DIY: EX Model 7 Speaker Polk upgrade

[Cheule]

My goal with the DIY is simple: to improve the EX system's sound dramatically while 1) not spending a lot of money, 2) not allowing anyone else to touch the car (I'm really picky) and 3) having some fun tinkering with my car in the process.

I decided to install new Polk speakers in 6 positions, and then use Goose's polyfill mod to enhance the already pretty good subwoofer.

List of materials for this DIY:
- Polk DXI 6500 Components - $149.99
- Polk DXI 650 Coaxials - $74.99
- Walmart "Mainstays" extra firm Standard size pillow - $5.88
- DynaMat 36" x 12" 4-Sheel pack - $89.99


Here are the speakers I used for this DIY. Polk DXI 6500 Component speakers for the front, and Polk DXI 650 coaxials for the rear. (From what I hear, the DXI650s are nearly identical to the DB651s. It's just that the DXI line is retail and the DB line is online sales. I bought mine from Best Buy.) The DXI 650s were especially a good price, $75 for the pair. The component DXI 6500 fronts were $150.


The 340 watt OEM amp is pretty nice. It's definitely not the weakest link in the audio system's chain. That honor goes to the OEM speaker cones, which are complete SHIIITE.

The OEM speakers have the flimsiest cones I've ever seen in a supposedly upgraded system. The cone surrounds are made of cloth!, the speaker supports on the back are made of flexible plastic. The permanent magnet is the size of a bottle cap!


Here are the new rears next to the OEM rears. Notice that the OEM rears have no tweeters. The quality difference of these two might not be apparent in this picture, but in person there is no comparison.


The backs, look at the magnet difference!!




So your first task is to get the door cards off the front. For that I recommend you look at Hoi's door card removal post. The only thing I would add is, make sure you go slow, and gently. Especially with the little plastic covers that border either side of the windows. They have little tabs that break off very easy, and from what I heard, replacement parts are about $40-80. I did break a few tabs, and ended up having to superglue them back together. Another tip: if you get some of the black toothpaste crud on you, use alcohol, and it comes right off. Wiping and soap is fruitless.

Then, you'll want to DynaMat the doors. This makes a HUGE difference. SS2CRZ has a redneck dynamite thread where he outlines a cheaper way to go than actual DynaMat, this seems to be a good way to go if you are on a tight budget. I found multiple threads online that warned against asphalt smell, and strips peeling off vertical surfaces in the heat of summer. So I went ahead and bought the expensive stuff.

After DynaMating the doors, the road noise was reduced, the doors had a much more solid "thump" when closed instead of a "ting" and the OEM speakers even sounded better. This makes a difference. I recommend it.


When you remove the OEM speakers, it's simply one bolt at the top (8mm) then push hard on the speaker upwards, to slide it up about an inch, and then it slides outward. You might have to really shove it, as they are glued in. Then DynaMat around the speaker holes, and then drill 4 holes to attach included spacers. I snapped off all the superfluous tabs off the spacers. Use a 1/8" drill bit, and then the supplied screws will bite well in the door sheet metal without any backing nuts. The spacer is important since without it, the larger speaker magnet will collide with the window path. Also the spacer moves the speaker cone closer to the door card speaker grille.


Cut off the factory speaker cable connector, and solder the wires to the speaker. Do not forget to have the included rubber gasket lined up with the speaker at this point. I did, and then had to unsolder the cables to get the rubber gasket in-between the speaker an the spacer. At this point is a good time to go over the wiring colors.

Here is a picture of the wiring diagram: (thanks to fergsonfire who pointed out that the tweeters were reversed)


But the colors for the wires go like this: (all positions assume US layout)

Front left driver's door speaker: Light Blue (+) and Gray (-)
Front right passenger's door speaker: Blue (+) and Red (-)

Left tweeter speaker: Gray (+) and Light Blue (-)
Right tweeter speaker: Red (+) and Blue (-)

Left rear speaker: Gray (+) and Brown (-)
Right rear speaker: Blue (+) and Orange (-)


Here's the Polk DXI 6500 woofer installed. The direction the logo runs will not matter, since it will be behind the door card speaker grille, but I rotated the speaker so that the soldering points were directly downward, as the OEM speaker cutout has a bit more space there.



Rinse and repeat on the passenger's side woofer.

Now time for a side bar on why you should NOT install the supplied Polk crossovers. For multiple reasons, I have decided that the OEM amp includes crossover or at least a frequency roll off for the front woofers and tweeters. There has been much discussion on this point in several threads, and I tested the woofers using the included crossovers and not, and it made no difference. In the end, save yourself some hassle, and don't install the crossovers. They aren't needed, and would be a super pain to install since the tweeters aren't connected in series with the woofers. I attempted to get at the wiring harness in the OEM amp, and once I removed the HU, I saw what a pain putting the crossovers in the dash near the OEM amp would be. That's when I began testing the woofers with and without the crossovers by playing flat frequency sweeps from 200hz to 20khz, and I found no appreciable difference with the crossovers in place or not. This tells me that the OEM amp already is rolling off those frequencies.
If you'd like to see the gory details about my fruitless excursion into HU removal and OEM amp placement, check out this thread. But trust me, save your time. Just slap the speakers in without a crossover, it sounds great with whatever the OEM amp is doing.

