cracked speakers in the doors

[NCBRIJEN]

I have realized about a month ago my speakers in the Reatta doors started to sound like they are cracked?? Are they hard to replace and where would I find some? Thanks for your help!!

[Barney Eaton]

Check the old discussion, I just replaced mine, did both in about 30 minutes.

[Guest EDBSO]

Your foam surrounds have rotted to nothing and the cones are completely unsupported. This is very common.

Note this applies to 89 and I believe all year fronts are the same. There are two speakers per side each in the front door panel. The bass is the larger and lower under the cloth speaker grill. It is shot. The tweeter is higher up on the door (and probably is OK)

I replaced my lower stock 5.5 inch round speaker with a 6x9 after lots of dremel work. I used Infinity Kappa Series 693.5i their newest best 6"x 9" 3-way loudspeaker with 1" EMIT? super tweeter. I just have 100 hours on them and would consider them broken in. I am very disappointed in the high frequency tweeter section and their imaging or more to the point lack of imaging. I have put Phoenix gold in the front doors of another Buick and they blew these away.

Pretty straight forward . Pop off the door panel unbolt, do electrical and replace.

Evidently the stock speakers are available from GM, I don' know why anyone would want to use them though????

Go to Crutchfield They have a good selection. Excellent descriptions and lousy prices so once you have chosen which one you want use a Shopping Search Engine to get a better price.

As Baraney indicates much available using the Search engine here

Easy job 3.4 on a 1 to 10 scale.

[Guest]

I replaced mine but I had the door trim panels off for another reason...didn't bother to check to see if the speaker grille's come off (which would make replacement far easier and quicker). On my 96' Chrysler, the grilles pop off easily. Check a service manual.

Taking the door trim panels off is not hard, but you need to be patient, otherwise you'll break some of the trim attach points.

For replacement, the AC/Delco website lists the part numbers off of the speakers as still good. Alternatively, I went to the Crutchfield website which lists replacement speakers for Reatta's. I took the list to Best Buy, found a pair I liked off of the list, took them home and they bolted right into place...no modifications other than soldering the speaker leads.

[Guest EDBSO]

Speaker grills are held on with the sheet metal pressed wire nuts. They are flimsy, easily strip and easily shear off the plastic stud and are attached from the back side.

[Guest kennyw]

also be aware that unlike most [door panels] the Reatta's do not have to be pulled [up] after pulling the attaching pins our from the sides and bottom. The top of the door pannel pulls straight off,,,,,,,also held in with pins, not straight up. Most look at the mirror black plastic and wonder how the door panel can get past this part. JUST PULL STRAIGHT OUT,,,,NOT UP........KEN

[K Howie]

The speakers in the reattas, from my limited knowledge, are by Bose. They are high quality but pricey as well. I just got off the phone with Dean Christy from DSS (called about CRT repair) and he mentioned that they have the correct speakers for $150. Bad noise could come from a deteriorated receiver, as well. DSS repairs those, too.

[Rawja]

The speakers in the Reatta are regular old Delco. They are inexpensive and cheaply made. I replaced mine with factory original when I first got my car, and they were around $30 a piece. You are much better off going with the aftermarket on this item.

[Guest EDBS0]

KHowie <span style="font-style: italic">Excuse me <span style="font-weight: bold">BUT </span> HOW</span> can you or anyone even begin to evaluate how your tuner/receiver/amp sound when all you really know is that your speakers are blown. The speakers have deteriorated a bit at a time over the last several years. They were NOT perfect yesterday and completely BLOWN TODAY <span style="font-style: italic">NOT!</span> I would like to respectfully suggest that you have no idea how your "radio" sounds! I have found them to be quite a high quality. I think Bose systems are grossly overrated but fortunately very few if any Reattas were ever sold with Bose systems.

Having replaces speakers I believe that there is no way possible for Bose speakers to fit in the front doors of an 89. I have also gone and reviewed the Yearly differences and do not believe that Bose speakers were ever offered. <span style="font-style: italic">Be grateful, cold soldered joints in their amp section and mediocre quality in my opinion.</span>

Many car dealers perform unnecessary repairs, electronic shops may not be a lot different?

Replace speakers <span style="font-weight: bold">first</span> with quality speakers then and only then evaluate your system <span style="font-weight: bold">and</span> if you purchase high enough quality speakers you will have to break them in for 100 hours before you can evaluate them!!!

Anyone???? Were Bose systems ever installed in Reattas?

KHowie; You are new to the Forum and there are many money saving tips here. There are a great number of posts on repairing the CRT with a dollop of solder. Often just disconnecting and reconnecting it will "repair" it. Use the search engine here.

[K Howie]

Geez....excuse <span style="font-style: italic">me</span>!

[padgett]

AC Delco lists three speakers for the '88 Reatta. The following are current GMPD prices (need to add shipping) each.

