DIY: Installing speakers in a mk4 golf/jetta

[Sean7]

Is there a DIY just like this one for the MK3 Jetta? I have yet to peek behind my speaker grills to see if there is clearance to add a 1.5 inch adapter piece like this one.

I tried searching, but all I can find is this thread

Thanks for the help

[jazzb5s4]

Hey guys i have a 2000 jetta my front passenger speaker went bad and i got a a pair of 6 1/2 inch pioneer speakers my car has manual windows so will the window touch the magnet or will i def need that spacer if so where can i get one?

[Pat @ Pitt Soundworks]

depends on depth

[GL03]

You can install aftermarket speakers into your MKIV using the Factory fitted Spacer/plastic housing fitted on car. YOu don't need to make any, you will use the ones in the car. They are reusable. The factory harness you will not need to modify it, it will plug into the same location. You will gut out the speaker out of the ring casing and install your speaker in place of it.

Use a dremel, dykes, or jig handsaw to core out the speakers from the black plastic ring casing. Carefully do this with speaker spacer/ring fitted. DOn't need to disconnect the speakers. Avoid damaging the speaker connector, you will solder your speaker to this later from the back side. Cut the two speaker wires closest to the speaker.
Don't touch the rivets, these secure the the ring onto the door.

Once you removed speaker core, install female spade connectors to your aftermarket speaker. leaving a couple of inches slack, solder the other ends to the back of the inside of ring connector. Pay attention to polarity. Secure speaker with short sheetmetal screws. Roll the window up and down and check for clearance.

Factory speaker harness will be fitted,spacer/ring fitted, and look like a factory set-up , when you are done.

[verwustung2]

There isn't one in the facts and i thought I'd spend my three spare hours this week doing something constructive. It also clears some space out of my room .

Things you'll need:
router with 1/4" straight and flush bits and circle-jig
power-drill with screw head and 1/8th and 3/8th inch drill bits
dremel with cutout bits
non-hardening modeling clay
coarse thread 1 5/8" drywall screws
2" long 6-32 threaded screws with nuts - these are at home depot and have a flat head
small washers
*maybe* wood glue

The woofers in question, oem vs aftermarket:

Step One
Remove your door pannel. I'm not going to go into detail as I'm sure it's in the mk4 faqs. three screws on the bottom, two behind the door pulls, pull and lift up. Unhook the stuff inside.

Step Two
Unhook the plug going to the speaker. Take your power drill and drill out the four rivets holding the OEM speaker to the door. It will pull right out.

Step Three
Now were going to build the baffles. Here's the easiest way to do it.

Take your router and set your jig to 7 1/4" and cut a hole. The circle left over will be 6 3/4" in diameter and the perfect size for the stock door.

Next, cut the center out of the circle you just made. You'll want to use the setting on your jig for the cutout diameter provided by your speaker manufacturer.

Next, place your woofer in the rings and use a pencil to mark the cutout holes. Put your woofer aside and take your drill and drill out the holes you just marked.

Depending on how thick your speakers are, you may need to make two rings per woofer. If you're using 3/4" mdf for your rings, you can stack two rings on top of each other and still have room for the woofer. You can fit a speaker up to 3 1/2" deep behind the OEM door skin doing this. .

In order to make a double-thick ring read this. If a single ring will suffice, skip this paragraph. Repeat the drilling for the second ring. Apply some wood glue on one of the rings and use the drywall screws to clamp the rings together. Screw them together very tightly! Take a paper towl and wipe up any extra glue seeping out the outside. Depending on your glue and the temperature, the rings could be dry in as little as fifteen minutes.

Now, take woofer and rotate it so that the second set of holes are evenly spaced between the first set. Drill these holes out. You will not have eight holes drilled in your rings.

Next, take the 3/8th inch drill bit and very carefully spin the bit at high speed but very lightly touch the wood. This will in effect drill very slightly into the wood, but the bit won't bite and tear the ring apart. You will do this for four of the eight holes. You'll want to go down into the wood about 1/4".

Finally, drop a washer in the hole. You'll probably have to press down with a screw driver to get it in. Next, put the 6/32 screw and put it through the hole so the head goes in the notches. You'll want to put a flathead bit in the power drill 'cause it's a lot of screwing to do by hand. Take the bolt all the way down.

(I did these a little out of order becuase I wanted to test-fit everything before doing the full mock-up and write-up. Sorry for the bad pics)

You'll end up with this:

Test fit your rings. You may need to use a flathead screwdriver to pry the bolts into the stock holes. This is perfectly okay. Feel free to hit the ring

Step Four
Take the non-hardeining modeling clay and make a small ring around the woofer hole. This is twofold. First, the clay will absorb vibrations from the woofer. Second, it will make an airtight seal between the rings and the door pannel.

