Michael > wrote in
:

> Thanks for the suggestions. I guess I had originally set out to put
> the tweeter in the dash location to prevent any permanent scaring of
> the interior of the van (in case I choose to take the speakers with me
> when it's time for a new vehicle).

Might not be worth it unless you're looking to sell the van within a year
or two. If you really want to though, you could simply put back the stock
pieces and stick a "button" or some kind of "attractive screw" where the
hole for the component tweeter was. This also eliminates resplicing the
wiring under the dash when you put the OEM speakers back.

> Also, I was figuring I'd place the crossover under the dash which
> would have easy access to the tweeter, but then it makes it
> challenging to get wire to the woofer, unless I can find the factory
> speaker wire heading to the door, and just connect it to the crossover
> instead.

You can do that, but then you'd have to find the wires leading to the door
speakers and tap into that, which is a big PITA. If you sell the vehicle
and take your components with you, you then have to resplice the wires
back, leaving a bit of a mess.

> One thing I'm not sure of is how the factory dash / door speakers are
> wired in parallel. Do they split right at the factory harness? Is it
> spliced somewhere along the way? I guess if it was spliced anywhere
> after the crossover placement, it wouldn't really matter since it
> wouldn't be connecting to anything any way. The tweeters are
> pre-wired and would just connect directly to the crossover.

My guess is that all speakers run full range, as I doubt that DC would
spend the money on true crossovers in an OEM system. My '03 Dakota with
the Infinity Premium Sound (which wasn't too 'premium' btw) is that way -
the woofer in the door ran full range and the tweeter in the sail panel
simply had a filter on it to cut off the low frequencies. So in essence,
the wiring to both the woofer and the tweeter carried the entire full
range.

I would guess that the van's wiring simply runs the dash and door speakers
full range right to the head unit (or amps as the case may be). If both
the dash and door speakers are 'front' when you use the head unit's fader,
this is most likely the case. To find out for sure, you'll probably need
the wiring diagrams for your vehicle. I obtained mine from the dealer -
he simply copied the few appropriate pages from his shop manual for me.

> Hmmm... more to think about. Thanks for your time.

Glad to help.

> Michael
>
>
> On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 00:06:25 GMT, Joe > wrote:
>
>
>>Your best bet is to replace the 6x9 with the woofer and just add the
>>tweeter to the door close to ear level. You can either leave the dash
>>speaker intact (bad option) or simply disconnect it (much better
>>option).
>>
>>Ditch the original 6x9 and connect the crossover to the wire that used
>>to be connected to the 6x9. (just lay the crossover in the bottom of
>>the door). Be sure to hook plus to plus and minus to minus.
>>
>>Mount the tweeter on the door close to ear level and run the wire down
>>behind the door panel to the crossover, which is already sitting in
>>the bottom of the door.
>>
>>Unless you want to reroute the wire from the crossover to the tweeter
>>back through the door into the passenger compartment and up to the
>>dash (big PITA), the tweeter in the door is the way to go.
>