Jeff928S4

I am soon going to be replacing the 6.5" woofers in my 89' S4.

I decided to pull the old speakers to see how the new ones will fit....and in the process found out the rubber surrounds were completely rotted away. They still were making bass, but would rattle on really low bass - I didn't think they were as bad as they were.

Old speaker....it's pretty darn thin.....





Here is a pic of the crossover for the rear 4" + tweeter that is attached to the back of the speaker....



Here are the new woofers.....doesn't look good for them to fit where the old ones were - look at the difference!! Yikes!!




Luckily, in the hole for the woofers, Porsche was nice enough to cut a hole in the metal (was this for sound quality? The rear of the old woofer doesn't protrude into the hole?)




But....will the new CDT HD M6+ fit?

Juuuuust....







I think once the speaker trim in on (which I am going to have made out of wood; then screw the new woofers into these) it will pull the woofer out just enough. I am not going to use the original trim from the old woofers because I want to keep them intact and the new woofers have a different mounting pattern.

I need to now figure out how to get a grill over those woofers - the stock grills hit the rubber surround of the woofers.

So, before I decided to put these new woofers in, I figured I should hear how the old ones sound to compare (I heard it is hard to replicate the sound of the stock woofer), so I decided to re-foam them....


Removed the old grills again.....

Insert screwdriver in this slot and slightly twist - this will pop the grill up; then do the same on the opposite side and the grill should just fall off.



Pull the speaker out - it is attached by two white plugs....you can see the wires here....



On one side, the wires were easy to get at to unplug....on this side, you can clearly see both white plugs



The one going back to the rear speakers was juuuuust showing...



Now, on the drivers side, I couldn't see that white plug....



What do I do now....how do I unplug it (or worse, plug it back in), when I can't see it? Oh yea, pull the tweeter (grill came off the same as the woofer grill)....



There is the plug!!




Now that I know I can put it all back together....time to re-foam!!!


Went to the local hi-end stereo place and bought the 6" rubber surround - it was slightly too big, so I cut about an inch out of it and glued it back together.

Too big.....was overlapping on the outside....looks good in the pic, but it was too big - I'm picky



Before and after...



New smaller version resting on speaker...




Now, we remove the old rubber surround. Surprisingly, it was not "brittle", rather it was "extra soft". It just crumbled in my fingers, but was sticky.

I just used my fingertips to roll the glue/rubber off the actual speaker cone...




Cone is clean....



Now for the old glue/rubber on the speaker trim - same deal, just used my fingertips to remove old rubber (I also used the mini-vac and it lifted a lot of it)...Then once the bigger pieces were gone, I went around the rim with the razor knife - got lucky and it came out in a nice steady circle




No rubber left anywhere...



Tried to clean up the sticky glue that was left - but it was never-ending!!!




Got most of it up....




Now, it is time to start gluing. I just bought some universal UHF white glue, as you can't use any glue that dries too brittle....and, with the white glue, you can move the new rubber surround around to position it before it dries.

First, glue the new surround right to the paper cone....to help keep the cone stable and to to push it up slightly, I stuffed paper towel in behind (be careful not to stuff in the gaps where the voice coil wires go as you may knock one off).




I put the glue on in dots and used a lil' brush to spread it out....







Placed on the cone...



Used a Popsicle to put it down/shape it....



...then placed the biggest bolts I had to put pressure on the glued piece....




All done....




Now to glue the outside trim. I removed the paper towel at this point.

Use Popsicle stick to lift edges....apply glue in groove...



Smooth it out....




I was lucky to find a bowl that was pretty much the exact same size as the trim....




I put the bowl on top, then sat some dishes on top of the bowl for weight - I would randomly move the bowls position every 30 minutes so the whole trim was effected.

The finished product.....





Before and after....





So, that's basically it.

The new surrounds were $7 each - glue was $2 - took about 3-4 hours (I really took my time) to do one woofer - doing the other one tonight.

I have yet to install the woofer in the car, but will be doing that within the next few hours and will update how they sound when they look all new and pretty!! I will tell ya, they feel pretty solid - the cone moves up and down with no signs of the new surrounds separating at all - the true test will be seeing them in action.

Oh, and if I install the new woofers and they sound better - these re-foamed originals will be for sale (I will not be cutting them apart to use the surround).

Hope this post helps someone with the 6.5" speakers that rattle.


Oh, and the stereo place that sold me the surrounds said "it's a very complex process and takes a long time to learn", but then again, they charge $75 per woofer to do it at the store.

Ispeed

Wow, that is being meticulous. Great job.

danglerb

Make sure the overlap fully seals otherwise you might get some noise from air leaking.

BIMMERMIKE

Good work but I would use this cup.

Jeff928S4

That was my first "make sure to get this right" task. I glued the edges together before I installed the surround (some folks on the internet said to just cut it and then glue it on - but I thought about the "bump" and how it would not be glued to something - that has to be sealed) and made sure it was airtight before I glued it to the woofer.

UPDATE!! I just hooked up the one woofer (drivers side) and, well, let me tell you......


OMG!! Kudos and bows to the Porsche sound team. That one woofer alone has some kick to it - nice and punchy - I can feel it my back.

The mirrors don't rattle, but it is a VERY nice bass sound (it seems to miss-mash with the other 4" mids - it feels like bass is coming from the doors and everywhere - the whole car thumps). Like I said, if you listen to the 10-speaker system in parts (just the front right/just the front left/just both fronts/just the right rear/just the left rear/just both rear, individually (even in pairs), it sounds thin and muddy - but blend them all together and it's magic.

