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Fleetwood rear speaker new details + question

2124 Views 3 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  Caddylack
The familar problem, with some new details:
'95 Fleetwood:
The front lower door speakers were replaced a year or two ago with two nice NOS ones and they made a great difference. Two decades of hot, cold, and humidity aren't very good compared to dry, cool-stored originals. If I wanted aftermarket ones, that wouldn't be a big problem either since the front takes 4-ohm rounds which are easy to find.
Now, the rear--that's different. Mine work, but they sound muddy as you'd expect after all that time. Nine years ago when I got the car they sounded much better.
Shop manual is half-right, half-wrong. The speakers are 7-inch rounds with a special oval plate and mounted from below, not 8" rounds mounted from above as in the shop manual. Good thing, too, or it'd be necessary to tear out the shelf to get to them. This way, two screws and they're out.
Radio diagnosis section says 4-15 ohms is acceptable for nominal impedance measured with an ohmmeter at the rear speaker.
Speaker p/n Delco 16149126 is stamped 9.5 ohms. That p/n is not unavailable anywhere except from bcacoustic.sk, which looks like a scam--Google Maps shows their address is a house in the middle of Slovakia.

The speaker likely is the same as many others, with its own p/n because of the particular ovalish mounting plate, which is designed for four screws but uses only the two rears since the front of the speaker slides into place. It wouldn't be hard to find or fab an adapter for a 7' or 8' round, or even a 6x9. The plate on the OEM speaker is about 7x9.5 inches, and the mounting holes are in a 6.5 by 4+5/8 rectangle.
So, an acceptable replacement is 10 or 8 ohms, but the market says fuggedaboudit. Every relevant size is 4 ohms or less. I guess they're trying to sell high-powered replacement heads/amps to the vibrating trunk crowd. I did see some 8 or 10-ohm 6x9 speakers listed on Amazon or Ebay, but the listing seems sketchy.
Feelin' like a dinosaur. I don't want ****ty-sounding music or a butchered system. No painfully bright highs, stereo-wars bass, overheated amp, half-assed spliced-in resistors, or something new in the dash (I like the stock look and it works fine). I don't want to change anything except to get decent new 8 or 10 ohm speakers that will let me understand the news voices on NPR and roll down the highway with Pink Floyd's Meddle cranked. My home stereo goes to eleven, but that's not necessary in the car. :smile2:

Any ideas?
Mark

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If you can not find what in 8Ohms 4Ohms will work. I would not try full volume though.


Car manufactures usually have more efficient speakers. What ever you replace your rears with should have a high db at 1Watt at 1Meter. If it does not the factory fronts will be louder than the rears. A total guess would be 92db/WM. My car's PO replaced with aftermarket so I have less volume than a stock system. The other problem is that aftermarket speaker manufactures some times add bass to the speakers. This can be more than a simple bass control can correct. With a stock stereo you should also look for a speaker with a "flat" frequency response from 20Hz-20KHz.


Finding speakers that work well with a stock system is a challenge.
Don't intend to misdirect, but if the impedances are close to the B-bodies, then some good recommendations here:
https://www.impalassforum.com/vBulletin/6-audio/279936-speaker-recommendations-6-5-fronts.html



For my black car I absolutely could not believe how chintzy the oem speakers looked - worse than a Corvair I had a quarter century earlier. I did not want to change the tuner so took a lead and ended up with Infinity Reference. Such an improvement I did the rears too. On both my FWBs I've found the sound so decent I have not been compelled to upgrade. Except had to find little replacement tweeters when they broke. And a door speaker had broken at about the same time it went to the new owner.
When I was a teenager, I put a new pair of 6x9's in the factory speaker brackets. The speakers fit fine, I just had to drill new holes for the screws.

This time I will probably make my own brackets.
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