Rear Speakers in 1995 Civic

April 10, 2007 1:34 AM

Attempting to install rear speakers on a 1995 Honda Civic Coupe

I bought some replacement speakers for my car as the rear ones seem to be dying. I'm trying to save a few bucks, and as dealer install is $60, i'd like to do this at home. My rear speakers seem somewhat accessible from the trunk, so hopefully that wont be a major issue. Part of my concern is just getting old ones out and new ones in, and part is the wiring. Although the linked page above doesn't show it, the speakers have essentially two metal tabs, a positive, and a negative, for connections. Thats it. All that came in the box were the speakers, grills, bag o' screws, and a very un-informative install guide. Anyone out there have experience or tips to pass on?

posted by efalk to travel & transportation (5 comments total)

The Install Doctor is a good site for beginner install info as well as vehicle- and stereo-specific instructions and diagrams.
posted by knave at 2:25 AM on April 10, 2007

Climb in the trunk (have a friend handy to be tool bitch), unwire the old speakers (pull 'em off - note which is which), unscrew the old speakers, screw in new speakers, stab wire ends onto tabs. If it sounds weird, switch the wires on which ever speaker is misbehaving.

It's about the simplest thing you can do to your car, short of filling it up.
posted by notsnot at 4:09 AM on April 10, 2007

Yeah, and to elaborate on notsnot's post, when it comes to denoting wire polarity, I always take a Sharpie and mark the ends of the negative wire. I do this when it comes to home theater and car audio.
posted by booticon at 6:27 AM on April 10, 2007

I had an 89 and a 91 Civic 4dr and in those cars the rear speakers sat in a hole in the back shelf under the rear window.

Removing them involved removing the speaker cover grate and then removing 2-4 screws holding the speaker into the sheet metal. The job was fairly simple, though it'll give you a crik in your neck trying to look as you work. Assuming your rear window doesn't have some dark tint on it you'll be best off getting out of the car and looking down though the window to see what you're doing.

Once the screws were out you'd just lift them up and out. Disconnecting and connecting the speaker wires from within the trunk was easiest.

The most critical thing is having a short stubby screwdriver to get at those mounting screws - at least one of them you probably won't be able to get at with a normal length screwdriver.
posted by phearlez at 7:53 AM on April 10, 2007

Phearlez's last point is the kicker- I had to go out and buy several scredrivers until I got one that was just small enough. I ended up using a u-joint to get to those back 2 screws.

Previously, in my Prelude, I left them out and they would rattle when the bass was pumping or I went over the right sized bump in the road.
posted by Four Flavors at 9:21 AM on April 10, 2007