I have recently joined the team of P5 owners and was wondering if anyone has tried installng 6" component speakers in the front door panels of a 2003 Protege 5. I am looking at the Diamond Audio M361 and Kicker RS6 speakers. If 6's would be too difficult or too deep then I may go with the Infinity 6800cs or JL XR570csi speakers. I'll probably run 50-70 watts rms to them.
I realize that these are four quite different speakers, but I purposly chose these to get some input from any audio buffs out there. I have been out of the car audio game for a few years and am playing a little bit of catch up now. I don't need tremendous power, more interested in clarity.

Thanks in advance,
B

 

*edit* moved to appropriate (audio) section.

Sir Nuke I believe is a wealth of audio knowledge.

 

I just put a set of DLS R6A3's in my door....I would think if you could get those in just about anything would fit. Had to trim plastic on door pannel, build a 3/4" trim ring, and fiberglass the trim ring down but no problem. These are 3" deep. So whatever your speaker deapth is i wouldn't go past 3" .

 

2-3/4" is TOUCHING the windows. But you could likely get away with a thinner trim ring than 3/4" Also know that you'll need to trim back the Ring that extends back from the door panel. Tweeter mounting is where it gets tricky, If you want it to fit within that 5x7 space as well, you're gonna need to make a bridge of sorts to mount it over the mid. Or you could get a 5-1/4 and tweeter side by side in there.

As far as speaker brands, GO LISTEN TO THEM!!! lots of them. listen listen listen. I can't say this enough. Make a mix disc of a variety of diff music types you listne to, preferably songs you're familair with already. Living where you do, you should have plenty of audio stores around with boards so you can hear the speakers. I highly recommend checking out Boston, and Focal components as well. But use your ears, everyone's are different, and music tastes vary as well as what you want to hear in it. I for one couldn't stand the sound of the Diamonds, they just sound ringy and harsh, to me, but some ppl love them. I've heared good things of the kickers, but I haven't heared any yet, and noone seems to take kicker seriosuly enough in that dept. to really display them along with the major players.


check here if there's not enough info on this site, MUCH more active community. http://protege5.com/vbb225/forumdisplay.php?f=11 I also have a how-to stickied in there about pulling speaker wire to your doors which you'll likely want to do if you're pushing much more than 50w. Speaking of power. unless it's a $ issue, I'd HIGHLY reccommend pushing MUCH more power. I've got something like 200w RMS going to each of my front speakers and they sound SUPER clean. much cleaner than when I was pushing "just" 75. It's a night and day difference.

 

I was able to line up two of the three component speaker mounting holes to the factory ones. I then used "Plumber's tape", which is a flexible metal strip with holes in it, vertically along the other two factory mounting holes to allow for the third component speaker hole to be mounted to the tape.

Finally, I ran a "t" piece of plumber's tape from the midpoint (where the third component speaker mounting hole was attached to the tape) horizontally and drilled the panel to mount it.

I mounted the tweeter along the horizontal section of the tape. The crossover network was attached with velcro along the backside of the inside door panel.

The pics would help to show what I'm trying to explain. I'm new to THIS forum, so please bear with me. I do not how to post pics quite yet.

 

I just installed a system in my pro5, and I wasn't sure what would fit either. I found the Kicker 57.2 components fit perfect with little mod to the factory 6X8 location. The tweeters also screw onto the cone of the driver to make them like coaxials if you don't wish to drill holes in your door panels. I am running them along with a et of kicker 65.2 components in the rear doors with the Kicker KX 800.4 and they sound great!!!

 

Those are my momo's in the front doors.

http://www.sounddomain.com/memberpage/123741/3

here are some more pics