After doing a lot of reading on here, I replaced the head unit with the Kenwood Marine blue tooth radio and attempted to replace the surround on my stock subwoofers. The new radio sounds awesome and I am loving it so far. Unfortunately, I botched one of the sub woofer surrounds and it glued the cone at an angle so the driver rubs against the magnet and sounds pretty bad. Based on reading posts here and speaking with a local car audio shop, stock replacements do not exist and aftermarket options are not plug and play.


I am OK with a bit of light modification, but I have little electrical skill (I can twist 2 wires together and screw on a cap, but not all that much more)


It looks like Kicker recently came out with a 6.75" sub (CompRT67) that is dual voice coil and 2 ohm, but looking at the design, I am not sure, even with cutting out a large portion of the enclosure, it would fit at all. Has anyone tried this one?
6.75" CompRT Subwoofer - 2 Ohm | KICKERŽ


I see several people have gone with the Pyle PLPW6D subwoofer. Based on other posts, it looks like only a bit of modification to our enclosure is needed, but it is listed as dual 4Ohm.


I am not planning on adding or upgrading the stock amp. It is my understanding that to get a dual 4ohm speaker working with a 2ohm amp, you have to hook the subwoofer up in parallel. The stock subwoofers have a 4 prong spade connector. To hook the Pyle's up in parallel, would that mean that I would only use 2 of the space connecters and hook the positive on the spade up to both positives on the speaker and do the same for the negative?


The Pyle is also listed as a 6" subwoofer instead of a 6.5 or 6.75. Do the mounting holes for the Pyle line up to the stock enclosure after cutting away room for the magnet?


Sorry for all the questions and thanks for any help you can provide!

 

The Kicker 6.75 CompRT67 will fit but the speaker housing has to be cut and mounting holes enlarged. Just finished installing the Kicker 40CWRT672 subs in the rear & 40CS674 in the doors.

 

Thanks Chuck & Paula. By speaker housing, you mean the subwoofer enclosure? How do the kickers sound? Are you using the stock amp as well?


You are right next door to me. I am down in Columbia, MD.

 

If you want stock they can still be ordered for $60 each:

SPEAKER. Left. Sub Woofer. Woofer. Speakers, Amplifier, and Related Items made by Mopar. #05102804AA

I switched mine to Kicker or Pyle, but ended up repairing my stock and switching back.

Ryan

 

WonderMellon - If you want to stop by I'll be glad to show you the set up. Just PM me. Yes, the plastic subwoofer enclouser has to be cut to allow for the larger size magnet, and Yes, Still using the stock amp. Still to early to tell if I like them or not...so far not that impressed.

 

Why not just repair the stock subwoofer again? It's cheap and easy, and they sound fine to me.

 

CharliO,
I tried the repair route first. The driver side sub I did OK, but I made a mistake on the passenger side. I must have slipped after centering the code, because it is not centered. The driver now scrapes the side of the magnet and makes a rattling sound. It's not too bad at a loud volume or during a quick pulse. At any moderate to low volume or during an extended low tone, it is very noticeable.


Has anyone ordered the replacement that RyanB linked above?

 

I understood that you had messed up the repair on the passenger side. My point was simply that you should try it again. You did one right, so just be careful when you do it this time. To me, it seems easier than playing around with other speakers.

 

I did the repair on mine, and that was the one thing I was concerned about was getting it centered well. First I glued the foam to the cone, then what I did was move it in 4 directions while pushing in and listen for rubbing, and find the center of where it was quiet. Then I glued the foam to the frame in 3 spots, and put the ring on holding tight with finger, but no with screws. Then tested the cone's movement, and fudged it around to where it would move smooth. I was going to order the new old stock, but didn't know if they were all 12 years old sitting in some warehouse and would fall apart as well.

 

Yeah, I glued the cone and then glued the surround to the frame all the way around. I had it centered, but I must have bumped it when pushing the edge of the surround around the frame. As try trying again, I am not sure how easy it would be to remove all the new contact cement to try again.

 

If you mean removing without damaging the new surrounds, I don't know, maybe a razorblade/scalpel through the glue?

 

You're not going to save the surrounds. Use some lacquer thinner to clean off the old glue.

Then use a test tone to center the voice coil when you put you new ones on.

 

ATX - Thanks for the link. I wish I had seen that one before I tried to do my repair. The instructions I received was just to "feel for it."

