Speakers in doors?

ChuckM

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Hi. I realize the auto makers never really cared about good sound in the 70's, and the one speaker in my dash sucks. My interior is in very good condition and I'm worried if I cut the doors I'll be some kind of bad f body owner. I can't put them in the kick panels because the car is a standard and I need the parking brake. Any suggestions? Or just go ahead and hack the doors? It's a 76 coupe. It's already got upgraded rear speakers and I just added an Alpine head unit
 

Aspen500

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If you can find a dash pad for an F that had 4 speaker stereo, you can put some shallow speakers in. Think they're 3 1/2"(?). Without A/C or bi-level heat (no vents/ducts), deeper ones would fit. All you need is the metal part so the pad condition doesn't matter.
My car is an original 4 speaker and have modern dash and rear speakers in it with boxes on the rears. Sounds about as good as the original 4 watt stereo ever will but it's good enough for me, lol.

It's your car but I cringe at the thought of nice door panels being hacked. Once they're cut, there's not really any going back.

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Aspen500

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Never thought of that. A guy I work with has a '67 LeMans with a stock look stereo from Retrosound (I think). He put one of those dual speakers in the center dash location, along with 6x9's under the rear deck and it sounds darn good, without having to cut or modify a single thing, other than the speaker wire of course.
 

Cordoba1

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Another option is to tuck some downward-facing speakers up under the dash on each side. Not ideal, but it does help fill in the front with a little more sound. This works okay if you have decent rear package-shelf mounted speakers installed. Under-seat subs are a nice upgrade, too.
 

MoparDan

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If you can find a dash pad for an F that had 4 speaker stereo, you can put some shallow speakers in. Think they're 3 1/2"(?). Without A/C or bi-level heat (no vents/ducts), deeper ones would fit. All you need is the metal part so the pad condition doesn't matter.
My car is an original 4 speaker and have modern dash and rear speakers in it with boxes on the rears. Sounds about as good as the original 4 watt stereo ever will but it's good enough for me, lol.
Yes, the front speakers are 3 1/2. Now the trouble is the magnets on the factory speakers are really small, I had to cut the speakers holes to fit the Infinitys I'd bought since the magnets were so much bigger, and since these dashes are metal I had to buy a pair of tin snips to cut the holes bigger-not fun! Tin snips were useless by the time I was done...the passenger side is easy but the driver's side-not, lots of stuff in the way. Mine has bi-level and I had to put something (a soda bottle cap? I can't remember) in between the vent and dash to keep it pushed down a little so the speaker would clear, whatever it was it's still holding 11 years later fine. Newer factory tape/CD combo radio, Infinity speakers in the factory spots, I don't know a whole lot about sound quality but I think it's fine, and for what it's worth I had a friend who knew about sound systems, and we'd crank it up at times, and he thought it was pretty good for what it was, I specifically remember him saying the front speakers had great separation. Sorry for long response
 

Aspen500

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On my A/C car, used a heat gun to soften the duct and made a depression for the magnet. Didn't need to trim the metal but probably have speakers with smaller magnets than you have. Since I kept the stock stereo, went with the least expensive speakers. IIRC, got them from Crutchfield.
 

Aspen500

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The speakers I used are fairly shallow.
Found the instruction sheet. They're Kicker DS35 and the mounting depth is 1 3/4".
 
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