My install's coming along nicely

[jRi0T68]

Exactly. Apply it yourself first.

 

[JohnKuthe]

Major hiccup today. Mounting the custom made birch plywood speaker rings to the PHD drivers was a breeze but while fitting them to be mounted up front we discovered one of the cheap plastic mounts had cracked off irreparably! Gonna require windshield removal to get to it to repair it right! I emailed a place here in St Louis that I had used to replace the windshield on Baby my 1994 Caravan and they do great work! I may have to just get a replacement windshield but hope they can reuse my existing windshield as cheaper. But I'll get a replacement if the price is right! I just need to do some pretty radical speaker mounting tab repair! Need the windshield out for a couple of hours, about six! 10AM-4PM would be perfect!

Plus I accidentally erased some great pics I took today of the PHD speakers being mounted into the 3/4 birch plywood custom made speaker rings! Now no one will ever see the PHD speakers not in their speaker rings!

John Kuthe...

 

[The_Quiet_One 10+ year member]

so that mean you may as well make proper speaker mounts?

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

How far on the spectrum are you if you're considering removing your windshield to install dash speakers?

 

[JohnKuthe]

so that mean you may as well make proper speaker mounts?

As much as I can, The other plastic speaker mounts were OK, this ONE broke off. Much different lack of reinforcement. If I take the windshield out I can get to everything easily and have an adequate fix planned. As best I can right now.

John Kuthe...

 

---------- Post added at 09:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:52 PM ----------

 

How far on the spectrum are you if you're considering removing your windshield to install dash speakers?

Sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do!

John Kuthe...

 

[staan]

hmm left working at ibm deleting your own pics and blaming it on outsourceing lol

 

[JohnKuthe]

so that mean you may as well make proper speaker mounts?

Major revamps are in the future. This is gonna be good enough for now.

John Kuthe...

 

[JohnKuthe]

hmm left working at ibm deleting your own pics and blaming it on outsourceing lol

I SWEAR I pasted the pics somewhere to my hard drive, but I can';t find them. And I deleted the pics off my "digital camera", an Android HTC Desire 610 which I found and is not connected to anything.

John Kuthe...

 

[Boomin_tahoe 5,000+ posts]

Bah! Please keep your petty interpersonal squabbles out of MY build post!! Note who the "threadstarter" is!! ;-)
John Kuthe...

I'll try and be nicer if you try to be smarter.

For pete's sake "nood", I'm to too far behind ya in age.

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

Let's have some pics. I've always found firing off the dash sounds pretty poor and unnatural, so for the cost and effort surely there's better mounting options.

 

[JohnKuthe]

Let's have some pics. I've always found firing off the dash sounds pretty poor and unnatural, so for the cost and effort surely there's better mounting options.

Can't really get many good pics with the darned windshield in the way. Yes there are better ways, but I was/am trying to stick with the stock speaker locations as much as possible. Problem is Chrysler built a bunch of climate control stuff out of plastics, and routed them all up in the dash area as you can imagine, and that's where they took advantage and mold in cheap plastic little 5.25" speaker mounting locations up there too! I can't rip it all out lest I lose much of my climate control airflow ducts too! Plus with the way I'm doing this build I can't have my vehicle out of commission as a functional vehicle for more than one of my and installer guy's work sessions for 6 hours max. And all the other speaker mount points look to be a lot more substantial than this ONE that broke off.

Here's the driver's side stock speaker mount location:

You can see in this pic the two metal clips Chrysler uses to provide a place to screw in sheet metal screws to mount the speakers. It can't be seen well in this pic but the little plastic tab on the right is NOT well supported at all and broke off, just hanging by a thread right now. And since there are only TWO opposing screw mounts for each 5.25" speakers, one mount being broken is a deal breaker for installing that 5.25" driver! This is the one I'm planning on replacing with a 1" wide strip of good strong galvanized steel. I just need to have the windshield out so I can much more easily and accessibly get to the location and make the needed repair. *****, believe me! :-(

John Kuthe...

 

[LosIsATool 5,000+ posts]

The DSP can fix a lot of location issues if you can understand what you are hearing. They can fix width to a point. You should be able to get good depth.

 

[JohnKuthe]

The DSP can fix a lot of location issues if you can understand what you are hearing. They can fix width to a point. You should be able to get good depth.

That's what I'm hoping, especially when I plan on going full active, next year sometime.

John Kuthe...

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

https://www.qlogicenclosures.com/

Or you can drop 200$ on some kickpanels that install with a couple screws, allow for easy removal/replacement of speakers, look factory, and will image nicely without having to worry about reflecting/compressing off the glass.

Depending on make and model you can often find them on eBay/Crutchfield/etc. for even less.

 

[JohnKuthe]

https://www.qlogicenclosures.com/
Or you can drop 200$ on some kickpanels that install with a couple screws, allow for easy removal/replacement of speakers, look factory, and will image nicely without having to worry about reflecting/compressing off the glass.

Depending on make and model you can often find them on eBay/Crutchfield/etc. for even less.

I would LOVE to find some GOOD QUALITY little speaker mounting pods, especially if I could find some to fit up on top of the dash! I have mental plans of maybe building some to custom sit-up-front speaker cabinetry for up there and I could cut out all the cheap plastic extraneous molded-in junk Chrysler put up there, but that is gonna me way longer a project than the time slots I'm currently working with to do! The logistical plans of my current project are VERY constrained!! :-( I have mental plans on fabricating some type of wide flat speaker enclosures for up front, but all plans like that require vehicular downtime of days which I can not afford to do right now.

And just SAYING what I COULD do is easy, from behind your little computer or phone screen. To actually DO it is MUCH harder!

John Kuthe...