Has anyone taken apart their doors and replaced the factory speakers yet? If so how hard was it and what tools did you need to do it. I want to put a pair of 6.5 (diamond M5's)seperates in the factory locations.

 

6 1/2" will need some major modifications. I will be installing 5 1/4" with a spacer and it will fit in the basket in the door panel. I am running new speaker wire into the doors. I finished the passenger side and will need to run the wires for the driver side. Very difficult since I am running two sets to the doors for the separates crossovers are mounted in the trunk.
The stock speakers are supposed to be 6 1/2" but they are the same size as after market 5 1/4". I also had to do a little modification to the A-pillar tweeter part to fit the new tweets. Dremel makes things fit.

 

I have some Alpine DDDrive's for now. 6.5's fit fine as long as you make a 1/2inch spacer and remove the stock plastic spacer. I'm still waiting to put my Focal 165w3 Utopia's in. I need to wait until after i get to Hawaii. Restricted cash flow.

 

I put Infinity Kappas in my doors. Taking the panels of was easy. I fit the new speakers in the stock basket using a 0.5" spacer and longer screws which threaded themselves into the stock holes.

I wedged the tweeters in place with polyfil that I had left over from my sub box, and held them in with hot-melt glue. No metal cutting was necessary. For me, this was not an option.

Running speaker wire to the door was a pain. I mounted my crossovers in the trunk for easy adjustment, so I had to run two sets of speaker wire. I ended up cutting the stock rubber after I got through the body side of the grommet, running the wire outside, then back in through the door side. I then covered the speaker wire with split-loom tubing to protect it.

I haven't seen how other speakers would mount. Maybe I just got lucky. You really have to get in there and scout it out.

 

I found a good way to run the speaker wires through to the door. If you push in the two gromets in and pop them out you can see the two openings. Use silicone spray to help slide the wires through. I slid a hanger wire very carefully through the rubber tubing and connected one end of wire with another copper wire and tape. Lubricate with silicone and attached the second wire a little further back with more tape. Use silicone it helps.

The wires I ran were Monster cable insulated which were pretty thick, but they fit. I need to run the driver door and do my speaker mounts and install my system and enjoy. I can't f***in' wait until it is all done. New car installs are a b*tch. Still no aftermarket din replacement. Custom work until something decent comes out.

 

How do you take the doors apart? On my last CL a broke a couple clips and bent the trim that rubs against the window by not knowing what i was doing.

 

There are two screws in each door. One is in the door handle and one is under the arm rest you can feel the hole or just look for it. Once both screws are out carefully pull the outside of the door panel the clips come out fairly easily you shouldn't have to pull hard. Once the panel is loose lift straight up and it is out. The tricky part is to remove the handle latch and the plugs for the door light and power controls. The light on the passenger side will twist out and their should be a plug for the driver side. There is a post with pictures of the inside of the door and the clips.