This is the first time to hear the full system working (and the woofers are still not crossed over - I removed the amp and the woofers are running in series off the rear speakers - can't wait to hear them with crossed over and with an amp). I am really impressed - and this is from one of the guys who had the big 18" Pioneer subwoofers/big Fosgate amp back in the day. I remember that bass, and although this bass isn't "oh, I hear him coming" bass, it is still very punchy and deep when it needs to be. I swear, it sounds like the bass is thumping down in the empty alcoves behind the woofer - did Porsche build somewhat of a sealed enclosure that seems to be resonating bass by mistake?

It will be interesting to see how the CDT's (and an amp) sound - they might be hard-pressed to mimic the mid/bass the factory woofers achieve - we'll see - going to be hooking up the CDT's next week.

The other woofer is currently drying - after hearing just the one hooked up, I immediately ran inside and re-foamed the second one. I'll let ya's know tomorrow how they both sound.

Jeff928S4

Are you sure you want to use that one? It might be pretty rare - It's not often you see a cup with Toronto written on it (sorry - it was too easy)

We'll be paying you guys a visit Saturday night - I say 4-3 Calgary in a shootout!

mrdieseldude

I will give it to Jeff... He is the man when it comes to adding pictures. With those... as they saying might go "it is worth a million words". Kudos to Jeff.

PS - I think the tight and punchy bass is 100 x's better than that loose, muffled and garbled bass. Seems maybe the Stuttgart guys got it right.

Hilton

Jeff, what amp are you using to power the rear speakers?

Looking at the wiring in my 89, the crossover attached to the woofers isn't electrically connected to the woofer - it only serves the mid/tweeters, and the 6.5" is effectively a full-range driver.

I suspect the factory 6-channel amp has a filter in it for the woofer outputs? (the factory amp was already AWOL when I got the 89 - so I've not played with one).

Good to hear a postiive impression of the factory speakers - I got mine refoamed from my 89 but have yet to reinstall them as I'm sorting out other interior issues, and putting the engine in my no-sunroof 87 back together too

Bill Ball

I actually agree with you. The factory 6.5s, when in working order, have a tight, punchy bass that is hard to replicate or improve on with other speakers. I refoamed mine as well using foam that was smaller than 6" and didn't need cutting.

Jeff928S4

For the longest time, I didn't have a camera. Now, pretty much any time I am working on the car, I try to have the camera with me. There is nothing I like more than wanting to know how to do something and somebody on the net has it all spelled out in picture form; so I know someday down the road someone will stumble on a thread like this and be "sweet!!".

Jeff928S4

Right now I just have the woofers running in series off the rear speaker wiring and that is running off of the Alpine deck amp.

Yup - that crossover is grounded to the speaker, but that's it. I tried to remove mine (the wires are criss-crossed on one woofer), but one wire (a black one) is connected to the rear of the woofer, so I couldn't remove it.

I believe the woofers were crossed-over at the amp somehow - I know they each had their own individual channel....and the fact that the woofers are 2 ohm vs the 4" mid's being 4 ohm tells me the amp and speaker system were designed around one another.

The woofers running off of the deck do throw out some high-end - I would be curious to hear the original woofers running off of the original amp to see how much of the highs were taken out.


Got the other woofer hooked up last night. Lovin' the bass, but that one woofer I put in last night has a rattle when it has to hit hard. I'm going to take the grill off again and take a look at it in action. I suspect where I overlapped the surround may be leaking (it wasn't as good a seal as with the first woofer), so I may re-foam it again.

Before I re-foamed that one woofer, I had the exact same rattle on that side, so it may also be one of the connectors in the rear vibrating against the back of the woofer; like I said, on one woofer, the wires go from top to bottom and bottom to top and cross behind the woofer. On the other side - where the one connector was up by the tweeter - the wires run from the speaker right into the connector close to them so there are no connectors sitting behind the woofer - they get tucked down in by the soundproofing. I may have to wrap the plastic connectors on that one woofer in foam or something.

Jeff928S4

I'm hoping the CDT's are at least as good - if they are weak, I will spray some expanding foam down in the alcove below the woofers and see if that improves them.

If not, they may end up going in the bottoms of the doors.

Jeff928S4

Fixed the rattle - the grill on that woofer was pushed in a wee bit and the surround was smacking up against it.

These grills sit REALLY close to the actual woofer - when I pulled my old grills off, there was a semi-circular section of rotted surround stuck to the grill.

I removed the mesh and straightened it out and when I re-installed the mesh, I bent the tabs a bit shorter than before so the mesh sits higher then usual, giving more room for the woofer to woof.

It's also nice to see I can still use the stock grills, I just need to replace the mesh with something bigger and manipulate it so it sits really far from the trim for the new woofers...or just have the woofers recessed in the new wooden trim so the grill sits outwards from the woofer face.

Podguy

I did the same thing to some Boston speakers a while back. They came out sounding great.

Podguy

Oh forgot - Orange County Speakers has different foam sizes for a reasonable price.

http://www.speakerrepair.com/

They will do the repair for you. Not worth it on small speakers but for big ones it is well worth the price.

Here in the SF bay area there is also A Brown Soun that does repairs as well

http://www.hempcone.com/abrown.com_new/