Spacing aftermarket speaker grills for use with stock door panel

[— Agent☣Orange —]

Yeah, I know some of you have seen it but I just wanted to be the first in the Interior section!


This is a quick show-n-tell of how I overcame a problem I had with some new speakers. Folks who upgrade to nicer speakers but like to hide them beneath the stock grill cover won't like this DIY. I really wanted to use the grills that came with my aftermarket speakers but did not want to just screw them on top of the stock speaker grills like a chump. I also did not want to mount the speakers to the stock grill itself either (don't need to go into why that's a horrible idea).

So, obviously the stock grill has to go. But, in doing that, the aftermarket grill will look so sunk in as to be an amateurish disaster.

Solution? Cut out the stock grill and float the aftermarket grill so that it sits flush (or close to flush) to the door panel.

_____________________________________________

Okay, so by now, I've already cut the plastic mesh grill out of the stock speaker panel. I used a Dremmel with a cutoff wheel to get as close to the borders of the ring as possible and then finished it off with a sanding cylinder. I had to go slowly here because the sanding starts to melt the plastic and coating the sanding element reducing effectiveness. Take your time and let the stuff cool between standing jobs.

I selected some 1-inch aluminum spacers and special, longer screws to reach the new length requirement


and then mounted the speaker and grill in its new position paying attention to get the grill centered






Then I test fitted a spare door panel with the stock speaker grill cut out


Decided I didn't like the look of the aluminum spacers so I wrapped them in CF for looks




I also reinforced the grill and the speaker ring with steel washers


and finally finished the project!


The aftermarket grill now floats independently of the door panel and looks great to me, especially after a little neffy on the tweeter panel earlier


Later, I want to change to black screws since the silver ones are bugging me. I also want to cut the spacers down a tiny bit to make the grill more flush or even slightly below the surface so it won't get damaged when the inevitable shoe hits it.

[markcher]

Looks well good , almost retro like spokes from a wheel , the carbon trim sets the door off might have been cool in a grey or silver fleck.

[— Agent☣Orange —]

You're right about silver setting it off. I didn't post the before pictures but the tweeter panels were silver. This project is part of my overall effort to eliminate a lot of silver and chrome in the cockpit to just a few accents but for the most part black.

[phillyb]

i'm excited to see these again once the spacers are taken down a bit.

[— Agent☣Orange —]

I'll post an update!

I have some black screws on order and I'm going to grind down each spacer about 3mm.

[Eunosbaby]

Nice!

[— Agent☣Orange —]

I didn't want to cut up my nice black stockers so I used some crappy tan ones and painted them with texture paint. Now that I know everything works, I might go ahead and cut up my black ones. I dunno, the texture paint on the speaker panel is kind of bothering me. There's already the leather texture of the main panel, the cf texture of the tweeter panels, the dotted texture of the elbow panel. I think the texture on the speaker panel is too many.

Am I over thinking it or what do you guys think?

[—RotorNutFD3S—]

That looks awesome! If I ever have to replace the speakers I have now I might have to do this as well. I like accent lighting (in moderation) and it would be very easy to add behind the speaker.

The paint seems to match pretty well and most of that panel is hidden by the seat when the door is closed anyway. In the last picture, the textures seem to blend well, nothing draws my eye more than anything else. But depending on the paint, it may chip off over time, if it does, replace with the molded black panels.

[— Agent☣Orange —]

Hmm, now you got me thinking of some amber lighting stuck in there as per your idea.

Will someone change my name to YellowRice please?

Seriously though, cool idea. While I had the door apart to run a new wiring harness, I ran extra sets of wiring for future mods, one of which was convenience lighting that illuminates when the door is open. From my future Miata LED lighting thread:

[f86sabjf]

nope not riced yet but do the speakers glow and blink to the music..........

[— Agent☣Orange —]

No, the glove box door automatically swings down revealing a spinning disco ball though.

[f86sabjf]

So now I know where Thumper gets his moves from

[— Agent☣Orange —]

Not really. My Miata has never driven itself off a dock. ;)

[exdotcomer]

very nice

[chris87]

Nice!

If you have an NA with 2-piece doorcard you could also do this:





Sorry i don't have better pictures, and recently sold all the HiFi stuff