Step Five
Put your ring on the door. Put a washer on the bolt on the inside of the door. Push hard on the ring and hand-tighten the nuts on the bolts. Then use a socket inside of the door to fully tighten the nuts. Clay will come out the sides of the rings. This is good. You can smear the clay around a little to smoothen the seals on the inside and outside of the ring. If you're sound deadeing the door, apply the deadener over the clay and over the ring.

Step Six
You can now run the wire through the molding. VW was nice enough to use a VERY large mold. Some vehicles I've worked on barely had room for the stock wires, let alone anything aftermarket.

Push the wires through the door into the inside of the car. It's much easier this way. Even though the molding and the hole inside the car doesn't perfectly line up, if you put your fingers up this little hole and keep feeding speaker wire through, it will come right out inside the car.

inside the door:

the molding:

inside the car:

You can also take this time to solder the wires to the woofer:

Step Seven
Put another layer of clay around the top of the ring. This will seal between the ring and the woofer.

Step Eight
You will want to cut the drywall screws down. If you're using a double-ring, you don't have to cut them at all. If using a single-ring, you will want to cut them more than halfway off using a dremmel.

Screw the woofer in the remaining four holes tightly. Peel away any extra clay that squeezes out.

Step Nine
Reattach the stock door pannels, run your wires, and enjoy.

I hope this has helped a few people wanting to do some mild upgrades to their stock stereo system. If anyone finds any typos, it's 2:30 am, I won't be offended if you point them out.

Enjoy

Modified by pwnt by pat at 1:31 AM 3-11-2007

what did you use to attach the wood rings to the door? and do you have a picture of what the stock wiring looks like on the speakers befor you installed the woofer? im looking to install better speakers in my jetta but b4 i start working on it i want to know what im up against for wiring new speaker in

[Pat @ Pitt Soundworks]

Please don't quote pictures. If you could edit that out I would really appreciate it.

The rings were held in using 2" 6-32 machine screws. The factory wiring is a 2-pin connector for monsoon, 4-pin for non-monsoon IIRC and it's not "inside" the door, but rather next to the cone of the speaker.

[peterlopez99]

do you have more pics of the rest of the car ? and where you the rest?took the wiring to the back?

also why did you chose 2 3/4 ring when 1 was enough? it worked for me...i would like to know the reason of this. maybe your gettin better bass or sound quality from the speaker when its closer to the panel.

thank you

[Pat @ Pitt Soundworks]

No more pictures.

Two rings are necessary when you run real speakers that actually have some meat to their motors and more than 3mm xmax

[GTMonster]

Can anyone tell me if I use Autoleads SAK 3103 standard spacers... what is the max depth of speaker will fit it in the rear door of a MK4 Golf?
Does the window go far enough down to touch the speaker?

[Shouse]

just a note, I took my door panel off today to deal w/ a door handle issue and found my mdf baffle with a giant gash in it. Doesn't look like water damage (i sealed mine too). It's pretty stiff too, I can't push the mdf in to cover the gash or anything. Not sure if it's heat, weight of the speaker or what. Had it installed for about 2 years now. Just wanted to throw the warning out there.

[Pat @ Pitt Soundworks]

Most likely moisture soaked in and it doesn't look like it because it's dried. See it all the time. This needs re-done. I recommend only using cutting boards when moisture could be a concern.

[Shouse]

yup yup, going to redo it tomorrow. I've seen water destroy mdf before. The typical swollen up look. It's not swollen at all so it couldn't have been a crazy amount of moisture. Do you think it's from humidity or rain water? And what do you mean by 'cutting board'?

[Pat @ Pitt Soundworks]

It's mostly from moisture coming between the window and the seal then finding it's way along the back side of the window regulator and up to the mdf. It's always very humid around here and my MDF pile doesn't have any problems unless it comes in direct contact with water.

http://www.google.com/search?um=1&hl...l118l468l2.3l5

[akrazyassho]

These are the adapters I bought:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Scosche+...&skuId=7200575

They work great, nice fit, no fuss installation and great price. If you don't want to mess w/ MDF rings these work great, I've had them for two and a half years w/ no problems.

[Pat @ Pitt Soundworks]

Premade adapters are great until you start installing real speakers

[fuerte]

So i have a 2 door gti, i have 6.5 speakers all 4 ends? Also is it best to go with componat speakers or buy tweeters sperate?

[VDubieU]

Do you have any pictures of how you routed the speaker wire into the driver side door? I triend to insert it from the door into the car but I couldn't.

