mx5cartalk.com

Just thought I'd fill everyone in on the progress I made on changing over my NA8 speakers. I found these Alpine SPG-17CS speakers. They are a split system with a mid bass and a silk tweeter and a very large crossover box.
like on this Ebay site
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... K:MEWAX:IT

I got the speakers from JB Hi Fi for $110.

I started last night at 10 p.m. and finished only the driver's door by 2.00 a.m. I know very slow.

Here is what happened, transpired etc.

I took the door trim off in the standard way and without incident. After peeling back the weather proofing I spent the first 20 minutes spraying lithium grease on the window guides and cable as well as spraying silicon grease in the black window weatherstrip.

Then I focused my attention on the speakers. I must mention at this stage that I always wanted to keep the standard appearance and the original speaker grilles. Anyway first to come off was the old woofer. It was undamaged. I found it was round and very close in size to 6.5". My guess is that it was a 6" speaker. I worked out that the white striped wire was the positive and the green was the negative.

Then I unclipped the tweeter from the door trim, which was very easy. The stock tweeter is glued to a plastic frame that also has the clips that hold the tweeter to the door. This plastic frame is clipped with three clips to the tweeter grille, which is a plastic ring with the steel mesh moulded into it..

In trying to pry the old tweeter off it broke into pieces. I also pried off the frame from the grille and in the process broke two of the three clips. After that I realised I had the problem of getting the new tweeter in position close enough the the front of the original grille so as to make it interfere with the door and for this I had to enlarge the hole in the plastic frame so that the new tweeter could move closer to the grille. This took me an hour because as you probably know it is very hard to cut plastic with a stanley knife and a soldering iron

Anyway finally I managed. I held the new tweeter in place by plastic welding the frame to the tweeter. Then I re-assembled the grille onto the frame. Here I also had to use some welding to get the two broken clipping points to be secure. I intend to add epoxy to the welds to strengthen them as well as making the whole thing look neater and more professional.

After that I threaded the tweeter cable back through the door to the crossover. The crossover for these splits is simply massive and about the size of an Iphone but four times as thick. After that I connected the mid bass driver to the crossover and finally the input cable (the one that orginally went to the woofer). I had an issue with attaching the speaker cable to the mid bass driver because firstly I did not have spade connectors and even if I did I don't like that connection. I unfortunately had very little solder and it was very old. That is another thing I am going to strengthen tonight after I have bought some fresh solder.

Now I had the problem of where to position to the crossover box. This large box has some holes in the back for screwing it into sheetmetal holes but I was not prepared to drill into my door so for now I taped the box to the cable loom that comes into the door at the front. This is an area of the door that gets the least shocks because it is so close to the hinge. I will find a more permanent home for this box once I scope out the interior of the door a bit better.

Assembling the woofer to the door was the easiest bit. The three holes for the old speaker lined up with existing holes in the new one. I did not have any foam rings nor any old water shield. I'll have to find a solution for these two problems tonight when I do all the fixes and attempt the second door.

Anyway now to the results. Because I now have one set of old speakers and one set of new ones. I could easily compare. I played some Metallica on the CD player. The very first impression was that the old speakers are significantly louder but then I realised that the old speakers are actually making a noise that is not really very musical. The new speakers are very detailed and musical but probably need a bit more power per decibel. The bass is better and the clarity is like chalk and cheese.

I am really glad I started down this path as I have discovered the huge improvement to the sound quality from a very low cost change. I cannot wait to get my second speaker in. This time it should take much less time because I know what to do.

Please give me your thoughts and if you can help me with the following:

1. Do I need to add the water shield.

2. Should I water proof the crossover. At present the crossovers have vents that I presume are for cooling.

3. Any suggestions for where to put the crossover box. I need it to get minimal shock. stay reasonably dry and not rattle. I don't want to glue it to anything because glue could promote rust.

4. For when I do the head unit does any one know of a wire harness I can use so I don't have to cut any cables.

1: Most car speakers are designed to handle some water. I've never used the shields and have never had a problem.

