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For those of you that know, the LX and Sport trims come with the "weakest" audio system: 4 speakers, and that's it. While it's not terrible, it's far from great. Luckily, a quick and easy upgrade is to install some tweeters. Will it perform like a full component set? No. Will it make a huge freakin difference to the OEM system? Hell yes.
Now, this DIY is written with regards to the sport hatch (and the LX hatch), but it'll, no doubt, work for the coupe and sedans with the 4-speaker sound system, you'll just have to make do with what you have (modification via hole saw) or buy a different part number. I'll explain later.
Estimated time: .5-1 hours depending on how neat you want it to be.
This procedure took me 45 minutes and I was being meticulous with making sure my solder joints were good and my wiring was neat and tidy. I did, however, do the prep work days prior, but even that only took me 5-10 minutes to prep the sail panels.
Tools & materials needed:
Screw drivers (flat head for prying, phillips head for 2 screws, nut driver makes unscrewing the OEM speaker easier)
Soldering iron (kinda optional)
Zip ties (also kinda optional)
Plastic panel pry bars (also kinda optional -- not pictured because I didn't use any)
Parts needed:
Tweeters (I used Polk DB1001 tweeters - the install kit they include look OEM)
If you wish to purchase OEM tweeters, here's the part number for the front tweeters: 39120-TBA-A91 ($20.17/ea)
Sail panels from trims that have OEM tweeters installed. Part numbers are below, prices were taken from Majestic Honda (www.hondaautomotiveparts.com) and do not include shipping costs.
If you opt to not buy the OEM tweeter sail panels, you'll need to cut a hole in the OEM sail panels. A hole saw will do you well here, and the size will depend on the tweeters you buy. You'll either have to eyeball the hole really well or take multiple measurements to triangulate the center to make it uniform. I saw on another forum that the coupe's sail panels have some reinforcement molded into it, including a centered circle that works great as a template for a tweeter mount. My hatchback's OEM sail panels, however, did not have these reinforcements molded in on the backside, so the aforementioned eyeballing/measure would apply to LX/Sport hatchbacks.
If you, indeed, opt for the OEM sail panels, they still may require a little finagling to get to fit. The Polk DB1001s required me to take an exacto to the edge to remove material right at the crease where the OEM pod ring sits. After you figure out how to mount the tweeter pod, set it aside until you're ready to install.
Here's how the Polk DB1001's mounted in the sail panels, from the rear. This is after trimming the opening by a little bit. The metal brackets just kinda sit on whatever they could to pull the lip of the assembly to the panel. This required a minor bit of bending to make sure all 4 made contact with plastic.
How it do:
Remove the arm panel that has window controls. The easiest point of access to get a pry bar/screw driver under it is on the front end. The first time you break it loose, it's gonna be a bitch. Pull with gentle force.
Once you got that separated from the door panel, you'll see that there are 2 electrical plugs on the driver's side, and one on the passenger's side. Remove those, and set the arm rest panel aside.
Remove the one screw you see there.
Find a spot to pull the door panel off. There are 9 green clips holding it in place. Easiest place I found to start pulling from was the front bottom corner. Once you pop one off, the rest follow pretty easily.
Grab the underside of the sail panel. Gently yank it off the door. I actually broke my passenger side on by pulling too hard. Be gentle, but it's gonna take some muscle.
Remove the OEM speaker. Remove the top screw. The first time you go to take the speaker off, it'll seem like it's glued to the panel. It's not. It's just the foam insulation compressed between the speaker and the door, making it seem like it's glued on. Use a flathead to break the seal near the top, then you should be able to separate it from the door easily. It'll make a very satisfying peeling sound. Should lift up and out of place after that. Remove the electrical connector and you can remove the speaker fully.
Meet your OEM speaker. Pretty basic. If you're looking at where the plug goes, the left side is the negative, and the right side is the positive terminal. Below are the actual colors on the harness. This information will be pertinent later. (no pic, but it's pretty straightforward and my explanation is pretty good)
Driver's side: Negative - Grey | Positive: Pink
Passenger's side: Negative - Blue | Positive - Red
At this point, install the tweeter-mounted sail panel into the door. If you wish to have a clean look, do as I did and have the tweeter wiring follow the power mirror wiring harness to the center of the door, through the vapor barrier, then reach into the speaker hole and grab the loose tweeter leads. Secure the wires along with way, if you desire. I used zip ties to secure the wiring to the OEM mirror wire harness.
