s13 stereo upgrade

[mott6904]

I need to upgrade my speakers in my s13. I just replaced my head unit with a mid level alpine piece. Im going to put 6.5 components up front and then some nice speakers out the back. I have noticed people building plates for the speakers but leave to back open. What kind of sound quality would i get between just bolt in the speakers with a template or making a full enclosure for the speakers?

[twistedsymphony]

are you talking about building an enclosure for your door speakers?

For the amount of work involved with something like that the added benefit to the sound would be nearly unnoticeable.

considering the limited depth against the door you'd basically have to create walls in the door and seal it air tight, beyond the logistics of accurately calculating volume along all those curved surfaces you might end up having to separate welds in the door to get your pieces in place, nevermind the fact that it might not even be possible consider the other pieces inside the door that you're dealing with (window assembly, braces, electrical connectors, etc.)

The back might be a little easier (depending on the type of S13 you're driving since the coupe, vert, and hatch are all different) but even still it's a lot of research, time and effort for results that you probably wont even notice... automotive acoustics are pretty horrible as it is, add in road noise and spending time playing with speaker placement and enclosure design for anything but your sub is something you should only really worry about if you're building a competition system.

[mott6904]

I have a coupe well i just dont want to buy all this stuff and then not have any bass out of them. Im going to run them off a amp. Ive noticed on all the nice systems in mercedes and bmw that have some bass to the system that they are all enclosed. Ive thinking about just using the stock front amp enclosure and making something out of them

[twistedsymphony]

understandable... you're absolutley right about newer and higher end vehicles using a more enclosed design to eek more bass out of the regular speakers.

It's a whole lot easier for them to do that during the design phase then someone like yourself retrofitting a car that wasn't designed for it.

I don't have an s13 myself (at least not yet) with a coupe the rear speakers are in the rear deck are they not? If so consider starting there... and keep in mind that an enclosure off of the rear deck lid speakers will be much much easier than doing something with the doors.

look for some freebie applications online for enclosure design to help you estimate the volume of air in the enclosure... that's the most vital part of enclosure design IMO.

[92socal240]

You don't need an enclosure for your average car speaker, as long as the front wave and rear wavelength are separated it will be fine. Just use the template and put a 6.5" in place of the 4x6 in your doors, You can seal the template with Dynamat of similar material but it doesn't need to be completely airtight.

[Broadfield]

Not only do you not need an enclosure, but you don't want an enclosure..... it will actually make the speakers sound worse under most circumstances. Most automotive door speakers are designed to be ran in an infinite baffle arrangement. Which means the bigger the space the better, as long as the front wave and rear wave are completely isolated from each other. So just use Dynamat or the like to seal up all of the access holes on your door. That will help separate the waves.

Toby