Great use for OEM speakers (Idea Inside)

[SS2CRZ]

If you have replaced your OEM speakers (like my son "Goose" and I have) don't throw them away...if you have an old set of blown house speaker cabinets, you could have yourself a SWEET set of KICK @SS garage speakers!

We decided to test out a theory last night, and the results were AMAZING!

Old 1978 Panasonic "Thrusters" speakers--they belonged to his grandfather. They never did "Thrust" out much sound...



We cut a hole in the back of each cabinet (for access). We centered the speakers over each hole (using two 6.5" OEM door speakers for each cabinet) and screwed them in from the back side.



A 1-1/4" hole saw made the perfect-sized "tweeter hole" and one tweeter was glued-in behind the hole using 5 minute Epoxy adhesive. I removed the small OEM "grille" covering each tweeter, and used a dremel tool to trim it to a perfectly round shape. The grille was painted gloss black, and epoxied to the front of the cabinet.

We used high strength spray glue to attach speaker box felt carpet to cover the ugly faces of the speaker cabinets and trimmed it around the speaker and tweeter holes. The tweeter grill came out perfectly flush with the carpet.



A previously un-used set of Boston Acoustics speaker grilles trimmed the whole thing out quite nicely, IMO.



We soldered new wiring into the OEM speakers' connection terminals, and spliced / crimped overything together. *NOTE* The speaker "lead wire" coming out of the back of the cabinet should have a knot tied into it (inside the cabinet) to prevent it from being pulled-out accidentally.

We added about 6-8 fist-fulls of poly-fill stuffing to the cabinet to help with the acoustics.

We cut a piece of 1/4" MDF board one inch larger (all around) than the cut-outs on the back. Screwed-down these sealed the speakers off nicely.



And the sound quality? AMAZING! These speakers sound better now as garage speakers than they EVER did in the CR-Z EX!



Since the speakers are 4-ohm resistance and most house stuff is 8-ohm, the old Panasonic Stereo reciever seems to power them just fine--with a whopping 12 watts per channel. I'm sure they'd handle a little more; maybe up to 30 watts or so...

THE GARAGE IS DEFINITELY ROCKIN' NOW!