This is the part that takes some creative finagling -- connecting the tweeter wires to the OEM speaker. For those of you that wish to add tweeters to a car that's not equipped with factory tweeters (kind of the point of this thread), you're just going to connect the tweeter wires to the factory speaker. For the electrical term savvy, what you're going to end up doing is wiring these tweeters in parallel with the factory door speaker. I opted to do option 3 in my list below.
Option 1: Cut the factory harness, solder the tweeter wire and freshly cut OEM harness wires together.
Option 2: Buy the Metra speaker wire harness (p/n 72-7800), splice in an extra set of outputs and connect everything that way.
Option 3 (this is the route I took, and what is pictured below): Figure out which side is the negative and positive on the speaker (LPT: looking at the backside of the speaker, negative is gonna be on the left, positive on the right). From here, take the loose leads from the tweeter and solder them directly to the metal plate on their respective sides of the metal plate. I chose this route because it doesn't mess with the factory wiring harness, didn't have to buy extra crap since I already had a soldering iron and solder, and if (when) I upgrade my speakers, there's plenty of wiring left on the tweeter leads to be able to cut and resolder to whatever I need. Yes, I know the pic is upside-down. Note that the negative terminal is on the right side on this pic.
If the tweeter set you bought came with an external; crossover (like the Polk DB1001 does), find a place to mount the crossover. The external crossover on the Polk DB1001 was essentially a PCB with some components soldered to it, covered in a giant piece of shrink wrap. All I did was zip-tie it to some part of the door wiring harness. With how I have it, it won't rattle against anything, nor will it impede window movement. Before you reassemble anything, I'd recommend plugging the armrest back in to test window movement. If it's all good, keep on keepin' on.
Plug the OEM speaker back in, and remount the speaker. If you meet any resistance, some of your wiring might be getting in the way. Backtrack and reposition, if necessary.
Take a look around your door, make sure you don't see any of the green clips still in the door. If you do, pry it out with a flathead screwdriver and reinstall into the door panel. Put the door panel up to the door, and, starting with one corner (player's choice -- I chose the top rear corner), line that up and pop it in. Choose another corner and do the same, ensuring the armrest plugs aren't caught between the door and the panel. After you pop that other corner in, all 9 clips should be lined up. Hammer fist your door panel around the outer edge to make sure all 9 clips pop in, then reinstall the screw. Top right corner in Top left corner lined up. You can kinda see the green clip above my hand
Plug the armrest in (remember, 2 plugs on the driver's side, 1 on the passenger) and pop that bad boy in. The hammer fist technique works well, just make sure the clips are all lined up.
Repeat the process on the other door.
Grab your keys and test out the fruits of your labor.
All put back together View of the driver's side, from the driver's seat View of the passenger's side, from the driver's seat
If you want to add rear tweeters to your Sedan/Hatch, OEM tweeters are mounted just forward of the door handles. They don't sell that panel, pre-drilled, but from pictures I've seen, they're just flush mounted into that panel. A hole saw should do just fine here. Wiring would be similar, although the wire colors to follow would be different.
Last edited by xRiCeBoYx; Dec 19, 2018 at 01:13 PM.
lol, you guys suck. Didn't get a chance to tear it apart today. Spent the day wrapping presents and fabbing up my tree topper. Required cutting lexan and acrylic, welding, coiling metal round stock, paint. Tomorrow is gonna be more acrylic cutting/gluing, wiring, and a little more paint. lol
Lol, sureu. dnno how many Vegas Golden Knights fans are out there, but since you asked, I will
Since that might need some explanation, my household is full of VGK fans, we have 2 trees in our house, one regular multicolored light one, and a VGK themed one. All "white" lights (like 3200-3500k color temp), red, gold, steel grey, and black ornament *****, red and gold Garland, and a bunch of home made laminated paper ornaments made by my 8 year old niece (whom is a huge VGK fan bc of me. Lol). Theire secondary logo is an 8-point star, where the 45-degree points are crossed swords. Couldn't find one to save our lives, so I'm making one
