Replacement Infinity Reference rear speakers

[rsmonkey918]

Apparently Doug at MRC knows something about non-standard fronts- sure Infinity do one that small too- its just the shape- looking a bit unusual......

[rsmonkey918]

Thats top work mylife and I'll be following that up I think on Infiniy's website- interesting theres no separate tweeter as the installer suggested there might be- I know ours are up by the door-handle- should simplify things a bit.....

[k5turbo]

Have a look at FOCAL the fronts fit straight in you get the main door speaker, tweeters and cross overs!!

[mylife98]

So I got replacement Infinity speaker front and rear in the end.

A touch tricky to fit.

Fronts were 4032cf. Rears were 6522si.






You can make the fronts fit the speaker holders that are there already. It required clipping 3 of the 4 screw restraints to get them to fit the Audi speaker holder. Then cushioned and sealed in. Here you can see the speaker secured with one screw at the top and sealed in the speaker holder:


Dynamat the surrounding speaker area:



And here is the front speaker all installed and ready to go:



Rears were, frankly a pain in the A.

Considered all sorts of options including cutting an MDF custom holder for them (which would have been very difficult as the speaker holder has three levels on it: one for affixing to the speaker, one for contact with the door panel and one for securing to the door panel). The Audi Bose speakers are only about 15.5-16cm across. The Infinity ones are smack on 16.5. This means the speaker holder will sit directly on the raised rubber lip of the speaker: killing the sound and ruining your new speakers.

The solution I came up with in the end is to trim the speaker mounting level of the speaker holder. It's pretty hard, think plastic so having failed with the clippers, knife and mini hack saw, I found the best solution to be a soldering iron!! The plastic obviously has a low melting point and you can just guide the iron around trimming the lip.

Here I've just taken the first piece out:



And here I've removed the entire lip:



This looks a bit rough, but by the time I ran a bit of sandpaper over it and tidied it up, the edge came up with a lovely smooth contact surface to support the speaker. Then lay the speaker mount foam between the speaker and the mount and secure with some new self tapping screws into pre-drilled holds in the mount:






Again, Dynomat the door and speaker surround and install the speaker mount back onto the door panel:



Have tried and tested them back in the car and.... my God, what a difference!

Very happy!

Total cost: £50 front speakers, £50 back speakers, about £30 of screws, glue and Dynomat.


One note... have you ever driven your car without the door panels on? It is very, unbelievably noisy!! As in... I kept checking that the door was actually shut! They really do all the work of keeping the outside noise out.


P.S. you can see the full high def photos here: http://www.mylifeconsulting.com/images/highdefaudi/

[mylife98]

Couple of late notes: don't worry about the 4 ohms label on the 6522si box: the spec of them is definitely 2 ohms.

And RSMONKEY, there is a separate tweeter for the fronts - you can easily get to it with the door off. It looks like a 1 inch job, held in with a spring clip. I just choose to replace only the main speakers with component replacements and leave the tweeter be.

[neily]

Note - special offer at halfrauds this week. rears are only £20 + a further 10% if you reserve on line !!!

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stor ... yId_165707

[mylife98]

Finally getting around to selling my 3 old Bose speaks btw if anyone's interested:

One front:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0441967881


...and two rear:


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... K:MESCX:IT

[don]

Had missed this post... very nice upgrade.. what sort of head unit are you using?

I had thought the bose speakers sounded ok, particuarly with an upgraded head unit, though I'm sure there is better.

[mylife98]

Had missed this post... very nice upgrade.. what sort of head unit are you using?

I had thought the bose speakers sounded ok, particuarly with an upgraded head unit, though I'm sure there is better.

Standard Symphony II headunit.

The improvement of the Infinity speakers over the Bose is, I think, impressive. If you like really good quality sound, worth doing the upgrade.

[don]

That's interesting, I noticed an improvement in sound when upgrading from the Symphony unit to an RNS-D alone. I assume it would be better again with new speakers. There are quite a few RNS-Ds floating around now for cheap, perhaps you should try the difference and see if you get better sound again, although the Symphony unit was reasonable.