Been there, done that, 10 years ago...

I have tried fiberglassing, tune porting, increasing volume by tubes...

You are wasting your time.

 

the speaker cone itself isnt 8inches... But the speaker as a whole fits right in and matches the bolt patten. They are also advertized as 8inchers.

 

Speakers have improved a fair bit in ten years, but was it really that bad for you then? Newer ones can fit into amazingly small spaces that were thought impossible a while ago, but I guess you already knew that. What was it that caused yours to fail?

 

Is there already wiring in the door speakers? Right now, my 89 GX has the rear, the under the dash speakers, but none on the door, i wanted to get some 5 1/4"s for my doors, but just wanted to know whether there is already wiring there when i remove that circular panel? or do I have to wire it myself.

Another related question, if the wires aren't there, does the stock deck support 6 speakers?

 

Fail??? What indeed are you talking about? Properly set up a speaker almost never fails except for age. What are you thinking??? Maybe you have only dealt with chain store type installs

What I was saying was that I first started trying ported enclosures, volume increasing, and fiberglassing the area and all the other BS to try and get more airspace in the RX-7 rear strut towers, back in 1988. I last tried back two years ago with 8" speakers custom designed to work in a miniscule airspace and I tried countless times with probably 100 different 8" speakers in the in between years before that.

There is not a 8" speaker made that will reproduce any decent bass under 60Hz in that area no matter what you do.

So with my 18+ years in car audio, and 14 years of owning FCs I can say without any doubt, you wasting your time and effort, to try and get a 8" speaker to fit in there and sound good, when there are countless hundreds of true 6 1/2" (not 6 inch speakers sold as 6 1/2") and 7 inch speakers that work fine and do reproduce well in that area.

But hey maybe someone this week came out with a 8" speaker that will work well there... after all you mentioned that things change over 10 years...they must change over each week too.

Tell you what though... give me the Theile_smalls for your "8"inch kenwood speaker and I'll tell you exactly how it will sound, I'll even post a graph on it...

 

The tower isn't 9" wide last I checked. At least not without cutting, and eliminating the mounting points.
I've got some 6X8's in mine. I just made my own cutouts with lexan and a dremel tool. They sound fine to me.

 

Sorry, I didn't mean fail as in break, but rather fail as in disappoint. But you've described that to me now, thanks. I already know of your extensive history in the biz, so I thought your opinion/previous work would help me out here. I didn't mean to sound condescending or anything like that.

I'm just trying to get some decent mid-bass in the car as my tweeters and 4s in the front along with my 2-12"'s in the back tend to have little to none. The low frequencys would be handled by the 12's and I thought the 8's would be good if I set them for 110Hz-500Hz or so. I'm not going for loud, but rather a full sounding system with some good quality and since I got the 8's at a good price from a friend, I figured why not use them?

 

as a mid bass the 8" should be fine, however like I said, just don't expect any lower freqs...

 

I really wasn't going to. Might be nice to take out the 12's on a long/hauling trip and keep some bass, not to mention the weight savings. But if it sounds bad, I'll just sell the speakers at a profit and buy some better 6.5's or 7's.

 

Man I wanted that spot to work (just like I wanted the storage bin location to work)... and I tried so many different possible applications it was crazy.

See, I hate the idea of taking up the whole trunk with a box. I always wanted to find someway to try and get acceptable bass from the back end without comprising the storage capacity.

The best I ever got was fiberglassing the whole interior of the tower so that it could really sealed, and mounting some $120 each (cost-- retail was something like $350 each) scanspeak 7" speakers (used often in a couple high end home speakers), then using thin wall PVC 1 inch piping to port tune the shock tower to about 40Hz (really just below what the speaker should be tuned too) and then forcing the beta of the amp with a paragraphic EQ, and funky 24 DB Xover.

 

Exactly. It just seems to be meant for that size of a speaker, why couldn't they have made it just that much deeper? Bah. The bin placement is still terrible as the bass has nowhere to go, but the towers would reflect the sound waves forward off the glass. Again, not as great for position as my backfiring subs, but when you're looking for quality over quantity I doubt the extra bounce matters that much for 80Hz+. Damn stupid Mazda and them being centered around "performance".
Ever tried getting creative with fiberglass and extend the tower bulge back to the rear bumper and put subs in there? That would give you almost the same amount of room as stock but it would be hard to aim them.

 

Well I did something simular to what you were suggesting with a 4" sealed end PVC tube sticking out towards the rear, were I was able to add another 1/4 cube, but (besides looking funky) I think it is more an issue of the internal U shape. and standing waves being created internally.

At one point I also used an angled 1/2" MDF baffle to cancel the standing wave, but there still wasn't really the room.

And adding stuffing, while it helped trick the speaker a little on volumn still wouldn't stop the backwall shape.

The only thing I didn't try was a transmisson line coming off the tower, but I feel it would end up being like the FD with BOZO (whoops I mean Bose) package and end up using up a whole lot of room again.

 

I just recently put some 6.5" Infinity Kappa's w/ derectional tweeters in the rear towers and the doors. The rears image very nicely, I still considering upgrading the fronts to some sort of separates.

I did have to "customize" the rear speaker covers. The Infinitys did not fit under them. Here's a picture...

 

I agree. That's why I finally went with a 10" sub inside the spare. Decent bass and I can still put stuff in the hatch.

 

What kind of customization do you need? I'm looking to get 6.5's in the back, and people i've talked to have told me i need an adapter of some sort to make it fit. What kind of materials will i need? is it easy to do? Someone I know who does this for a living said he could do it for me, but that would cost $$$, i wanna spend as little as possible, seems to me it shouldn't be that hard, but I could be wrong.

 

yeah, i had that problem when i started this thread. for me to put my 6.5's in the back i needed speaker adapter brackets. none of the local electronic stores near me had anything, so i headed over to tweeter. they wanted $30 - $40 a tower for custom made wood brackets. but me being a little short on cash went to Crutchfield.com and for $16 including shipping had at my house in 2 days plastic brackets that do the job. so if you want to spend as little as possible go there.