Attempting 850 speaker replacement.

[kcodyjr]

Finally got first pictures, though we took them out of the car. Thanks to FCP Groton for the photography.

SAK-3204 front door kit with TS-E1302i speaker

SAK-3213 rear door grille

[ojdorson]

Excellent, thanks! That front door piece looks perfect. The rears - is there any sort of adapter?

[kcodyjr]

The rear adapter bracket is a separate product, SAK-3205. It's a simple ring that replaces that factory "bucket".

Note about removing the OE front speakers:

* The forward-lower speaker screw needs to be removed as well as the two outer screws.
* The bucket comes out by gently prying the upper rearward corner, tilting inward, and then lifting upward - the bottom edge is a groove that the door foam fits into, so you don't want to just yank it.

Note about installing the new ones:

* Secure the speaker using all four screws that came with the bracket. Tighten firmly but don't let them strip. Don't use those little tab clip things, they'll cause an air gap and a rattle, just let the plastic bracket bear screw directly. Speakers need a good air seal just like a manifold gasket does, and for similar reasons.
* It has no grooves or tabs on the outer edge, it just pressure-fits before screwing it down. You'll be tempted to use those outer screws to "pull" the bracket into the door. Don't, it'll rattle.

The new one press-fits using the same movement pattern as the OE, just there aren't any tabs or grooves to hold it there, which you'll realize is a benefit. Settle the lower-forward corner first, firmly, then press the upper-rear corner into place. It won't quite be fully bottomed at the screw points. Use the two OE outer screws.

[kcodyjr]

Here's a link to the SAK-3205 rear adapter plate:

Note it probably isn't thick enough to just screw into the plastic. It will be necessary to mate the speakers to the bracket outside the car, by holding those tab-clips entirely behind the ring - don't slip it onto the ring, unless you're also going to put a rubber gasket between it and the speaker.

[bob850]

I received and installed the 5-1/4" Pioneer TS-D1302r speakers, installed them in the front. Again, this is in an 1996 850 Turbo wagon.

They were basically drop-in replacements, although I could only use two of the screws to mount them. They appeared secure enough with just the two screws and I didn't want to drill into the plastic just to add the other two screws. I used the hole that mates to the red plastic support tube in back to preserve the panel rigidity and then the hole directly opposite from that one. Rest of system is still stock, although I do have the separate factory amplifier behind the head unit. I also left the factory dash tweeters connected.

With respect to sound, I agree with kcodyjr that they are an improvement in imaging. I didn't notice any low-end loss, and the higher frequencies are definitely improved. I'm still evaluating, but it seems like I might have lost the tiniest bit of mid-range definition. Other than that I'm pretty happy with them. I got them for $69 shipped on Amazon, but Amazon's price seems to have just gone up. Can still get them from other vendors for the price I paid though.

I'm guessing that a much more expensive 5-1/4" could sound better (maybe Polk, JL Audio, etc), but for the price I paid, I'm happy.

[Red-Arrow]

Guys in truth all speakers are linear transducers. This means they all do the same thing. The reason brand name speakers often sound better is because the Vas or suspension of the speakers are designed for car doors. The Fs or low frequencies can be lowered by adding mass to the cone, that makes more bass as it lowers the resonance of the speaker. The same is true of tweeters, the lower the mass the higher the frequency can be reached.

Our Volvo's have cone tweeters not dome tweeters. Change those and notice the large difference in HF detail. What I'm really saying is don't waste your money on Polk or JL because 80% of the woofers technical ability to reproduce bass is in the Thiele and Small parameters. Yes drive units vary in technically but not as much as one thinks because of the enclosure can make good quality drive units sound terrible and low quality drive units sound good.

[kcodyjr]

Actually, Red-Arrow, I think the reality is, ideal speakers are linear transducers, but in practice, they're all not-so-linear.

Some, of course, are more not-so-linear than others. You correctly point out that dealing with those nonlinearities - usually by suppressing operation at resonances by carefully choosing the crossover point - will matter more, in the end, than how "high-end" the speakers themselves may be.

Still, if one is going to go to the trouble at all... a chef is only as good as his ingredients.

At the moment, since the wagon is coming off the road again, I've got the Pioneers in all four door positions of the sedan. I like them there, and they're staying. I did try them in the rear deck - a decided lack of punch in the final result. Still no movement on fitting a new dash tweeter, the need just doesn't jump out at me.

I'm thinking the biggest problem is that nothing is suppressing any particular driver from operating near a resonance. Next move is to put together some testing equipment, and actually measure impedance and response of each driver, woofer and tweeter separately, to locate any electrical resonances and finalize a crossover strategy around that.

