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Title: Rear Spekers upgrade / repair Post by Octavian_P on Nov 19th, 2006, 6:29pm Hello, I know that a lot of people here have tried or wanted to modify the rear speakers on our beloved Scorpio. Each time we hit a problem, what size are the units (5x7”) and how to replace them. By now a lot of you have tried to change the "premium system" and found that the rear units are sealed for life... A lot of people like me would probably try to keep the stock look and do minimum cutting or drilling. But some want a bit more power, better SNR etc. What is there to do.... well please follow. As you know now I am the proud owner of two beasts, a 2.3 and the new member a 2.9 Cosworth. When I bought the second one, the second day I drove it, one of the rear speakers started to make funny noises and a lot of distortions etc. The natural course to follow was to check the wires but soon ended up buy trying to swap the right hand side with the left one....The conclusion was that the speaker has had it... Now the real problem beings, I took the speaker and looked at it. It's sealed, I said to myself what I should do to keep the look and replace the blown part. The logical course of action was to open it up....hmmm not a very nice job. After a few discussions with Kjetil S, I bit the bullet and went to "work". If you look at the underside of the speaker you will see that there are 10 points of melted plastic. Those points hold out the speaker grill. I have armed myself with a soldering iron and a flat screw driver. Now you really need to be patience on this, the plastic is brittle and cracks very easy if you force it. With the soldering iron I worked my way in the melted points. If you get deep enough you’ll reach the grill. The grill has 10 protuberances that pass through the plastic fascia of the speaker and are fixed with the melted points. With great care and the aid of the screw driver I have "dig" in till I have liberated the metal of the grill. It took me about 1 hour, but I believe now, it will take me about 20 minutes. After I have removed all the fixation points, the grill was a child play to take off. Now you have access to the speaker which is held in place by three bits of plastic and an epoxy resin of some type. After I took it out (broke 2 of the supports...) I have inspected it....when pushing the membrane gently I could hear a friction sound. The coil driver was out of alignment and it was rubbing with the magnetic core. Complicated as it sound it was easy to fix. The membrane of the speaker is glued on the frame with some stuff...which was...not so gluie. Maybe 10 years of extreme sun / cold / heat...took care of it. With the aid of my 5.1 system I have realigned the membrane back to it's original place....and surprise...it sounds awesome now :o. This made me wander how many Scorpios suffer of this thing. Now the speaker is spending the night full with clamps and fresh glue. By tomorrow I’ll pack all back again. Well in my case it isn't a speaker upgrade, it's more of a repair. The upgrade will have to wait a bit. But maybe the disassembled of the unit will aid others. I'll also be adding some pictures with various steps of the operation. PS: forgive any typing errors….(I not English :) ) |
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Title: Re: Rear Spekers upgrade / repair Post by Highlander on Nov 19th, 2006, 7:31pm Nice description octavian :) that sounds like it could be a common problem. And your English is a lot better than some of the English speakers ;) |
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Title: Re: Rear Spekers upgrade / repair Post by TiberiuS on Nov 19th, 2006, 8:55pm I repair old speakers on music centres and the like, many people throw away drivers with faults like you had ;) Reminds me of a pair of Wharfedale speakers I bought a while back with dead tweeters, the magnets were glued to the backs of the (plastic) tweeter frames and one had fallen off into the box. Clamped it square and glued the magnet back with epoxy, perfect. The common cause of the voice coil getting skewed is the cone being overdriven, the amp bottoming out on the bass and putting LF surges through the cone is a common one. The voice coil former on most drivers is only thin card or plastic, gets easily damaged, making it chafe on the pole piece. What I was toying with was a new rear shelf with a moulded MDF grille covered in speaker grille fabric and the drivers mounted underneath at an angle, I have a good pair of 10" subs in the loft, was wondering if I could make use of them. I'm not fussed about the fronts but I have most of the sound faded to the rears and would like more low end without it looking modded :) Nice write up, I'm sure you aren't the only person with that problem, the pics and any ideas you had on an upgrade would be nice too ;) Regards, Bruce. |
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Title: Re: Rear Spekers upgrade / repair Post by Octavian_P on Nov 20th, 2006, 2:33pm Here are the pictures http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d190/Octavian_P/IMAG0036-1.jpg http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d190/Octavian_P/IMAG0035-1.jpg http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d190/Octavian_P/IMAG0032.jpg http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d190/Octavian_P/IMAG0051.jpg http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d190/Octavian_P/IMAG0055.jpg http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d190/Octavian_P/IMAG0043.jpg http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d190/Octavian_P/IMAG0038-1.jpg http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d190/Octavian_P/IMAG0016.jpg http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d190/Octavian_P/IMAG0018.jpg http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d190/Octavian_P/IMAG0031.jpg These are some of the pictures I took in different stages. Today I have put the speaker back again. It was straight and forward. The glue has bonded nice and held the membrane. I have soldered out the tweeter wires back to the main speaker. To fix the speaker in the casing instead of epoxy resin I have used universal silicone, also I have glued back the 2 small fixation parts that have broken (super glue ;D ). After this the grill went back in with all of its protuberances. To hold it in place i have used again silicone and filled up each hole. Now it's nice, sounds ok, and in the car, doing what is should. |
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