got mine for about $60 each from amazon, but i've heard they were cheaper in the past.

2. Pick up a 2-1/3" ( 54mm ) hole saw attachment at your local home depot. I had one lying around from when I installed a door lock set.

3. Remove door panel (instructions exist on youtube and forums, I just followed those, no surprises) i used a plastic biker tire lever to get the door panel screws to pop, that helped. Remove entire OEM woofer enclosure (4 screws). Remove OEM woofer from enclosure.

4. Use speaker cover as a guide to mark the center point. I poked a little hole through the back of the enclosure with a punch to use as a guide for the hole saw. Drill out the 54mm hole.

5. Cut / dremel away at the inside of the enclosure until the sub sits down in there. Check the picture for the part I had to dremel away.

6. Mount the Tang Band sub using the stock mounting holes, they line up perfectly. You can reuse the stock spade connectors, if they don't fit perfect you can give a little squeeze with pliers, but don't overdo it. The positive and negative are different sizes, so it is easy to figure out which is which.

7. Use RTV silicone or some other sealant to make everything airtight, front and back. This is important. My job was not the cleanest, but it works. Black RTV silicone would work well and match the enclosure. The sub pole vent (hole in sub magnet) vents outside the enclosure. I looked online and some people said that is ok. Don't seal that hole in the sub magnet, the coil needs the ventilation.

8. Reinstall enclosure and door panel.

Speaker install

This is covered pretty well on other threads / youtube. Some additional pointers. I used Alpine SPS 410 speakers, about $80 for 4.

1. Have a good pair of cutters handy to cut the old speaker basket support. I tried a dremel but it was too messy. A pair of dikes works much better. You will need a dremel to get the old electrical connector off though. What I did was solder the old connector to the new speaker with a little slack so that it would be easy to plug and play.

2. When installing the new speakers into the OEM mount using JB Weld or some other epoxy, make sure to leave space for the rim on the speaker cover. Look at the red circle in the picture. Make sure that no epoxy seeps into that zone, otherwise the speaker cover will not sit flush.

3. Label all of the speaker assemblies when you remove them. (RF, LF, RR, LF) Once they are out of the car they are hard to distinguish. When I was re-installing, at first I thought the speaker wasn't sitting down all the way, but turns out I had swapped the L/R. The alpine speakers fit fine in all 4 locations for me, even though they are a little deeper than stock units.

Weights:
OEM 4" speaker + grill - 0.9lbs each (OEM is pretty light)
Alpine 4" speaker + grill - 1.4lbs each
OEM 5.25" door speaker + enclosure - 3.7 lbs each
Tang band 5.25" subwoofer + enclosure - 3.2 lbs each (neodymium magnet)

 

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I know its been a while ZenithSF, but thanks for the great write up. I just finished the exact same speaker installation and the sound is Amazing!

I did use cut up XTC baffles to seal the Tangs to the speaker box as well as to seal the back of the Tangs (I put a hole in the middle so the Tangs could "breath" out the coil).

Anyway, thanks again. One of my best mods yet.

 

Are you running the new speakers off a Bose amp? What HU? The CDR23?

Nice writeup.

 

This a a great write up. I have a warning though if you are going to take this on. My admonition comes in the following form. Give serious consideration to subwoofer alternatives IF you do not currently have door speakers. So, my car never had door speakers. I spent about 4 months finding bargains for new door panels and speaker boxes on ebay an craigslist. As an aside I didn't do too bad at less that $100 for each door, door panel and speaker box. I made my purchases working under the assumption that since there was a speaker connector in the door, the car must be prewired all the way to the frunk, in the area where the bose or otherwise amp would mount. WRONG. If the car was not sold with door speakers, the wiring ends inside of that flexing cable management thingy in the crack of the door. There is some serious surgery required to then extend the wires into the cabin and then on to the frunk.. providing you are going to drive the mini subs off of an amp... which obviously you should. In my case it a Rockford Fosgate punch amp with the speakers driven in parallel for maximum power. Back to the *****ing about the wiring. For example, the flexy thing is a MF'R to get apart. It requires a right angle adapter for a torx screw tip... and it better be a tiny right angle at that. Thank goodness my buddy who owed me one and did stereo installs was on site with his tool box. He had one. FYI, i checked on here and the other site Ren....t and a member there had a good tip. Be super careful when removing this multi pin connector it the door sill. There is a plastic hook at the top that if you try to pry it loose or are otherwise less that careful will break. If it breaks, it will allow water to migrate into the area causing rotting of the wires in the harness. The poster said " I have seen it over 100 times." Another thing is, that connector is a multi-pin connector and uses a male/female pin and receptacle configuration. The females are on the door side and are present, the males are not. IF you have an electronics store close by, I suspect you could get the right size pins but its kinda tough. I elected to run some 16 gauge speaker wire that was thin enough to fit through an unoccupied hole in the multi pin thingy. It was adjacent to the pre-terminated wires that run to the speaker connector in the door. I snipped them and then soldered them on the drivers side since the spare room in the thingy was limited due to the added wiring for mirror adjustment and door lock wiring and crimp connected on the passenger side... The long and short of it is that if you have no existing door speaker and you want to do this job. block out another 3 hours to complete it. Once done though, you will be pleased with the results. All in, It's about $500 in material.... Bang Tangs, door panels and speaker boxes plus the time. The benefit is there is no outward change to the appearance of the car. Oh, one last thing, I'll be putting the door panels on. I intend to cover the door speaker grills with speaker cloth. IMHO, they look old school in plastic.

 

Thanks for the write up. I may have to take on this project.

 

thread back from the dead! Head unit was CDR-210, and the car had the M490 (HIFI?) Audio package. (There is an amp in the frunk, but it's not the BOSE package) Unfortunately car is sold now, so I can't check what type of amp. I believe it was 6x40W