 

No problem,
Always attach the surround to the cone first, I'll dry fit it to figure out how much overlay there is then measure out some tic marks around the perimeter with a fine Sharpie on a poly cone. That way you have something to guide you when gluing it up. You can remove the marks afterward with some rubbing alcohol.

Let the adhesive set up first on the cone then glue the surround to the frame using the test tone. You can always burn a test tone CD too.
Don't pull and stretch it of shape, just let it set in place while listening for the voicecoil rubbing like in the video.

I use Aleen's Tacky Glue, restored many vintage JBL and Infinity speakers with it.

 

I came across these speakers today, pricey at 100 bucks each though

TM65 6.5? Woofer | Stereo Integrity

 

ATX,
Those are dual 4 Ohm and ours are dual 2 Ohm.


The 40CWRT672 are the only aftermarket dual 2 Ohm speakers I can find, but Green24u isn't sure that they sound all that great. They are $140 a pair and you have to cut the enclosures to make them fit.


RyanB provided a link to a site that is supposed to have stock replacements. I haven't seen anyone else go this route, but the dealer looks legit. It may be moot as the website is listing an inventory of -10 units. I may try to give them a call tomorrow.


I am not sure I can fix my botched repair job without destroying the cone. The contact cement provided with the repair kit cured very strong and I had a difficult time enough scrapping the original glue off the first time.

 

WonderMelon, try soaking a little lacquer thinner or Goof Off on the glue. Test a little spot first.

As far as the impedance I'm going to replace the stock amp as it sounds pretty bad. I've tried it with each of my Alpine CDA-7897 and CDA-9855. They sound much better than the stock radio but the amp still sounds bad. There's some kind of limiter too in the amp that clamps the signal when I try to use the EQ and MX features in the Alpines. The stock amp has a 15 amp fuse so it's probably only 150 watts total output or less hence the need for the low 1 ohm impedance of the stock subs.

Power amps are cheap and Class D sounds better than it did 10 years ago.
Look at this amp dyno of this little monster from Kenwood.

95 bucks on amazon

 

ATX. Thanks for the link. It was interesting. Unfortunately I am not all that much of an audio geek. I like to listen to music and want it to sound good to me. The details of how that gets accomplished is a bit beyond me. I got the gist that the amp does a bit more than it is rated, but I didn't really understand the excitement.


If you replace the stock amp with that one and still use the stock speakers, can they really handle the upgrade from 150W to 600W? That sounds like a huge jump to me.

 

What's amazing about those Kenwood amps is they're so tiny yet put out lots of power. It's hardly larger than a phone. Makes installation really easy because it will fit anywhere. Especially on our cars where space is at a premium. I have some "old school" Class AB amps that sound great but would be hard to fit in the Crossfire. That being said power isn't everything and I don't know how the Kewwood amps sound.

Going with more power doesn't mean it will blow your speakers. More speakers are fried by distortion from low powered amps than with clean power from a more powerful one. So with more power you get more headroom and less distortion.

Kind of like the difference between the NA Crossfire and SRT-6. Same car but one has 60% more horsepower. Can the SRT-6 get you in trouble faster than the NA? Sure if you mash the throttle down hard it's going to light 'em up. If you're responsible with it then it's fine.

Same with a larger amp and speakers. Setup your gain structure properly and don't hammer them hard and they'll be fine and will sound much better.

http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/how...eloudness.html

 

That is a nice read. I am also interested in Astro-Photography so I am familiar with histogram clipping. Sounds like the same sort of thing as the sine-wave clipping, and just as bad.


For reference for this thread, I met with Green24U today to check out his setup. It is not an apples-to-apples comparison as I am using the Kenwood and he still has the stock head unit, but we are both using the stock amp. I can say that even with my botched repair job, the subwoofers in my car, powered by my stock amp and aftermarket head unit produced more sound and "oomph" than the Kickers (40CWRT672) powered by the stock amp and stock head unit in Green24U's setup. I could certainly tell that the kickers were being driven, but my assumption is that they were just not getting enough power to really distinguish themselves. The same song played in both setups would vibrate the back of the seat in my car, but just barely be felt against the back wall of his.


I also contacted the Mopar Overstock site. They do not have any more stock subwoofers and even looking across all stocking dealers in the US were not able to find any. It looks like what we have in our cars is the last of them.


With all this information at hand, I am going to try my hand at re-repairing the passenger side subwoofer in my car. It will be the cheapest solution and one that I know will sound acceptable. If that just utterly fails, the only other option I see would be to get replacement subwoofers and drive them with a dedicated amp. That will be my last resort.