Repair stock speakers (rotten or broken foam surround)

[mikk]

I didn't find the stock speakers too bad, and they match up with the factory tweaters. I blew my weakened front surrounds listening to Dr. Dre up loud. The foam will commonly rot, especially if the car sees a lot of sun.

I was previously going to fit aftermarket speakers but it isn't worth the effort after my $10 fix ($8 surrounds + $2 glue). The stock speakers will outdo many of the cheap aftermarket speakers once they are repaired properly.


Fix It

The simple fix was to repair the speakers by putting on new surrounds. I bought rubber ones instead of foam. Go on eBay and get these: 2 PCS 5 1/2 "(5.5 inch) SPEAKER SURROUNDS REPAIR RUBBER | eBay

The item is called: 2 PCS 5 1/2 "(5.5 inch) SPEAKER SURROUNDS REPAIR RUBBER

A grand price of $8 including shipping!


They are the closest size to the original. Here is a link to the seller's page: eBay My World - zhzy5500

If you want to buy surrounds elsewhere, here are the measurements (roughly).
140-143mm
127-130mm
105-110mm
93-98mm

I won't cover taking off the door trims, that is covered elsewhere on the forum. Moving on...

Pull and gently scrape off the bits of old surround from the speaker, takign care not to bend the cone or move it too much. Clean any remaining bits off with wax and grease remover or methylated spirits etc. You don't need to take the speakers out of the door, but vacuum around and behind the speaker while the surround is off.

Glue the new surrounds on with a strong fast drying glue. I advise doing the outside first, letting that dry, then do the inside. PVA, wood, or craft glue is fine if you are patient or if you can clamp the surorunds in place while the glue dries. High pressure super glue seems to work well too.

Make sure your glue container has a small, thin nozzle so that you can get glue into the gap when you're doing the inside. Make sure it's perfect seal for the two circles you glue on each speaker. Before trying it out, make sure the glue is dry otherwise you will make the joins weak and it may fail in a few months.

Sorry no pictures for this. Didn't think about it until I was done. I half expected the results to be unspectacular, but i'm very impressed with the results!

[mikk]

Originally Posted by newton27

Being an electronics technician. Dragging speakers can damage the amplifiers output drivers.

How are you making sure your foam surround is not "dragging" the coil on the magnet.
When replacing the foam surround the speaker should be laying flat and not in the door. Troubleshooting Speaker Problems - autos.com

I'm thinking about ordering the surrounds suggested and doing my rear speakers, I will remove from the car.

Yes, agreed, dragging would be bad. Originally I thought I'd have to take out the speakers and I had my drill ready to attack the rivets.

The stock foam doesn't offer much support for the cone and it seemed quite well centred so I wasn't too worried about it. Perhaps because my surrounds were still in pretty good condition apart from some tears, the distance from plastic to cone was all within a mm all the way around. It also seemed with these speakers that the tolerances weren't as tight as with some other speakers i've reconed. There was the possibility for a lot of sideways movement of the cone without the coil and magnet hitting. When testing it out, I found that a 9V battery is a great help for centering the speaker if necessary.

I have reconed speakers before that seemed nearly impossible to do not lying down.

It would be interesting to see if other people's cones have any sag to them. Then I might have to add a few more steps above.