Mk6 Rear Speaker Upgrade/Replacement

[Guest richsoton]

one of my many projects was to replace the rear speakers on my escort cabriolet as the original ones sounded awful, however after lots of searching on here and on other sites there appears to be a lack of information for replacing the rear speakers, so i thought i would share my experience with anyone who is thinking of doing the same.

 

many websites claim that the rear speakers are 4" so this is what i bought, i then set about removing the rear door card, not an easy job!! the haynes manual is awfull!!

 

1st remove the lower bench seat, this is a must as you wont get anywhere without taking it out, beleive me i tried.

 

2nd remove the window winder handle, top tip the handle is secured by a spring clip which you cant actually see, but if you place a bit of cloth between the door card and the back of the window winder and pull it back and forth the cloth will eventually catch the clip and it will ping off.

 

3rd remove the screws on the front by the door/seat belt assmbly of the door card there are 2 or 3 to take out

 

4th remove the screw on the top of the door card that is sunk into one of the roof cover poppers

 

 

5th with the roof folded down look through the mechanism towards the back of the doorcard and you will see a tiny screw that holds the door card in remove that

 

6th right at the bottom of the door card hidden behind the back seat is a plastic trim cap, you will need to prise this out as well.

 

you should now have a fully released door card from the vehicle, just carefully pull it away, its quite tight and will require quite a bit of wriggling to get out.

 

then comes the shocker, the 4" speaker everyone says is in the car, yeah that actually turns out to be one of those wonderfull ford inventions housed in a plastic mounting braket, which is all sealed so you have to remove the housing and you cant take the speaker out of the housing, i have searched on the net and nobody makes a plastic housing for the rear speakers, so what i did was used metal strips with holes in which i brought from halfords and attached them to the car bending the ends round to attach to the speakers to hold them all in place.

 

its a fairly crude method but it worked and as nobody is actually going to see the metal strips holding the speaker in place i didnt see it as being a problem.

 

i also had to use mdf speaker spacers which i brought off ebay for a couple of quid, this will stop the back of the speaker hitting the window glass.

 

ebay item number 160331777149 4" 9mm thick mdf speaker spacers, worked a treat for me

 

i guess though if you have time and resources you could use the ford bracket as a template and make something out of mdf to avoid the need to use metal brakets.

 

just a shame that nobody has thought to make a mounting bracket for the rear speakers like they do for the front speakers.

 

anyway i hope this information may help somebody who is looking to change the originals for something better.