The plan is to physically cut the tweeters from the stock rear deck speakers, retain the woofer, and cut it off gently, at, say, 50Hz. I'll have to measure their response in-car to avoid any resonance in the trunk, so that number may shift. The doors, then, front and rear, I'll cut off below 50Hz, very likely using a first-order series type crossover, since they react most gracefully to temperature swings.

Before doing any of that, though, I'll need to redesign the 2way units' own crossovers. Participating in a larger system means it needs to present a predictable impedance to the next-level crossover, because for any given capacitor/inductor values, the effective "elbow point" in the response graph, is a function of impedance. Just having a capacitor in series with the tweeter, and that assembly in parallel with the woofer, is so much FAIL for that; each individual driver will need its own Zobel network if it's to play nicely.

[kcodyjr]

Time for a long-overdue update.

The wagon is history, so we're just dealing with the 1997 sedan.

All four doors have the TS-E1302i installed, dash and rear deck speakers are still factory. I ran it just like that with the SC-815 and OEM 4x40 amp for quite awhile, with the fader pushed a bit forward and the bass pushed a bit up. They were more than acceptable like this.

Key point for anyone planning something like this; I only had to screw with the sliders after I swapped out the rear door speakers. Balance was preserved with only the front doors upgraded.

Rather than trying to reverse-engineer the speakers to implement decent crossovers, I went with an active setup. I installed a Pioneer amp in the trunk, using a custom "intercept harness" that laid alongside the factory rear shelf harness, routing the signal to the amp's speaker level inputs, and the amp's outputs back to the speakers. The amp has an LPF, which I set to about 85Hz.

Balance restored. It sounded great with all three sliders centered, amp's gain carefully hand-tweaked. There was definitely more overall power to be had; the limiting factor was the door speakers vibrating against the door panels.

Most of the amp wiring is in the rear deck and trunk space. I also laid a power line through the driver's side wiring conduit to the accessory connector above the driver's foot, and also a turn-on signal and RCA cable through the same conduit partway, hook a turn under the driver's seat and along the rear seat foot vent duct, and up into the radio area.

I then replaced the factory head unit with a JVC double-din, KW-HDR81BT, which has six preamp outputs. This required a multi-part custom soldered adapter harness, but you all know the drill with making those.

Dash driven from the head unit, each door (with identical speakers) driven by one channel of the 4x40, and the rear deck driven via RCA from the subwoofer channel, amp's own LPF turned off. Head unit's subwoofer crossover is set for 120Hz.

It sounds outstanding. The doors do not rattle, nor does the rear deck. At the moment, the limiting factor is vibration from the front interior light panel, above the rearview mirror, at extreme volumes. It can convincingly reproduce a double string bass, or any other instrumental I've thrown at it. Rock-n-roll has just the right amount of bass without changing the settings. I let someone try some rap through it - if you didn't know better, you'd swear the car had a box in it.

As a matter of fact, if the going theory is correct that those factory speakers have proper Thiele-Small parameters for that trunk, it does indeed have a box - the entire trunk. You're not going to get a bigger box into the trunk, than the trunk itself. QED. If this isn't enough, you're looking for transducers in the seats.

I did note that, slaved off the factory harness on the OE head unit, the rear deck gain needed to be just the right twitchy little hair above minimum. Driven via RCA from the JVC unit, it's maxed, and just about right.

Given these factory rear deck speakers have some kind of resistor hippitry built into them, I might disassemble them, remove all the electronic widgets, and physically remove the unused ghetto cone tweeter, leaving nothing but the woofer cone behind the deceptively normal looking grille. That would decrease the amount of gain they need and eliminate any wave refraction around that tweeter. That would be an irreversible change, but then, there are plenty of these in the boneyards.

The need to replace those dash tweets is a little more apparent now. Besides their sound sucking generally, I believe they're introducing a phase misalignment due to having a different crossover point than the doors. I'm thinking a set of Lanzar DCT silk dome jobs now, but it'll need a resistor to match its output levels to the rest of the system. I'm not sure how to calculate how much though, not knowing the SPL @ 1W/1M measurement for the factory dash tweets. Does anyone know?

[Mister 850]

Greetings! I'm new here so forgive me if I make mistakes. I have a 1996 Volvo 854 and was wondering if anyone has taken the front-door speakers from another 850 and they fitted in the rear-doors? Thanks!

[Ozark Lee]

Greetings! I'm new here so forgive me if I make mistakes. I have a 1996 Volvo 854 and was wondering if anyone has taken the front-door speakers from another 850 and they fitted in the rear-doors? Thanks!

They are totally different and mount differently.

...Lee