I have always been a firm believer that placing Dynomat between wooden spacers and the door skin makes a difference. Doing it this way has always yielded excellent results for me with very little wasted resonance anywhere on the door frame at high volumes.

The deader you can make it the better in my opinion.

 

I would consider moving the crossovers not because of moisture BUT because every time you close the doors

 

What i did, I placed my x-overs in the kick panels inside the car. I fished 2-14gauge wires to run my components (alpine SPR-17LS) through the door (using baby lotion to ease the wires through the door grommets :-) ) I used the original speaker basket (which gives a 1/2 inch spacer by default) cutting out the back end, and using the supplied spacer/adapter (1/4 inch) to mount the speaker. i also used XTC 6.5 inch speaker baffles to protect the speaker from the weather.

I choosed cutting the OEM basket rather than using MDF variants because over time, they will expand and/or break down from moisture. plus, you can use speaker spacers ranging from 1/4 inch to 1 inch from any car audio shop, which saves you time and sometimes even money :-)

the pitfall of using XTC Baffles is that you lose some clarity (not a whole lot ), usually the 65hz > x range.

cheers!

 

Finally got a chance to do some more work on the install this evening. This time around I got all the RCA's and speaker wiring routed into the trunk and also completed the power distribution block install and primary ground wire placement. I will be using another distribution block with 8ga wires coming off of the 4ga ground wire to the rest of the components. Tomorrow will be a day of planning on how and where I am going to be mounting the Amps and Crossover. As much as I don't want to loose my spare tire I think the best place for this stuff is where the spare sits but I'm not so sure just yet. A JL Stealth box will be occupying the tool tray area so that's out. Part of me wants to do something cool in the open areas on the side of the trunk and another part of me says to just hide everything and keep the trunk in tack.....

Thanks for looking.

 

So I have to ask, how did you get the tweeters to look so clean? Doesn't the 03 come with the huge, oversized factory tweeter grills?

Also... you REALLY need to vent the plastic lining in the door. Trust me, the air displacement from the woofers will make the plastic flap louder than the speakers will play. Find the two holes in the metal closest to the woofers, cut the plastic, and use electrical tape to secure the edges of the hole in the plastic to the edges of the hole in the metal. I didn't do this the first time, then had to take the doors entirely apart when it drove me insane.

 

Good call on the plastic liner. I would have never thought about that. Of course now that it has been mentioned and I refer back to the previous pictures I can definitely see this happening. Damnit!!!!! It makes me sick to have to take the doors back off again

For the tweeters I just removed the factory ones from the back of the panel and then removed the mounting ring on the the new tweeters. They fit inside the big factory hole with no problem. I then just super glued the metal bracket that secured the factory tweeters to the door panel to the magnets on the new tweeters. I also utilized the factory tweeter plastic quick disconnects on the wires by cutting them and then resoldering them to the new tweeter wires. The aftermarket speaker wire is soldered to the other end of the quick disconnect for an OEM look.

 

On Saturday I constructed a 1/4" MDF tray that mounts in the spare tire location for the amps and crossover equipment. To say that this was a job and a half would be the understatement of the year. It was a long and tedious process but I am very happy with how it turned out. Everything is completely hidden behind the false spare tire wall. Most likely I will be looking into some large fans for better ventilation in this area after I have completed the rest of the install and worked out any bugs.

On a side note, My original plan to use a 10" JL Stealth Box has changed. I have decided to construct my own box using a single JL 12 that will occupy the same tool tray area. The new plan is to make a sealed enclosure and possibly use another board that will sit a few inches above the speaker face that will act as a loading device for the sub. This will act almost like a bandpass box but without the drawbacks. I wasn't real thrilled about having the flimsy trunk lid being the first place the bass waves will bounce off of like in a regular sealed enclosure. My theory is that this loading board will help to keep the bass waves around a little longer and at the same time help to direct the some of those waves into the cabin a little better. Will See About That....

Here's the amp rack before and after, as you can see the two amps and crossover used every inch of realestate on this board :

 

Well, I finally completed the install of this project minus the subbox. My first impressions of this setup are very good. In fact, I am so impressed with the sound from just the front components that I am contemplating even using a sub at all. The Morel components are awsome and produce enough bass to satisfy just about anyone. I am pushing 75WRMS @ 4ohms of clean power to them via a USAmps US180 2 Channel unit. The gain is set at 12 O'Clock on this amp. Using the front High Pass output of the Audio Control 3Xs crossover set at 50Hz I was able to keep the speaker excursions at a very conservative level even with the headunit on MAX volume. (read...Idiot Proof.. )

Despite tuning this setup at a very conservative level it still gets loud enough to just barley hear the engine at redline with the volume control buried. The dynamat and 3/4" MDF speaker plates are doing wonders at minimizing vibrations and resonance on the thin doors. Even deep bass notes down to below 50Hz are no problem with the 24db slope of the crossover keeping things under control. The Amp has a very good Damping Factor of 500 which also helps allot on lower bass notes were cone control is of the utmost importance.

All in All despite limiting myself to the lousy factory tweeter mounting locations sound quality is excellent. Voices are crystal clear and the highs are just right. Not too bright and not too soft. Eventually I may add my Audio Control ESP2 signal processor to help bring the sound stage more front and center of the windshield which will help make up for the factory speaker mounting locations.

If I decide to go with a subwoofer in the system I truly believe a cleanly powered 8" unit in a sealed enclosure would do the trick. I have a JL 12 in my basement but at this point after hearing the way it sounds currently I think it would be overkill. The last thing I want is a heavy window rattling sub that would draw the attention of the wrong crowd when I'm not around.

Thanks for looking!