shinerttu

Howdy Gents,

I have a 2008 GT with the Shaker 500. Let me say I am not impressed, and I swore after replacing my Bose system in my Nissan that I would never buy an upgraded stock stereo bc they are a pain to upgrade, but here I am.

Ok, so I want to spend most of my money on performance so I want to upgrade my 500 shaker on a budget. I kept a 4-channel 400 watt amp from my previous system, but sold the 12" sub because it took up my entire trunk.

I am somewhat of a sound snob, I like mids and highs to be crisp and the bass to thump I hate how much my doors rattle with the stock system.

So here is my plan, I just want to replace the front speakers with some quality speakers, for this weekend, and also dynomat the doors. I feel like this should make a considerable difference. Any recommendations on quality speakers less than $100 for a pair? I always used infiniti in the past but am open to other quality affordable speakers. I think the dynomat should help the subs sound much better. I hate rattle, hence I have no change or loos items anywhere in my car.

I won't be adding a sub and amp very soon, but obviously that will have to happen. Am I able to use my 4 channel amp only for my sub? I have used 2 channels in the past and bridged them but not sure about a 4channel. I know the best thing to do is to run my speakers off the 4 channel amp, but I just don't have the energy to rip out my carpet and install the amp.

Would I be getting a noticeable improvement with speakers and dynomat for now? Or should I suck it up and wait a month until I have the time to just do a full system install. Also, I don't think I will get an aftermarket H/U bc I'd rather spend $1000 on a S/C... just my priorities so this would all have to be connected to the stock shaker 500 H/U

shinerttu

So I forgot how much Dynamat was holy crap! lol I had some in my truck back in the day and it made a good difference although my memory is a little hazy. Looking into sound dampeners and I cant find a non-biased source or review. You guys have any experience deadening the doors? I don't want to spend over $100 on the deadner.

shinerttu

So... I went ahead and pulled the trigger on some good speakers and went with the dynamat door kit.

I got 2 6x8 Alpine SPR-68's http://www.crutchfield.com/p_500SPR6...68.html?tp=105

And I bought the Dynamat Door Kit http://www.crutchfield.com/S-VFsB7hZ...-Door-Kit.html

I bought everything off Amazon for about $170, which is like half of what it would have cost on Crutchfield. (Love their service but not that much!) I also got free 2 day shipping w/ Amazon Prime and everything should be here by Saturday for install! Hopefully my CAI gets here by then too because my tracker is showing a Monday arrival :/

I'll try and take some pictures of let yall know what I think!

DAD_23

Would love to hear how this turns out.
Thanks

Did you end up getting these adapters for the speakers to hook up to the 500?

shinerttu

Ok I just noticed Crutchfield says these wont fit up front, anyone know why? The Amazon thing didn't say it wouldn't fit my car....

shinerttu

No I didn't, I will just cut off the stock adapters and replace them with electrical connectors for the after market speakers. I honestly don't care that I am "modifying" the wiring. My cars are far from stock by the time I sell them. I will keep the connectors in case I re install the factory speakers later.


Update: I spoke with crutchfield and they said the tweeter on the new speakers sticks out 1/4" too far but that some slight modification will fix that.

I found a picture of a mustang door panel and saw that there is a honeycomb grille underneath the mesh grill, I figured I could sand this down the 1/4".... anyone have any input on this please?

jz78817

those are stiffening ribs to keep the grille from cracking if someone pushes on it. you can remove them, but just take care not to break them afterward.

I would try to find a way to cut it cleanly instead of sanding it; the door trim is made of polypropylene which tends to shred and make a mess when sanded.

shinerttu

Thanks for the input! I am doing it this weekend (none of my stuff arrived last Friday like should have so didn't receive the stuff until this Monday).

I bought a dremel rotary tool with like a 150 accessories (I'm trying to build up a tool collection). I figured this would be a perfect tool to cut or sand the plastic. I will post pictures hopefully by Sunday!

jz78817

be very careful with a Dremel. They're fast enough where if you don't watch what you're doing, you'll have ground a hole all of the way through before you know it. Also, work slowly; with the speed of those things they'll cause the plastic they touch to melt and gum up the bit.

shinerttu

Ok so I installed the Apline type R speakers up front and dynamat the doors. I took off the plastic cover on the door making sure to take it off in one piece to be able to reuse. I then used the plastic cover as a template to cut out my dynamat (this was perfect for knowing which holes you can cover). I did make the mistake of thinking I could cover the 2 large openings like below. But when I went to put the door panel back on I noticed that it stuck out and was meant to go in the big hole. That was dissapointing because I didn't feel like there was much area to dynamat... I had extra dynamat so I did the trunk as well...

Here is the door I messed up on by covering the big holes.



here is what the final version looks like...(wish I could have covered more..)



And because Crutchfield said these speakers wouldn't fit because of the tweeter, here is what I did to fix that problem

I put a piece of tape over the tweeter and put toothpaste on that piece of tape. Then I pressed the speaker against the door panel. Areas that had toothpaste were ares where the tweeter was touching the door pannel. I ground those areas down in just a few minutes using a dremmel. See below.




Verdict. Speakers are "bright" and definitely louder than before. Although I would agree with most and I can't wait to upgrade the head unit to actually get the best out of them. The dynamat I don't think made a big difference. Road noise etc sounds the same. It was dynamat extreme and it was thin so its hard to imagine a siginifcant improvement from doing the doors alone. I will say that the annoying rattle that drove me nuts is gone so I am happy. The rattle would happen when listening to like talk radio or a radio commercial. You would have the volume low and just hear like a bass rattle from peoples voices. No more rattle!