Next up, tweeters...

[Cheule]

Now it's time for the tweeters.

Getting the tweeter panels off is a piece of cake. Cbrei2310 has a great thread on it. I inserted a putty knife in between the seam around the tweeter panels, and they popped right out. Be careful not to scratch the panels, they scratch creating what looks like little white flakes easily. If you do scratch them a little, a sharpie permanent marker will turn the scratches black again.

Remove the tweeters by popping out the three tabs around the tweeter holder. Don't worry about being gentle here. Pry hard and destroy it as much as you like, you won't need the tweeter or the holder, you're going to cut it all out.

Now you will need to cut out a 2" hole where the OEM tweeter grille is in the panel. I used a Dremel tool, (if you don't have one of these, get one! They're $50 and you'll use it for a million DIY projects) and routed out the grille. I found that a perfect size was to cut just until the outermost bulge of the grill was gone if you are looking from the bottom. Notice how the panel is nice and flat, and then it makes a bump and then there is the tweeter holder side etc. Dremel out all the tweeter holder parts until you have only the flat panel left. I might not be explaining this well, and I forgot to take pictures of this part. Sorry. But go slow, do a good job, and you'll have what you see in the picture below when you finally slip in the flush-mount cups and tweeters.

These tweeters look soooo good with the CR-Z interior. Matches the silver and black scheme perfectly.


Make sure you screw in the metal cross retaining clips on the back side of the flush mount cup before you pop the tweeter in. I forgot twice, and had to force the tweeters back out by pushing through the little holes on the back of the flush mount cup with a pencil eraser against the tweeter.

Once you have both mounted, cut the factory clips off the wires in the dash and the solder the wires to the tweeter in the correct polarity and pop the panels back in. This was probably the easiest part of the whole upgrade, and arguably made the most difference to the sound. (Not that I would settle for upgraded tweeters only, the woofer and sub mod made a huge difference too.) Be careful to follow the wiring guide above, the tweeters are wired opposite of what you would expect.

Now time to do the rears. These are less time consuming than the fronts, I did both rears in about an hour, but part of the reason it took that long was because the speakers BARELY fit in the existing mounting location. The problem is that even with the supplied spacers, the magnets touch the wall of the car without the speaker mount being flush with the speaker mounting hole. But the good news is, it only misses being flush by a mm or two. I came up with a very simple fix that works great. But first let's look at a picture.

Here you see the right rear speaker grille popped off. Use a flathead screw driver wrapped in masking tape.


As you can see, I have a 2" square piece of DynaMat where the speaker magnet will come into contact with the frame of the car. Then I layered strips of DynaMat all around the OEM speaker hole. You can see in the picture I have one long rectangle in place on the left. You'll want to DynaMat all the way around the entire hole, but where you see that first long strip is where you'll end up going three layers deep with DynaMat.

Since the frame of the car sticks out on the left side more than the right, what I did was, build up three layers of DynaMat on the left side of the mounting hole bracket, and only one layer of DynaMat on the right side. That way when I screwed in the spacer, it was very slightly askew, with the left side of the speaker forward a few mm a bit from the right. That meant the speaker got a nice secure fit, with the magnet just barely coming into contact with the frame, but resting against the DynaMat square you see in the center. There is no rattle, and it doesn't hurt the speaker's performance at all, because the permanent magnet isn't a moving part. Only the cone and electro-magnet coil flexes. Again I experience no rattle at all, I screwed the speaker in very firmly, and feel more bass in the seats now after my upgrade, and I think some of it might have to do with the rear magnets being in pseudo-contact with the car's frame.

I noticed that the grilles pop back on very easily, without much pressure, but only if you have them in the exact correct orientation. You might want to note the direction they come off, for when you put them back on.



Now for the subwoofer. I didn't want to add an aftermarket amplifier for three reasons: 1) cost 2) space is limited in our small car, 3) our car's 12v battery depletes very quickly when we use the EX radio system while the car is off. A higher wattage after market amplifier would only make this worse. So assuming I want to keep the OEM amp supplying the sub woofer, I also realized I could not upgrade the sub speaker itself. Most after market subs would barely be moved by the smaller OEM amp. Add to that the fact that the existing sub enclosure is very small, and odd shaped, and that the existing sub speaker is really not that bad, I decided to keep it. The magnet is sizable on the OEM subwoofer. It is also made of much better materials than the door speakers. It has an actual rubber cone surround and a nice paper doped cone. Fairly thick and rigid. It wasn't a complete mess like the stock door speakers. However, the enclosure is just way too small for the sub to operate efficiently.

So I decided to follow Goose's Polyfill Sub mod. Adding the polyfill effectively makes the sub woofer enclosure seem "bigger" to the speaker, and it operates more efficiently, meaning more sound and cleaner sound. As SS2CRZ explained, the fill keeps the negative sound waves coming off the back side of the speaker cone from reflecting off the enclosure wall and hitting the speaker cone again causing distortion.

