I am thinking of changing the speakers in my R200, I'm assuming they are 6.5 in the front and would I be correct in thinking 4" for the rear? Do you also need speaker mounts or do the original ones simply unscrew and new one screw in?

your speaker sizes are correct and no you don't need mounts you can just pull the speakers off the original mounts

Oooo ok, anyone tried anything like these:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HERTZ-ECX165- ... E1RJIRK3NQ

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hertz-DCX100- ... Sw9NxTxm3s

both of those will fit no problem.

They're 5.25" / 13cm at the rear and 6.5" at the front.

The vast majority of 5.25" speakers will just fit (drop in replacement, use existing screws).

The fronts are on plastic speaker mounts. You can knock the speakers outs of the mounts after bending/cutting the tabs - which is more difficult than it sounds. You then need to drill some tiny holes for the new speakers and bolt up.

I have some photos if you're interested.

Bear in mind also that the R8 fronts are wired in anti-phase WRT the rears, like most other factory car systems, to nobble the bass response. Flipping the wiring over on each front speaker, left and right, restores the bass quite significantly.

Johnny 216GSi wrote:They're 5.25" / 13cm at the rear and 6.5" at the front.

The vast majority of 5.25" speakers will just fit (drop in replacement, use existing screws).

The fronts are on plastic speaker mounts. You can knock the speakers outs of the mounts after bending/cutting the tabs - which is more difficult than it sounds. You then need to drill some tiny holes for the new speakers and bolt up.

I have some photos if you're interested.

Bear in mind also that the R8 fronts are wired in anti-phase WRT the rears, like most other factory car systems, to nobble the bass response. Flipping the wiring over on each front speaker, left and right, restores the bass quite significantly.

Are you 100% the rear are 5.25 in an R8? I know they are in the later cars, but I thought they looked smaller in this car than my brothers ZR. So if I pop the door cards off and switch the positive and negative on both front speakers around it should help improve sound quality? Maybe a job for tomorrow

And yes all photos you've got would be appreciated!

jamiewelch wrote:

Johnny 216GSi wrote:They're 5.25" / 13cm at the rear and 6.5" at the front.

The vast majority of 5.25" speakers will just fit (drop in replacement, use existing screws).

The fronts are on plastic speaker mounts. You can knock the speakers outs of the mounts after bending/cutting the tabs - which is more difficult than it sounds. You then need to drill some tiny holes for the new speakers and bolt up.

I have some photos if you're interested.

Bear in mind also that the R8 fronts are wired in anti-phase WRT the rears, like most other factory car systems, to nobble the bass response. Flipping the wiring over on each front speaker, left and right, restores the bass quite significantly.

Are you 100% the rear are 5.25 in an R8? I know they are in the later cars, but I thought they looked smaller in this car than my brothers ZR. So if I pop the door cards off and switch the positive and negative on both front speakers around it should help improve sound quality? Maybe a job for tomorrow

And yes all photos you've got would be appreciated!

Yes, they are 5.25 / 13cm. I know, I've replaced them once already and am planning another upgrade.

Photos to follow...

Here you go:

Speakers and mounts removed from front doors. You can actually remove all 3 mounting screws and extract the speakers without the faff of taking the door cards off. You just need to remove the screw holding the door card on that is closest to the lower front corner on each door - where the door pockets start at the bottom. Just lift the door cars away by force with finger pressure by an inch or more, and you can angle a Philips screwdriver in to reach the lower screw nearest the hinge on both sides.



Cutting through the tabs. I used a tiny 2mm drill to just go through the metal at each metal tab site around the existing speaker:



Breaking the tabs off - just use a screwdriver like a chisel across the holes in the previous diagram - give the end a good tap with a hammer and the tabs break off. Deliver too heavy a blow and you can snap the plastic off - but it can be glued back in to make it look nice:



Once the tabs are out (4 I think in total on each speaker) deliver hefty blows to the back of the speaker whilst holding it tilted up off the workbench. Careful not to smash the back vents when doing this. I like to use a piece of wood to transmit the hammer blows to the rear of the speaker, eliminating the risk of me hitting the rear plastic grilles accidentally. It's only (old) glue holding them in once the tabs are out. Speakers out of their buckets/surrounds:



Close up of one of the buckets/surrounds - you need to drill small mounting holes in the rims to line up with the surrounds on the new speakers:



Reverse of bucket rims - the bolts come through here - you'll need 25/30mm long bolts to allow you to get the nuts on...



Pull off foam padding at the rear to make holes first, then refit once the new speakers are bolted up:



Installed in the doors:



Close up of the bolts into the buckets/surrounds holding in the new speakers:



Rears are easy - drop in replacements

Most car speaker systems are wired front/rear anti-phase. It's to reduce the levels of bass and make the audio system sound more balanced. But all car stereo systems lack bass, so I don't know why they persist in doing this. Trawl the web to find even Aston Martin owners dismayed that their factory fit £2000 audio upgrade still has anti-phase front speakers.

Adopt a wiring convention for the rears that matches Rover's own - I genuinely can't remember if they add a red stripe to one lead to indicate positive, or a black stripe to indicate negative - but whichever it is, go with it and be consistent for both rear left and rear right speakers.

On the fronts, try the two possible combinations that exist, i.e. either the same convention you used for the rears (black striped wire to negative, or red striped wire to positive)... and then the alternative (flip the wires on front left and front right). One of these two will give you noticeable improvement in bass response.

I'd also suggest looking at getting some high sensitivity speakers to boost listening levels, if you're not going for an amp.

I'll have to try and find out which ones I chose in the end - the Kenwood 6.5" units in the front are about 92dB 1W/1m and the Sony 5.25" ones in the rear are also over 90dB SPL 1w/1m as far as I remember. Both with the best/lowest bass responses I could find at the time.

Sony do their Mega bass / Xplod speaker series especially for 6.5" and 5.25" - I suggest you might want to look at these.

Johnny 216GSi wrote:Here you go:

Speakers and mounts removed from front doors. You can actually remove all 3 mounting screws and extract the speakers without the faff of taking the door cards off. You just need to remove the screw holding the door card on that is closest to the lower front corner on each door - where the door pockets start at the bottom. Just lift the door cars away by force with finger pressure by an inch or more, and you can angle a Philips screwdriver in to reach the lower screw nearest the hinge on both sides.
<SNIP>

I did the same with mine but I also swapped to component speaker and used the mirror backs to mount the tweeters to lift the soundstage a bit.

I've actually removed the rear speakers entirely

I would check the front dimensions as I think they are 6 inch (as I've got SPL dynamics 6.2 in the 220 and 5.2 in my van (and the van definitely has 5.75 inch speakers originally)

Otherwise I did exactly the same as you - reusing the original mounts. I can't remember the need to drill them out but it was a long time ago.