[Emron]

Do you have any pictures of how you routed the speaker wire into the driver side door? I triend to insert it from the door into the car but I couldn't.

Seriously?

And how did you try?

Seriously? Wow.

Route the wires with the rest of the door wires.


^drunk post. I'm not always an *******.

[Pat @ Pitt Soundworks]

It's MUCH MUCH easier to get the wires through the door guide if you take pull the rubber boot off of the clip on the body side. Then you can feed the wire through the body, then down through the rubber. And when you're done, slip the rubber boot back over it's clip.

[drewdrewhein]

are the speaker grilles directly attached the the door panel? i want to put different grilles in but i want to know if all have to cut the current ones out of the door panel

[Pat @ Pitt Soundworks]

they are held in by large plastic rivets. to remove, take a very large drill bit and spin it on the back side of the door skin where the rivet attaches at medium speed and very light pressure. This will cut the head off quickly and cleanly.

[ivanVT]

Hey guys.
I have a 2002 Jetta that I bought used around 3 years back when I was in high school. It came with an aftermarket head unit installed in it (older model Pioneer Mosfet 50Wx4 I think). The speakers didn't get swapped out, so I was left with all stock. No more than 6 months after I started driving my Jetta, pretty much all of the speakers were blown. It's probably because I had them blasting all the time... the only sound I had for a while came from both tweeters in the front that are mounted in the A-pillar near the side mirrors. They actually sounded pretty good and I saw no need to replace them.

Another 2 or 3 months went by until I got the money to buy some new speakers to swap out the old ones. I got 4 Sony X-Plode coaxial speakers on sale for like $80 when Circuit City was going out of business. (not quite sure, but probably an earlier model of one that looked like this: http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/sto...52921665804573)
I didn't really research what I needed before I scooped them up because they were on sale and I was young and just wanted music in my car. Eventually, I got some of the plastic spacers so I could mount them in my doors and the VW speaker harness to convert the black and red wires to that European plug format.

Now with everything I thought I needed, I proceeded to take off all of the door panels, and rip out the rivets and old woofers with back of a hammer. Mounting the spacers to the doors was pretty easy. I didn't use any clay like I saw one of you put between your spacers and the door (I don't really hear any vibrating so its cool with me). After mounting all of the new speakers in the doors on their spacers and connecting them their speaker harnesses I ran into a problem.

The coaxial speakers in the front doors played both high and lows, utilizing the whole speaker, while the front tweeters continued to sound great. The problem I encountered was that the rear door speakers only were playing the lows, not utilizing its built in tweeter, while the tweeters that are mounted in the door panel near the door handle remain broken. I have been rolling around with this setup ever since. Honestly, I have a nice sound quality projecting from the front of me, but the back just sucks. When you sit in the back seat it sounds like my stereo is real whack.

Wow that was kind of a long story just to get to that point. My question to you DIY dudes out there is, What do you think the best way to approach solving this situation?

• Since I have a coaxial speaker mounted in the back already, would it be easier to just divert the signal going to the tweeter mounted in the door to the speaker I installed using a crossover?
  ----This is probably the easiest and cheapest solution to my problem right? I'd like this a lot because it would actually put those rear speakers to use for once.
  ----I really don't feel like buying a component speaker set to replace those speakers in the rear doors and put in new tweeters if I don't have to. Broke college student...
• Do you think it is going to be necessary to get an amp to pump up the power delivered to those rear speakers?.....This will probably be much more expensive and a pain the ass to install I'm guessing

Honestly, I don't know too much about car audio and wiring, but I have been reading up a little on it in forums the past few days. I think I can tackle it by myself or with a buddy. If you think you have some sort solution or advice to me that'd be awesome.

[JoeHL]

Really useful! I had something similar to this, but I used foam and it wasn't quite as sturdy so I think I am going to try this method. Do you have any rattling at all?

[chicago_audi]

http://www.honeydohardware.com/comer...dProduct=60673


Drill 4 holes 90 degrees apart to attach to car door. The speaker holes on my Jetta are 6.2" / 156mm apart.
Drill 4 holes offset 45 degrees from above to attach speaker to grate. My Pioneer TS-A1604C speaker holes have a 6" diameter.
mount speaker to grate with #6x2 screws ( or whatever is appropriate )


The inside depth of the grate 1.8 in so if your speaker is deeper than that you will need to cut a 2" or 3" hole for the speaker to protrude a drop.
I am going to use a 7" piece of rubber shower base to make a seal between door cavity and drain which will eliminate the need for caulk and also will help keep the little bolts in place before inserting them into the bottom part of the drain.

