speaker mounts

[jfirios]

I just bought the speaker mounts for the footwells from DMC Cali. Does anyone else have them? I saw them in one other car at their facility, but I am not sure how to install them. Just wondering if anyone else has any experience with them.

[Mike C.]

I have them in mine. Hold on and I will take a pic.

[jfirios]

how was it mounting them up?

[Mike C.]

Very simple. Used screws, drilled right though the carpet right into the fiberglass. I pre-drilled through the housing first, then just placed it and zapped it in.

[jfirios]

Okay so you covered it first then the mount actually goes over the carpet in the car? It isnt a sealed type of system. There is a bog gap at the top of the whole thing right. I am curious to see the photos.

[Notifier]

What are the specs on these? What size speakers do they take? I'm interested in placing speakers in that location, was thinking about building them myself but if the cost is reasonable wouldn't rule out purchasing them. Don't see them on their web site.

Pictures?

[jfirios]

they are made for 6 in round speakers. They are a mixture of wood back and fiberglass front. they come un carpeted from DMC. They are not on their site. If you call danny at DMC Cali, they have them there. I got mine for 250 for the set.

[Notifier]

Ok, thanks! I might try to build them myself first.

[jfirios]

might be a pain in the ass to do it yourself. Unless you are good at glass work.

[protodelorean]

The ones I saw from a vendor were only a front shell in fiberglass with no backs (open speaker). There is actually room there to build fully enclosed pods.
http://www.projectdelorean.com/images/Kick_Speakers/slides/DCP01591.JPG
http://www.projectdelorean.com/images/Kick_Speakers/slides/DCP01594.JPG
http://www.projectdelorean.com/images/Kick_Speakers/slides/DCP01595.JPG

These were one-offs I built for myself. I was going to build molds so I could reproduce them, but the best way to mount them is screws straight thru the back (through the carpet) and I didn't think folks would be willing to screw thru the carpet. From the above post, it sounds like even the ones currently out there require screwing thru the carpet.

a few more pics at: http://www.projectdelorean.com/images/Kick_Speakers/index.html

[jfirios]

i agree, as i was one of the guys bugging you to sell the pods you made. But, I am going to carpet the mounts and install them to the fiberglass then put the carpet in around the mount cutting out the excess.

[Notifier]

might be a pain in the ass to do it yourself. Unless you are good at glass work.

I was thinking more along the lines for just using MDF if I can find it thin enough. I've got the tools and time to give it a shot.

I kind of like what Iznodmad did here: http://dmctalk.org/showthread.php?572-Choices-of-speakers/page12 (scroll down to post #120). Seems simple enough. With them being down in the footwell they shouldn't stick out like a sore thumb if they look a little rough. Sounds like what you have is more "molded" to the shape of that area.

[protodelorean]

I was thinking more along the lines for just using MDF if I can find it thin enough. I've got the tools and time to give it a shot.

I kind of like what Iznodmad did here: http://dmctalk.org/showthread.php?572-Choices-of-speakers/page12 (scroll down to post #120). Seems simple enough. With them being down in the footwell they shouldn't stick out like a sore thumb if they look a little rough. Sounds like what you have is more "molded" to the shape of that area.

Correct. I actually molded the shape of the backs of my pods right off of the pontoon shape itself. This is why I can't use mine to make molds for others. (Since I wasn't going to have any carpet behind them) I'd expect others would want to leave their carpet and just install over it. So I'd need to repeat the molding process, but do so with a gap to allow for the carpet to remain in place.

[Mike C.]

Mine are now enclosed. I added a small piece of fiberglass to close the hole at the top. I took this pic back when we were test mounting the setup last year. It is a 6" Kenwood mid in place, since I have tweeters mounted in the dash for the highs.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v43/michael_cole/IMAG0694.jpg

The final placement actually has a piece of black carpet tucked to hide the gray. The gray carpet showed no matter what position because the shape of the housing wasn't 100% perfect.

[jfirios]

I know they aren't 100 % perfect fit, but it is close enough to allow the 6 in speaker there. A little modification and some sound foam to fill the gaps should do the trick. Not to mention I have already dynamatted the entire car with the exception of the doors. So I am thinking of just cutting the carpet out from where the speaker will go, or cut it back enough to make a seamless type of look without having all that carpet behind the speaker. If that makes sense.

[Mike C.]

I know they aren't 100 % perfect fit, but it is close enough to allow the 6 in speaker there. A little modification and some sound foam to fill the gaps should do the trick. Not to mention I have already dynamatted the entire car with the exception of the doors. So I am thinking of just cutting the carpet out from where the speaker will go, or cut it back enough to make a seamless type of look without having all that carpet behind the speaker. If that makes sense.

It makes sense. The reason I opted to leave the carpet back there was if I wasn't happy with the pods, I was going to remove them. Rather than having a spliced piece of carpet reinstalled, I opted to just leave it so I could remove if necessary.

[jfirios]

another thing that will help with the look is to carpet the mount with the same or as close to the same color as the car carpet is. Speaker carpet is cheap too. They have it at al & eds sound here in cali for 7 bucks a yard and the color is almost the same as the cars color.

[jfirios]

Ah, makes sense mike. I see that they have on the mounts those two metal strips. did you just bend them back to the form of the tub and screw them in that way in order to secure them to the car?

[Mike C.]

My car is two toned. Black interior with light gray carpet, which is why I left the pod black. It blends right into the dashpads.

[jfirios]

the whole speaker set up i am doing is a full range thing, the 6 in are mid low, have 2in mid hi in the place of the 3 in stock speakers and tweeters at the top of the windshield on the pillar firing at the windshield. all together will have 8 speakers in the front.

[jfirios]

Mine is the whole light grey thing. Not bad but i really like the look of the dark grey headliners. they used that for the black carpet and dash cars right? after everything is done I am going to have everything recovered, the dash, pillars and center.

[Mike C.]

Ah, makes sense mike. I see that they have on the mounts those two metal strips. did you just bend them back to the form of the tub and screw them in that way in order to secure them to the car?

I bent the metal strap into the contour of the pontoon, and then when I was satisfied that it flowed properly, I fiberglassed the enclosure shut. Once that dried, I screwed them into place. I didnt like the idea of having all that unsealed speaker enclosure like that.

[jfirios]

did a test fit today, will look good i think with everything covered and all.

[FABombjoy]

FWIW, I also made my kick panel enclosures sealed but ended up unsealing them with a hole saw later down the road. Below 100Hz performance was really bad. It seems that most component speakers are designed for infinite baffle or enclosures with significant volume.

If you've blueprinted your enclosures from the speakers T/S params it might be different, but leaving them sealed definitely did not work well for me. I think that even if they were designed around the T/S parameters that having no side or rear-facing port will still leave you with less than optimal low frequency response. That area of the car does not seem particularly good at naturally reinforcing low frequencies.

If you're DIYing, then you can also tie your pods into the knee pad mounting studs. That's what I did in lieu of driving screws into the body. You can see what that would look like in this pic from my kick pods (http://lukesandel.com/techgallery3/index.php/Auto/DeLorean/DMC-SuperStereo/DMC-SuperStereo-Pods/IMG_2187_001).