5 1/4 speaker in 4x6 opening?

My car has 4x6's in the front doors (2000 Chevy Malibu) and I'm looking at putting a component set up front... after listening to speakers, I decided I'd rather have a bigger speaker up front than a 4" component set. How much extra work is it to cut out enough room to put in a 5.25" speaker? I plan on having a shop install them for me, and I was hoping to get an idea of what I might expect labor wise for putting a 5.25" component set up front. If you guys think a different speaker size/set-up would be better up front, by all means suggest away.

well depending on how your door panel is designed (wheather there is an open/box space infront of the speakers in the door, or a flat panel, with no space to mount the speaker further out from the stock position) will affect how the installation will go. if the option is to move the new speaker out further from the stock mounting position, a custom mounting bracket will probably be fabricated, and if that is the case, you may as well go with a 6.5 speaker if you havent bought them yet. 6.5 will offer a better low-frequency midbass than the 5 1/4's and still have the same high end as the 5 1/4's.

if they arent making a bracket and instead cutting out the door panel to fit, then you should decide how much you'll allow them to cut, chances are if you cut too much your stock speakers may not fit back in. but make sure you understand their procedure if you consider selling the car with the stock speakers down the road.

you may also find use for Kick-pods/panels on each side of the front. you can fit your midbass/tweets closer and audiable seperation is harder to tell, as well as direct Line of site with the midbass and tweets would give you an overall increase in SPL and SQ.

when the speakers face one another in the door, or are not properly facing the driver, myself i feel things get alot more flat than they really are. i would opt for a kick pod because of that fact alone, if your looking for better sound quality.

hth

You can try Metra Electronics. They may have a plastic plate to fit your conversion already. They are cheap, too.

They have a ton of kits that convert different size speakers to a different hole size.

DXAV

i will back that, we stepped up just from 5 1/4's to 6 1/2's and there is a large diffrence

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2009 0-1000 Trunk WR 154.0DB 2009 1001+ Trunk WR
2007 USACI World Champion
2007 World Record
2006 USACI Finals 2nd Place

you can goto sounddomain.com (one of many sites i imagine) and find kickpods, i believe the brand name is Qlogic, but dont qutoe me. they are inexpensive, and are fairly standard but arent ugly by any means.

fabrication would be possible i assume, but may cost a little more than if you wanted just something simple. and it could be easier for you to acquire them over the net, and not have to pay the shop for the kickpods themselves + usual markup. check ebay, check sites that carry any kickpods figure out what you like the best. i think they are even specific to the model (ie: malibu)of car you have too.