I would attach photos but I do not think Vortex has a photo hosting process.


$3.40 and about 10 minutes worth of work.

[DFreshh]

So I know nothing about stereo systems. With that said if this is a stupid question... im sorry.

Im running the stock non monsoon stereo with four blown speakers, is there a way to use the factory wiring to install aftermarket speakers? or would this be really bad way to do it?

[FigureFive]

So I know nothing about stereo systems. With that said if this is a stupid question... im sorry.

Im running the stock non monsoon stereo with four blown speakers, is there a way to use the factory wiring to install aftermarket speakers? or would this be really bad way to do it?

Audiophiles would probably say that the factory wiring isn't thick enough or high enough quality, but I don't think most people would be able to tell the difference.

That said, you can use the factory wiring, but you'll have to clip the factory speaker connector off the wires making it difficult to go back to OEM speakers later if needed. However, it's the easiest thing to do if you're running a factory head unit or factory Monsoon amp as running speaker wires to them would involve clipping the harness and splicing there.

[DFreshh]

Audiophiles would probably say that the factory wiring isn't thick enough or high enough quality, but I don't think most people would be able to tell the difference.

That said, you can use the factory wiring, but you'll have to clip the factory speaker connector off the wires making it difficult to go back to OEM speakers later if needed. However, it's the easiest thing to do if you're running a factory head unit or factory Monsoon amp as running speaker wires to them would involve clipping the harness and splicing there.

Ok fair enough! Do I have to worry about the new speakers being underpowered or anything like that??

Also the factory wiring has 4 wires. How do I address this seeing that aftermarket speakers utilize only two?

Thanks in advance!

[FigureFive]

Do all four wires connect to the woofer in the door or do you have separate tweeters up in the corner of the window, so 2 wires into the woofer and 2 wires into the tweeter?

I've only worked with MkIV's with a Monsoon amp which a pair of wires to each woofer and tweeter, so there's a total of 8 pairs of wires.

[Fbmowner]

8/19/12 and this guide was an amazing help! I basically followed every instruction and I am very pleased. With all the proper tools this guide is the best for front door speakers, thanks for posting!

[Aeroproz]

I installed the following speaker from amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ls_o00_s00_i00





I suggest removing the outer styrofoam, It caused massive rattling after installing my bass drivers. Remove seat cushions then work on the panels, it is connected at the trunk area by a clip so don't break your trunks parcel shelf's rails. No baffle or spacers used or needed here. I used kicker 6.5 mid bass drivers to replace the blown woofers, and bolted Pioneer 6x9s to the back of the seat, the bass drivers are completely free air (gain @ 50% & bridged) and the 6x9s have vented boxes, (still running stock veewee speakers in the front doors at partial volume to minimise distortion and a future blow out). Everyone asks me if I have a giant sub box in the back, I do not .

Just a tip for those wanting to go the bass driver route instead of normal component speakers, set your amps settings up before putting the panels back on your car, your going to want your component speakers to max out before your subs, your not going to hear the subs distorting over your mids and highs, expetually if they are unsealed or unboxed like mine are. I tried to use Styrofoam baffles, it was an epic fail, they rattled more then a blown speaker and limited movement and muffled the smooth bass, they are now in the recycle Styrofoam bag where they belong. Stick to solid baffles and you should be good if you care that much, I prefer free air anyways.

I would love to stick a bigger sub in but kinda iffy without any instruction or diy, if i know ahead of time I am gunna have to do sheet metal work I can plan accordingly.

I will have better pictures and an actual diy soon, I think im gunna go for different speakers anyways, maybe even size up and take pics of my process so you can copy my procedure.

[Pat @ Pitt Soundworks]

You need to glue the foam baffles to the sheet metal. Without something to enclose the speakers rear wave you will have a ton of bass cancellation.

Bigger sub? Go for it. Cut the spare tire well out, weld up a plate, and build the box under the car. Best way to do it.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

[Aeroproz]

The baffles are rattling at the back, idk how to fix it maybe glue the baffles to the speaker or wedge something in the quarter panel, but that may bust the speaker one day. Both options sound unappealing really. Any ideas?

[Pat @ Pitt Soundworks]

Glue the baffles to the quarter panel. Or fiberglass sealed pods.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

[Aeroproz]

There is a good six inches of breathing room to the quarter panel. I am going to search the internet for some sort of official instruction on the Styrofoam baffles. Perhaps theres a simple solution I have overlooked.

Edit: Apparently they are garbage for my application, I guess I will be either leaving it as is, mounting boxes in that same spot or mounting them to the back of the seat and reversed.