I spent most of the day yesterday moving the front tweets in my system from the speaker opening in the door panels to the A-pillars. It took that long only because I worked with great care.

I actually mounted the tweeters on the A-pillar itself, using construction adhesive. That way I can remove the A-pillar plastic covers without having to worry about wires, etc. Since there's so little room in there, this also helped me get a location that I knew was most space efficient and that would fit. The tweeters are aimed to fire into the windshield. By the way, they're MB Quart QM 25.61 NX, the standard tweeter in their high-end component systems.

I drilled hexagon pattern holes into the A-pillar plastic. I'm not happy with the quality of my work on that part of the job, so I will get another set of the pieces and do it right, but they're pretty inexpensive, so it's no big deal, and they're extremely easy to remove and replace.

The toughest part of the job was threading the leads from the crossovers in the door panel through the rubber conduits that run from the doors into the kickpanels. That took about a half hour for each one. I used a flattened coat hanger to poke through from the kick panel side. The problem is access (there's not much room to work, particularly on the driver's side) and the simple task of getting a lead all the way through the rubber conduit. The conduit is open on the door side, but completely taped up on the kick-panel side. Nonetheless, I found it was much easier to poke a hole in the tape and push the hanger wire through the kcik panel side than threading it through and poking a hole from the door side. Once I had the hanger wire threaded through, I taped speaker lead to it on the kick-panel side and pulled the lead through.

IMO, the improvement to the sound is well worth the trouble. Staging and overall presence and quality of the highs is vastly improved, particularly at speed. For example. on a few Miles Davis recording I tried after the install, the sizzle of the cymbals could be clearly heard at about 70 mph, whereas they were muffled with the tweeters in the door panels.

I'll post some photos when Photopoint is running again, if they ever get the site up.

 

thats where elnetti had placed his on his black/tan s2k in japan, man that was one sweet s2k....

 

Rick, is your home made A-pillar hole pattern like the hole pattern you bought for your first set of extra pillars? I suspect not, but how is it different?

I don't quite picture how you mounted the tweeters to fire towards the windshield.

I can't wait for Photopoint to get back up.

Barry

 

My tweeters have been like that for about 18 months now, and is Photopoint ever comes back up (and it had darned well better for as much money as they got from me!!! ), I'll repost pics of them again. If you go with a tweeter that's low profile, it isn't a huge deal to do it (we used JL Audio), but the install method we used isn't for the home tinkerer...

 

The hole pattern is different from what Kromer Radio in Canada did originally. The back of the tweeters is glued to the metal a-pillar nearest to the glass, which aims them toward the windshield.

I'll post some pictures if I can.

 

Rick, have you upgraded the radio/cd yet?

 

Yes, it was one of the first things I did when the car was delivered.

 

Rick, how much are these tweeters and exactly where do you tap in to get the signal? I don't understand what you mean by crossovers in the door panel. Looking forward to seeing the pics. Thanks.

 

Getting 16 gauge wire through the conduit was a huge pain......tougher then other cars I have worked on. I used a coat hanger too with the speaker wire electrical taped on.

I figure that I will get seperates one day, and this will save me time down the road.

 

I agree. While too incompetent to do the work myself, I had my tweeters installed in the A-pillars. Love the sound.