Simple, cheap, and effective door treatments

[wild_eye]

Originally Posted by Rudeboy

You want to use a product that is as rigid as possible and waterproof and you want the cover to be removable. If the edges of the access hole are in a single plane you have a lot of options - aluminum, various plastics, even waterproofed woods.

If the cover must follow irregular contours, the material you choose is going to be determined by your fabrication skills. If you can shape sheet metal you don't need me to tell you how to do it. My favorite material for these situations is fiberglass and polyester or epoxy resin. Probably the easiest approach is to use aluminum flashing. You can buy rolls of it quite inexpensively from the roofing department at Home Depot. Two layers with a non-curing viscoelastic adhesive between them is very effective.

No matter which material you use, seal the edges with either a viscoelastic adhesive or some sort of caulk. Finish with self-tapping screws and a few drops of thread locker to prevent corrosion.

Nice! I will head to home depot to try that aluminum flashing. Was going to do sheet metal but the aluminum will be way easier to work with.

[Rudeboy]

Originally Posted by wild_eye

Nice! I will head to home depot to try that aluminum flashing. Was going to do sheet metal but the aluminum will be way easier to work with.

Heavier sheet metal will be more rigid. If you can handle it you'll get a somewhat better result. Two layers of the flashing does work pretty well.

[on1wheel06]

i dont know if this has been mentioned, but to seal my doors i used aluminum screening hot glued to the door, then covered in a layer of second skin.

let me know if you guys would like a write-up.

[news 4 u]

Great info, thanks! Saved me a lot of money, that's for sure

[enkyteam]

thanks for the info bro...

[eng92]

Originally Posted by Rudeboy

Heavier sheet metal will be more rigid. If you can handle it you'll get a somewhat better result. Two layers of the flashing does work pretty well.

If you have decent clearance to the window glass, you can dramatically increase the stiffness by adding ribs to the backside.

One of my winter project will be FG covers with either FG ribbing or a piece of aluminum eggcrate attached to the backside.

[mitchjr]

My 6.5 comps have a mounting depth of 3.9 inches and my doors have like 2 5/8 in. space. So what i did was stack two pieces of 3/4 mdf. Two together actually measure 1 5/16". Is this going to be detrimental to the sound or will I be ok if I do the rest of the baffle well.

The main reason Im asking is I read some thing on DLS's web site about a chamfered piece of mdf but my comps arent dls they are RE xxx.

[JoshHefnerX]

There's nothing wrong w/ making thicker baffles as long as the backside of the speaker can still breathe.

[Jefweezy]

great source of information buddy, i installed four dynaxorb squares behind each speaker, the midbass response is incredible. My doors are subject to some minor leaks in bad weather so i coated my baffles in fibreglass resin to make them waterproof and prevent mold forming.

[lexazz]

cool info mane

[jasondplacetobe]

thanks for an excellent post, learning is fun!

[Salad Fingers]

Originally Posted by npdang

Next, I glue a large sheet of egg carton foam behind the speaker location.

Where have you found the cheapest/easiest place to get this is?

[Jopop]

I've been doing this over the last couple of weekends. First deadened the outer door with thick butyl/aluminum mats, applied some closed cell foam behind the speakers, deadened the inner door metal where i could get to it from the back, sealed off all access holes with 1mm steel (difficult to shape, but i got it eventually), deadened the door metal facing the cabin until dead when knocked then covered in closed cell foam.

MDF rings were wrapped in modelling clay and attached to the door, mounted a pair of the seas lotus performance mids. Somehow the window still rolls all the way down although with the naked eye it looks like the speakers should be interfering with the window track, but they don't.

The door panel needed some adjustment to fit due to blocking up the access holes, an angle grinder was helpful for cutting out the curved plastic designed to go in the access holes. When finally put together it sounded good with resonable output @ 180w but started buzzing on high excursion. Turns out the original grill in the door plastic doesn't work, the speaker surround collides with the door panel!

So i get the angle grinder again and flatten the area behind the speaker grill on the door plastic panel. This lets me turn up a few more notches, but still isn't what it can be.. So i go get the jigsaw and cut out circles in the door plastic so the plastic doesn't interfere with the speaker. I found a pair of phoenix gold RSd grills which fit nicely, but they don't look very good. I'm looking for a set of classic round non-transparent metal mesh speaker grills measuring approx 7 1/4" across, 7"-7 1/2" is probably okay though if you know where to find them it would be very helpful..

Anyway after the door treatment and a bunch of other work with the tweets, 0 gauge power etc doing everything like in the popular DIYMA tutorials i fire her up again, and this time she sounds good. The SEAS mids with the door treatments deliver a very nice punchy low end that i have never heard in my other cars and midrange sounds clean and accurate and has good off-axis output even at LPF 2.5k@12db, and there are no rattles or buzzes until the drivers bottom out (and by then you're playing very loud).

I tested the builtin measuring system on the P88RSII and it's pretty nice, gives you a great starting point to tweak with. I found the calibrated sound to be a bit bright or tweeter-heavy, I increased the volume on the mids (p88rs cut them by -8 and -10db) and it's very close to perfect now, needs some slight EQ around 2.5-6k to suit my taste.

Now I'm just waiting for my BM MKIII to complete the system.