EK Civic Install

Has anyone seen a quality speaker install on an EK (96-00) Civic? The door speakers normally mount to the plastic door skins, so it sounds like crap and Dynamat helps but you are still losing a lot of quality from the crappy mount.

The alternative seems to be to cut out the skin behind the grill and mount to the metal door skin, but I’ve tried 3 different speakers and they all bump into the steel bar that supports the door. I could notch the bar but I’d rather not compromise the structural integrity of my door in a crash just for some speakers. I know there are kick panels available, which I pretty much hate as much as the skin-mounting, so anyone who has done this - did you make some spacers yourself, cut the steel bar or…?

i dynamatted my doors and just installed the speakers in the oem location. i’ve also done the kickpanel thing. the sound stage is way better with the kicks, but i found mine getting in the way of the clutch and my passengers stomped the living shit out of the one on their side. what speakers are you using. you may want to drop to 5.25" if you’re having a problem with the magnet structure or basket hitting things back there.

I’ve cut the ass out of those plastic mounting brackets before, so all you’d probably have to worry about is the physical depth. So that just means choosing your speakers accordingly.

I might still have the Infinity Kappa components out of my sisters car you can try. I know they were DEEP.

Kappas are what I had in my old EK and yeah they were way into the door support, and I cut the crap out of the brackets just to get them to mount in the stock location anwyay…I think I am just gonna end fabbing some spacers to mount them against the metal skin

H4A - that’s exactly why I don’t want kickpanels, despite the improved sound stage…there’s not a ton of space in the Civic footwells and I know the QLogic panels come out pretty far…I’ve seen some custom fiberglass stuff that are a really mild angle, but I’m not trying to go that far, I just some decent 6.5s instead of the stock junk. Hadn’t thought about 5.25", though I’d be fabbing that as well.

I had a huge problem with the kappa perfects in my ek as well. 525’s fit a little better if you want to stick with the kappas and alpine type r’s are huge too. i just installed polk db series 6.5’s and they sound great. i’m very happy with them for the $100 price tag. next step for me is the kicker ss component set. to match my ssmb 8’s.

I’ve heard Polk is a good value though I’ve never tried them, is the db a component setup or are you running stock tweeters with those 6.5s?

I have those exact same speaker in the teg, with stock tweeters. I love them, but I can’t exactly hear them all that well…with that huge sub drone…you knw what I’m saying :scared:

i’m running a bit of a mash up. polk coaxial in the stock location running full range. a/d/s/ crossover to alpine type r tweets in stock location as well. all signals processed through my eclipse pro-mode 30 band eq. it’s a different situation than what you’ll find yourself in, but you’ll really like the polks if you try them out. if not 30 day return policy most places. i could recommend more expensive speakers that i wish i had, but it’s useless unless you amplify