2: Yes. Crossovers are probably not waterproof and will not like being wet. I put the crossovers under the dash in my NA.

3. Under the dash. Yes it means you have to run an extra wire through the door loom (which is a bitch) but it won't move as much and there are a million things to connect it to.

4. Don't know sorry but I'm sure they exist.

4.yes. When I'm at my pc I will find a part # of the one I used. I think I had pics in my garage thread too. I love my alpine head unit.

Quite a bit of water gets inside MX5 doors so it would be a good idea to waterproof your crossovers or mount them in the cabin as Jeo suggested. I've seen what what water does to crossovers in a dodgy speaker installation in an MX5 door in a friend's car and it wasn't pretty. I wrapped my crossovers in plastic and cable tied them under the door intrusion beam using that as a bit of a shelter from the water.

Be warned though that running new wires into the doors in an NB isn't a pleasant job as the door basically plugs into the car wiring harness at the boor jamb. So you have to run the extra wiring through the plug. Not impossible, just unpleasant. The NA's are a lot easier to run extra wires into the doors as they dont have the plug at the door jamb.

Hi, thanks for the tips and feedback. Last night I went back and completed the job on the driver's door. I epoxied the tweeter in place, sprayed a bit more grease on the window guide rails, put more solder on the woofer and then covered the solder in epoxy followed by electrical tape. I then moved the crossover under the side intrusion beam with a quadruple folded bicycle tube between it and the beam. I held the crossover on with four cable ties and on top of the cable ties ran two layers of duct tape. The top layer of duct tape was shingled so the one higher up overlaps the lower one all the way to the top so water cannot get onto the crossover. It is also protected from side ways loads when the door closes.

I went over the water shield a bit and taped everything up. When I went to close the door I an O sh*t moment when the car would not unlock. I discovered this after I had closed the door. I tried locking, unlocking etc all to no avail. Finally I lowered the roof and standing outside the car I wiggled the door trim off only to discover that I had trapped plastic behind the lock lever and it was not allowing it to unlock. I felt foolish but thankful that it was not something worse.

Anyway I decided to write down all the steps for doing it on the passenger door. I worked out a better way of opening the hole on the tweeter carrier using a drill. Its moments like this when one needs a Dremel.

Anyway I'll finish it off and let everyone know the outcome.

I have a feeling that I'll end up with a new head unit. I just cannot decide which one. Presently I am swinging between Alpine, Panasonic, Kenwood or JVC and between an entry level model with only an aux input to a full featured unit with bluetooth and usb charging. Decisions, decisions.

snshami wrote:I have a feeling that I'll end up with a new head unit. I just cannot decide which one. Presently I am swinging between Alpine, Panasonic, Kenwood or JVC and between an entry level model with only an aux input to a full featured unit with bluetooth and usb charging. Decisions, decisions.

obviously depends on your needs and wants but I went for Alpine as I wanted something that would not only play music from my phone but also charge it as well. Of the brands you listed, and include Pioneer and Sony, Alpine was the only one that would do that. My budget was not big so the base Alpine was up there in cost with some pretty flash units and I have had no regrets.

here is the thread I mentioned earlier about my Mazda to ISO wiring harness

viewtopic.php?f=55&t=41701&p=535397#p535397

OK its done. The passenger door took half the time and its probably a better job. I did one extra thing. I found some left over rubber seal that I bought to stop draft on the door of my house. It is around 10cm wide and has a peel off adhesive strip on one side. I stuck that to the outer perimeter of the speaker frame facing outwards. The speaker frame is around 0.5 cm wide so the seal hangs over the back of the frame. It works very well to seal the speaker to the door sheet metal.

Anyway now that I have both new speakers in place it sounds absolutely awesome. I would be surprised if a new head unit could substantially improve on this sound. That is not to say that I will not get a head unit for other reasons such as to listen to ipods etc.

Without doubt I am certain that best first audio upgrade on an NA MX-5 is changing the loudspeakers.