Put some new front speakers in last night - Diamond Audio Hex 6.5 separates. The woofer is made from sandwiched hexagonal kevlar = extremely stiff for tight transients. I chose the silk tweeter because of the Mini's small dimensions and stock tweeter location - should be a bit smoother than a the Aluminum one.

Anyway - here's a pic of the entire door with the set installed...


Here's a shot of the incredibly overbuilt and HUGE Diamond crossover - it is wedged between the two side-intrusion beams and would likely stay there on it's own but I put some 3M industrial double sided tape on the back just in case


Here's a shot of the woofer installed in the stock location. The Diamond 6.5" Hex woofers don't have a terribly deep mounting depth, so that helped. Still I needed to make a custom adapter to accomodate the offset mounting holes and the depth required. I ordered MikeyTheMini/NewMiniStuff plastic ones but the speaker mounting flange wasn't big enough to bolt the speakers to, so I used them as templates to make MDF ones. It took about an hour with a jigsaw, router, and Dremel. They could have been cleaned up a lot more, but they're covered by door panels anyway so they look like this...


Getting hte speaker wiring in here was a MAJOR pain in the ***. I had to remove the stock plastic wiring harness/grommet from the driver side door jamb area and drill a hole int he unused area and then thread the speaker wire in. Easier said than done, trust me!


Here's the Diamond tweeter. None of the Diamond mounts that were included would fit int he stock location so I simply used the tweeter with more industrial DS tape. It is angled rearward a bit to improve imaging.


That's it for now.

I finished the boot area (two PPI PowerClass amps, painted dark silver by a body shop, under a false floor made from aluminum plate) a couple of weeks ago but I don't have pics yet. Head unit is a Alpine CDA-9855 with Ipod integration. Sub is a Perfect 12".

Will post more pics when I have them...

 

Looks good, Nice photo documenting. I recently installed Alpine type X components in the front. I ripped apart the stock speaker and used its housing a spacer for the 5 1/4 woofers. Worked really well, however I had my camera and forgot to take pictures. Also I dremmeled out the stock tweeter cover grill and flushmounted them because they wouldnt fit where the old tweeters were. I think it turned out pretty good.

 

nice job.


that MDF adapter you made looks good too. :smile:

btw for those that mount their cross overs to their doors.... if you get
a door ding near that location, you'll need to remove that before you
take it in to PDR... for PDR sake, you will want to mount your x-over
on the brace (if it can clear the glass..probably not). and try to keep
it away from the center of the door. best location would be on
the inner panel.

 

I figured in the event of damage to the door, relocating the crossover would be the last item on my list of worries.

One bonus of wedging it in where I did - the door sounds more robust when I close it now. A bit of the tinniness is gone when I shut the door.

 

Good job on those mdf brackets Mark!! So how do they sound, the hex's, not the MDF ?


DM

 

I need to tweak them a bit. The tweeters levels were a bit low so I bumped the +2db switch on the crossover to on. The woofers are really REALLY tight, but I seem to have a midrange peak that sounds a bit flaky to my ears. I need to run a spectrum analyzer on the car once I get the other side done.

 

or just get a sub in the back and let the front 6.5" be mid ranges.

 

There is a sub in the back (12" Infinity Perfect) but it's crossed over at 80hz to prevent it from producing midbass, which will draw the image to the rear.