Too Many Answers

Well, as usual... I done screwed something up. The speaker installation is complete but there was a much easier answer stareing me in the face. If only I had talked it thru with someone I would had detected this issue much earlier. Programming is not the only arena in which a single problem can have multiple solutions. However, just like programming there are usually solutions that are ill advised or better done otherwise. If you hadn't guessed it yet, this is about my component speaker installation.

Let me explain where my head was before I tell you what I did. The tweeters are best installed as a flush mount (cone being on the same plane as the surface to which it is mounted). However, after evaluating all of the options that I had available to accomplish this task, I was unable to successfully find an acoustically friendly and physically safe to do so. These locations included the A pillar (the vertical structure that supports the windshield and acts as a part of the door frame) or on the doors.

In my car, my A pillar covers do not contain enough space between the covers and the pillar and the pillar is also rounded off, therefore, a flush mount would not be possible. Subsequently, the door was also not an option because of the presence and location of people in the car will interrupt the signal. Also being a smoker, the door was not an option because of the potential of water damage due because of smoking while driving in rain. Having a window open to vent the smoke & ash permits water to enter into the car and potentially to the cone of the tweeter because of its direct exposure that the 6.5" mid-range driver does not exhibit. The location entertained for this placement was between the door lock indicator and the unlatch handle for the door.

Another option that I considered was to have Car-Speaker-Adapters.com create another custom adapter to house the 6.5" speaker and the tweeter. However, in doing so, the separation of speakers would have been nullified and I might as well have bought a 3-way 6x9" speaker with an adjustable tweeter direction. Also in putting the tweeter in the same location as the 6.5" mid-range speaker would have introduced major interference with people sitting in the seats. With the passenger always getting an interrupted signal and the driver being interrupted anytime there is a passenger. This was just unacceptable.

Provided with my component speaker set was an angled mounting bracket. One of the keys of this bracket is that it is surface mount. However, all of my focus had been on the surface mount options for the speaker. Therefore, unfortunately, with this tunnel vision in mind I made a poor decision. I decided that I would manage a way to surface mount (or as closely as possible) the angle bracket housing for the tweeters. The action that I intended to take was to cut a hole in the dashboard that would be just big enough for the speaker to pop through.

Well, when the time finally came to cut the hole and try to find that perfect fit, I got impatient and measured too wide (about 1/2 the width of a sharpie all the way around mounting bracket. So, instead of a close fit I've got a gaping hole in the dashboard that allows the insulation, wires, mounting spring to be visible from outside the car. the aesthetic view of the installation of this speaker is piss poor. I will have to revisit this one in the future.

It wasn't until I was done completely screwing up the first speaker I had a revelation. I realized that this mount was inteneded to be a surface mount and I would have just needed to drill 3 holes (1 for the wires & 2 for screws). The second speaker has thus been mounted this way.

So, if you have a look at the following pictures, you can see the disparity between the heights of the speakers (BTW, I prefer the "submerged mounting" appearance from the seat but I don't like it when looking down on it). I might replicate the efforts of the lower speaker on the surface mounted one, but not until I figure out a way to make that method blend better with the dashboard. I have an idea how to accomplish this right now, however, am not sure where to obtain the materials to do so.

(BTW, please take the time to view all of the pictures, I just added more pictures to the photoset from the first post on this topic. Therefore, the pictures regarding the final installation will be at the end of the slide show.)