GT3 speaker upgrade Part 1.

Yep (they are the only speakers). My originals distorted everytime the volume went up and were deffo due for replacement. Will let you know, but Kappas are supposed to be top notch (and I found them at a good price too).

Migration info. Legacy thread was 133838

Previous poster said:

Quote: Originally posted by oceancarrera on 18 April 2007
Yep (they are the only speakers). My originals distorted everytime the volume went up and were deffo due for replacement. Will let you know, but Kappas are supposed to be top notch (and I found them at a good price too).

Click to expand...

They aren't too bad actually, had the bass units in my old C4S

Migration info. Legacy thread was 133841

Ok, I've completed Phase 1 of the speaker upgrade......

More floor pics, a sort of before and after.....



I carefully cut a hole in the blanked off missing tweeter area.....




The MB Quarts have a steel ring that really helps with the mounting, a couple of rings of normal Dynamat (the browny stuff) provides an excellent sealed aperture when this ring is placed inside the OEM aperture.



As you can see these MB rings have had their speaker mounting edges 'removed', this will allow me to bend the tabs around the OEM aperture securing them in place.



The speakers were sealed using Dynamat Extreme, help dampen the whole affair:





The tweeter and midbass units were then epoxied to the OEM cradle, epoxy is great, if you buy the 1 hour setting version, the 1 min 'crap' is awful stuff! Using epoxy helps when returning the car to standard as it 'cracks' off when assisted with a screwdriver and Stanley knife.

So off to the car......

Remove the headunit!!!! Thanks Porsche, mine's away on hols with them at the moment.



Remove the instrument binnacle, hidden screws, T20 Torx screwdriver at the ready!





On previous installs I've always used the existing wiring because I'm a lazy barsteward, this time I decided to feed additional cables, one for the tweeter and one for the midbass. Removing the binnacle helps you feed the cables into position - you can try and do it without removing it but it's a right PITA, the passenger side is easy, you can reach up from inside the centre console to the speaker whilst pushing the cables through.

I took picture before the second set of cables were fed through but I'm sure you can get the idea!





I also removed the aircon control, just two screws it helps if you have big hands.



Now to mount the crossovers.....



They looks good on the dash don't you think? We'll come back to those later.....

This is a standard ISO to ISO extension, we are only going to use the speaker cables side,



What you need to do here is attach 4 longer (18") cables to the end of the ISO that connects to the stereo, not the other! Solder, butt connectors etc will do the job perfectly. Then you want to connect these cables and the ones going through the dash to the crossovers.....



I mounted the crossovers under the stereo, surprisingly there's enough room there for an entire family of refugees!



The 4 wires exiting from the 'hole' are those attached to the ISO extension.

At this point you need to make sure the cables are all tidied away, routed the holes in the dash so you reconnect the stereo, remember to connect the black 8-pin connector to the ISO extension and the other end of this to the stereo the same applies to the brown plug!

On the cables sprouting like weeds from the speaker holes you will need to attach spade/bullet connectors to help attach them to the speaker. With mine, I used bullets to attach the tweeters and spades to attach to the midbass.



Once done insert back in the holes and the job's a good un!

Words to the wise.....

1. When mounting the speakers to the OEM cradles, try and get the cable mountings in the centre. If any cables are on the outside you struggle to re-insert them in the hole.

2. Take careful note of the - and + on the speakers, it won't blow up but you'll get phasing problems if you mix them up.

3. When removing the binnacle, lay down a towel over the dash to protect the dash.

4. To remove the dash speakers use a Torx allen key or tiniest ratchet (I found one in Maplin) and Torx screwdriver bit.

5. Put two washers here:





Without these you'll struggle to get the newly fabricated unit mounted properly.







Migration info. Legacy thread was 138290

great work Damien,

impressive stuff,

pardon my ignorance but whats a crossover do?


Migration info. Legacy thread was 138310

Previous poster said:

Quote: Originally posted by Speed Freak on 03 May 2007
great work Damien,
impressive stuff,
pardon my ignorance but whats a crossover do?

Click to expand...

Thanks Daz, a crossover simply splits the sound into high frequencies and low frequencies. The standard OEM speaker in the GT3 is a full range ie. a single speaker to deal with both high, mid and low frequencies that is total crap. The crossover ensures that only low/mid frequencies go to the midbass unit and only high frequencies go to the tweeter.

Migration info. Legacy thread was 138358

ok think i get it

Migration info. Legacy thread was 138377