Since I’ll be taking the Speedster in soon for surgery I have decided to also make some other changes.
Greg has said that in lieu of trying to patch all of the cracks in the body he will probably just cut off the back portion of the car and graft on a new piece. That means pulling out the carpet in the rear package shelf area. Since the carpet is coming out I’d like o get new German Square Weave carpet. I also want new door cards so I have to relocate the speakers I have in the doors. I wouldn’t have put them there but the owner before me did so I just made the holes bigger, put in much nicer speakers, and added tweeters. If the vinyl on the door cards doesn’t match the seats I’ll have those recovered as well. Grafting a new back end onto the car will also mean reinstalling the custom made sub-woofer enclosure that is in the gap between the firewall and the back seat.
Today I measured 10 times where I wanted to put the mid-range component speakers at in the kick panel. I had to make sure there wasn’t anything in the wheel well that would cause any interference. The piping for the window defroster was close and there were no issues with wheels while turning etc. I cut the holes for the speakers and used a Boom Mat baffle as a mold plug. I fiberglassed over the back of the Boom Mat inside the wheel well to make it waterproof. After the resin dried I pulled the BM out and cut off the front of it so the baffle would sit fully inside the fiberglass pocket so the speaker will sit flush. Next I’ll sand and smooth the fiberglass mold then paint the wheel well flat black to match the inside as it looks now.
After the new carpet is installed I’ll cut the carpet so I can flush mount the speakers, do the wiring, install the speakers, and install the speaker grills. I’ll make two small black polycarbonate panels that will mount to the steel frame piece that runs under the dash and install the tweeters in them.
After I cut the first speaker hole I test fit the Boom Mat and wired up one speaker to test the sound. The quality of the sound was so much better than when the speaker was in the door. Tweeter placement was checked and the sound was much improved as well with the sound being directed right toward the driver and passenger.
I’ll post more photos after I finish the rest of the project.