Here is the pillow I pulled polyfill out of from Walmart. It was $5.88 and a lot cheaper than buying polyfill from a craft store, which was $8-10 a bag. I stuffed half the bag into the sub woofer cabinet, making sure every nook and crannie had stuffing. It wasn't a loose fill, but not super crammed either. As I said, 1/2 of the pillow worked for me.


As with the door card removal, I am not going to reinvent the wheel here. Just follow Goose's excellent post. I would simply add that be careful not to break off any of the orange tabs that hold the interior paneling to the car walls. I broke 2, and had to buy them at a DISCOUNTED ripoff price of $2.50 each from my local Honda dealer. They were $5.50 to start with and the guy took 3 dollars off because they were such a ripoff!

As I said in another thread, I used to listen to the stereo with the settings of Bass +5, Treble +5 and SW +6.

Now I use Bass +4, Treble +2, SW +4 And the speaker system is MUCH louder, highs might still be too loud for me at +2. I might have to set it to +1 or Centered. Even though I have the SW set to +4 now, I sounds as if it were on +10 (if that were possible).

Also, now I listen to the stereo at lower volumes and it sounds louder!

The fidelity improvement is incredible. I am so glad I did this! THIS IS WHAT AN UPGRADED STEREO SOUNDS LIKE. Honda did OK on the HU and the OEM amp, but the speakers just don't do the EX stereo any justice. Replace those, and the EX stereo comes alive!!


If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Credits:
Thanks to the following members who all contributed to my upgrade:
SS2CRZ, Talk2meGoose, OneFitZ, Fergsonfire, Hoisumguo, Item9, cbrei2310

[Cheule]

This post is reserved.

[benwish]

Excellent write up and easy to follow.
I did the "upgrade" with Polk Audio's last week and could have used this :-). The overall sound improvment is like day and night, seriously.

One thing to mention: For the rear's, there is a Polk Audio db651s speaker (shallow mount). This will mount without any problem in the back. Still tight but the magnet is not touching.

B

[lldsandsll]

I did the opposite. Sub upgrade happening this weekend, rest of the speakers down the road. Thanks for this incredible write-up. I'm curious how goose's and ss2crz's vertical redneck strips are holding up. I'd assume they would have told us if they began to peel. As far as smell goes, they went over that extensively and said it's a non-issue. I'm gonna try that stuff out when I swap my sub. I'll also post my sub swap as a DIY. I thought the other one was great, but it lacked a lot of details I was wanting to know. Anyway, great contribution man!

[Cheule]

Originally Posted by benwish

Excellent write up and easy to follow.
I did the "upgrade" with Polk Audio's last week and could have used this :-). The overall sound improvment is like day and night, seriously.

One thing to mention: For the rear's, there is a Polk Audio db651s speaker (shallow mount). This will mount without any problem in the back. Still tight but the magnet is not touching.

B

Agreed, it is like night and day. Thanks for the tip on the db651s. I had no issues with these though, in fact I like how they are mounted against the DynaMat on the frame. I suspect it gives me more bass I can feel through my seat.

[Cheule]

Originally Posted by lldsandsll

I did the opposite. Sub upgrade happening this weekend, rest of the speakers down the road. Thanks for this incredible write-up. I'm curious how goose's and ss2crz's vertical redneck strips are holding up. I'd assume they would have told us if they began to peel. As far as smell goes, they went over that extensively and said it's a non-issue. I'm gonna try that stuff out when I swap my sub. I'll also post my sub swap as a DIY. I thought the other one was great, but it lacked a lot of details I was wanting to know. Anyway, great contribution man!

I wasn't trying to make it seem like their redneck dynamat suggestion was a bad idea, otherwise I wouldn't have linked to it. I find all of SS2CRZ and Goose's write ups informative and excellent. I was just trying to convey that I decided to go actual DynaMat because the $60 difference between the real stuff and the Tite-Seal was a no brainer for me since I am extremely sensitive to smells I find objectionable.

In a thread I read on another forum, a fellow mentioned his Tite-Seal strips did fall off, but that it took 5 years to do so. That's another reason I just ponied up the extra cash, I really don't want to have to open up the doors again a few years down the road. I owned my Insight 1 (2000) for 8 years. I hope to have this CR-Z for as long as well.

[lldsandsll]

Thanks for the info, and I hear ya.

[stumcewing]

Thanks for the write up. I'm gonna go ahead and do this with mine in a couple of weeks time I think as soon as we've paid our current period of taxes on our house.

Here is a question for you though, do you have to solder the tweeters, or could you say cut and splice with plugs?

[Cheule]

Soldering is always the best bet. And an el cheapo soldering iron is about $7.99. It makes better contact (better sound) and is more reliable (won't disconnect on you due to car vibrations).

However, the Polks do come with wires that use push on connectors to the speakers, and the other end of the wires are pre-stripped and pre-tinned. You could use cable twist connectors on those.