Replacing door speakers and installing window accelerators in my 348

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had some buzzing from my door speakers. This had been going on with the old radio as well. To get to the door speakers, first you must remove the lower door panel and the carpeted door panel. On the rear end of the door there are two screws in a narrow metal retainer. There is a single screw on the lower door panel at the front. With these removed, there are three pop in retainers on the carpeted panel and four on the lower door panel that hold the panels to the door. Using as little pressure as possible, I pulled on the panels to remove them. I had purchased new retainers but only had to replace a couple of them as they broke during the removal process.

With these panels out of the way, the speaker is exposed. They were 6 1/2" Infinity speakers with a center tweeter that could be angled for the best sound. These tweeters were higher than the speaker cone and were rubbing on the back of the carpeted panel thus causing my buzzing. They were soon removed from the car.

When I originally decided to replace the radio, knowing that I would be replacing the door speakers, I also ordered the window accelerators from Ricambi. The power window wires are directly behind the speaker opening. To install the accelerators, you need to remove one of the clips hold the window wires and strip away a section of the plastic covering. With the wires exposed, cut one wire at a time. One end of the cut wire goes into the supplied butt connector with the other end of the cut wire and either one of the gray wires from the module are shoved into the other end of the butt connector. I crimped these wires into the butt connectors and then soldered them before covering the connections with some shrink wrap. With that wiring complete, you cut the other wire and repeat the same connections. There is a ground wire for the accelerator module that must be attached. With all the connections made, I cleaned an area inside the door opening and then used the supplied double sided tape to mount the module. The windows definitely worked better after the installation.

With that done, I took the door speaker to a local car stereo store to find one that was shallow enough (2" or less) and one that did not have anything sticking out from the speaker cone. Since the car is not quiet, I was not trying to install a killer system as it would be somewhat wasted. The shop had a pair of Kicker speakers that did the trick. After installing them, I re-installed the door panels and everything was now back together.

I climbed into the driver's seat, closed the doors and spent some time adjusting the radio settings.

And then the driver door would not open!!! More to come.
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After my first drive I had to adjust the fader more to the front as I was only hearing the rear speakers. Huge difference having the speakers directly behind your ears. We used to have a Miata that had speakers in the head rest which worked very well.