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16052530 SPKR ASM $19.58 (tweeter)

16070314 SPEAKER $54.47 (rear 8 way ? May be error, am curious what it is)

88999231 SPEAKER $36.00 (Front 5")

Front is really 5.25".

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Has anyone ever bought these ? How did they sound ?

[Guest]

I replaced the 5.25 door speakers and the rear speakers using the delcos from gmpartsdirect.com. I think they sound great. I assume the rear speakers you have listed, Padgett, are the 6x9s. I have a vert and they have a narrower speaker; looks like 4x9. The front speakers have a new part number and different connector. I just soldered the old connector on the new speaker. The tweeters hardly ever go bad and I did not replace those.

good luck,

curt

[NCBRIJEN]

Thanks for the reply, I was thinking of aftermarket, up scale speakers. What kind did you replace yours with and did they fit without major adjustment?

[Rawja]

When I first got my '89 (2/01), I replaced all of the speakers with OEM Delco originals.

Replacement of the dome tweeters was a waste of money, as they don't seem to deteriorate like the 5 ¼? speakers.

I didn?t feel the sound was Dynamic enough, and installed the 5 ¼? portion of a MTX component speaker system that was on close-out from Crutchfield in the front doors. The speakers lasted about a month before they started buzzing pretty bad like they were blown, and I thought they sounded muddy even before the buzzing.

I then installed 5 1/4" Infinity Kappa 52.3i speakers in the front doors wired in parallel with the stock dome tweeters and liked the sound. (I like my music a little on the bright side)

The only problem at this point was my system just wasn?t able to give me the bass and volume I required, and I looked into possibly getting aftermarket amps and sub-woofers, but didn?t want to trade the quality for quantity of sound, and I like my car to look ?factory?.

Realizing that there is only so much bass capability inherent in a small 5 ¼? speaker,

next I installed 6X9 Infinity Kappa 693.5i speakers in the rear, utilizing the speaker brackets from a 90-91 Reatta and let me tell you it made all the difference, sound output was greatly increased, the quality is great and the bass really rumbles?. All thoughts of doing upgrades to the amplification and installing subwoofers became moot by installing the 6X9s in the rear.

Some notes and observations from my many times tearing the interior apart:

When you are replacing the rear speakers, you can cure any rattles and squeaks coming from the rear trim by installing high-density black weatherstripping between the trim and the car body.

The original door speakers had a covering over the front and the speaker did not project beyond the speaker frame. Most modern speakers have a little bit of projection of the speaker surround which when the foam on the door trim panel contacts it, muffles the sound by preventing it?s free movement. I solved this by removing the foam from the door trim, I?m wondering if I could have fitted the Infinity grills over the speakers and still have been able to get the door trim back on with the foam intact.

Buy a door trim removal tool It?s worth the 8 bucks.

EDBSO installed the Infinity Kappa 693.5i 6X9 speakers both in the rear quarters as well as in the doors. From what I understand, it required cutting the sheet metal of the doors, but he got them in under the factory trim, so it looks as original. I imagine that his car must be capable of making your ears bleed. I think that hooking up the stock dome tweeters in the doors along with the Infinitys would improve the poor imaging perception.

While I?m sure the changeover to 6X9 speakers for the 90-91 Reattas was a cost cutting move on GM?s part, if you have an ?88-89, you will definitely like the sound of the 6X9s better if you go with a high quality component style speaker over the 5 ¼? setup that came with the car, and it?s just a matter of changing the rear speaker brackets.

[NCBRIJEN]

Thanks for ALL the advice, this is really GREAT!! All I need now is the time & patience to change the speakers.

Happy Holidays ALL!!

[Guest]

You may want to know, before you start replacing speakers, that the Reatta's front speaker (driver/tweeter) set is an impedence matched component system. Do not try to replace just the driver (5.25") speaker without replacing the tweeter (which has a 4" housing, and doggonit I'd swear, looks as if it may be a 4" tweeter), as your highs will all but disappear and sound muddy for all that is left. It is a 12-ohm Tweeter and VERY hard to match to in aftermarket. If you replace your driver with the OEM speaker set, you'll be fine, though. If you do have one of the vehicles with the Bose system (I guess you can look for the name on the speaker, but I really don't know how to tell if you can't) or just want to go aftermarket on the driver, then just go for a complete aftermarket component system to replace the speakers. You can go up to a 6.5" in the doors without modifying beyond drilling new screw holes. The higher quality manufacturers tend to cut holes in their 6.5"'s to fit 5.25" installations, so check before you drill.

Also, staging is possible, for the audiophile in you, but without the Bose system (which I guess does do some staging), requires amps, equalizers or, spectrum analyzers or DSP's, and a whole hell of a lot of time/money. It costs a lot to get good quality. Hope all of this helps.

[Guest EDBSO]

Reattas were not cursed with a Bose system, ever!