Upgrading the speakers in your BE/BH (Non-Macintosh amp'd system)

[suubyduuby]

** Updated 22 April 2012 **

Part 1. General installation guide and front speaker installation.

Part 2. Rear speaker installation.

Wanted to put together a walkthrough on installing speakers in a BE/BH Legacy. Hopefully for anyone who does this in the future, this guide may prove helpful.

There's also a bunch of links, wiring diagrams and photos below. So follow along, have fun and before you know it you'll have your new shiny speakers installed in no time. ;D

This guide is provided for front speaker installation, but same principles apply to the rears.

Guide shows installation of 6.75" speakers, but same principles apply to smaller speaker sizes...however, you'll need to get a suitably smaller mounting.

WHAT YOU'll NEED:

- New speakers (6.75") and included accessories

- Pack of self-drilling metal screws (x6)

- Speaker mounts (Part #902 from Ed's Auto for the 6.75" speakers)

- Heavy-guage speaker wire

- Crimp plugs/spade connectors (x4)

- Various sizes of heat shrink tubing

TOOLS REQUIRED:

- Impact driver (or cordless drill if I/D unavailable)

- Philips screwdriver

- Needle-nose plyers

- Side cutters

- Soldering iron

- Hot air gun (for applying heatshrink)

I purchased the #902 Subaru speaker spaces from Ed's Auto Services. You can also pick these up from Hyper in Mt Wellington who are a retailer.

They sell for $24.99 but saves fabricating your own out of MDF. However as ScoobyDoo mentioned in a post, these don't fit the mounting pattern of the BE/BH Legacy's. But..all is not lost, here's how you fit them.

INSTALLING THE SPEAKER MOUNTS/SPACERS

First off you'll need to remove the door trim and the factory speakers. On my BH, the speakers are integrated into the factory retainers and the whole speaker/spacer is one piece plastic. Just unscrew the three mounting screws and unplug. Keep the old speaker handy as we need to hack the old plug off and build it into a factory wiring harness adaptor.

Remove the factory screw plugs where the old screws go as we need the speaker to be fitting nice and flush with the door. Grab the 902 spacer and position just slightly off centre from the original mounting holes.

You'll need to keep it as close to the original position for the trim to fit nicely. On my first attempt I angled it too much and trim wouldn't fit back properly when I reassembled the door. Incorrect and correct mounting positions shown below.

Once mounted correctly, use the self-drilling metal screws and secure them using the impact driver.

Fire the first one in first, check the clearances with the trim and them finish off the other too.

MAKING UP THE FACTORY PLUG ADAPTOR

Rip off the old factory plug from the integrated Clarion speaker/mount, remove the angled tabs and leave a nice soldering surface on the back of each pin to secure a wire on to. Grab some fine sandpaper and give the metal surface a bit of grind to remove any oxidation. Makes soldering way easier and ensures you get a good bond with the metal.

First off, the factory wiring diagram:

Source: http://ae64.com/Legacy-pinout.htm

- Cut a 40cm length of speaker cable and trim back approx 1cm on each wire. Seprate the plastic-bonded wires approx 4cm at each end.

- Cut 1cm lengths of suitably sized heatshrink and place on ends of each wire.

- Solder on the factory plug and heatshrink. I also used a larger piece of heatshrink to seal the assembly.

- Solder on spade/crimp plugs. Apply heatshrink.

On the speakers I was installing (Pioneer DS-1720C), the smaller spade pole is NEGATIVE (-ve) and the larger pole POSITIVE (+ve).

On the factory harness for the Front-Right speaker:

* NEGATIVE: Black/White

* POSTIVE: Red/Yellow

I subsequently match the negative terminal to the speaker wire with the white strip (for easy identifcation) and soldered the smaller spade terminal to the other end.

And so on for the other terminal...here it is connected to the factory harness and installed in the door:

Following a quick test, here is the final result installed in the door. After that, all that's left to do is reinstall the factory trim and you're away.

Repeat instructions for the other door and match the wiring colours using the chart above.

Feedback welcome below. Hopefully this proves useful to your install. All the best!

Any comments or questions please post below. Shout out also to scoobydoo and spark_38 who provided valuable installation advice. Thanks guys.

Useful Links and Website:

- http://ae64.com/

- http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=749402

[Scoobydoo]

Nice walkthrough

[Flippymoi]

This is great. have been wondering what is involved with this for a while. Cheers!

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[suubyduuby]

Part 2. Rear speaker installation.

Well after enjoying my new fronts so much, the rears sounded pretty worse for wear so have picked up a new set to replace them with.

See below for rear install guide and installation photos.

MAKING UP THE FACTORY PLUG ADAPTOR

Rear adaptor is a little different to the front. Basically fits right over the spades on the stock speakers, so you'll need to make a little adaptor that has spade terminals on one end and spade plugs on the either.

Cut a 20cm length of speaker cable and trim back approx 1cm on each wire. Seprate the plastic-bonded wires approx 4cm at each end.

- Cut 1cm lengths of suitably sized heatshrink and place on ends of each wire.

- Solder spade plugs on one end (to fit speaker). Heatshrink.

- Solder spade terminals on the other end (to fit factory harness). Heatshrink.

Same as before, I'm using Pioneers for the rear so, the smaller spade pole is NEGATIVE (-ve) and the larger pole POSITIVE (+ve).

Check out the cable guage difference between these and factory wiring ;D

INSTALLATION

Same as front speaker installation. Check wire color codes in above chart.

NB. When installing, the R/R wiring scheme matched the table but the R/L did not. For some reason, my wagon has the same wiring colours for BOTH sides on the rear. Just used the same wiring scheme as the R/R for the left speaker, and all OK. But just double-check this for your installation.

[phoenixr]

hey guys is there already a thread on this forum on how to remove the door card without damaging any clips? preferably with pics like this fantastic walkthrough

cheers