For Christmas my wife got me Crutchfield's kit for the Aerio SX - Kenwood KFC-P605ie and 1669S speakers, cables, cable adaptors and a door panel removal tool.

Rear speakers. Piece of cake. Pop off the covers with an old butter knife, unscrew the old, plug in the adaptor cable, screw in the new. Quite a difference between the old speakers and the Kenwood's, which are double or triple the weight!

Front (door) speakers. I popped loose the door panel on the bottom and sides, and then tried to free it from the top. I'm sure it's possible, but I couldn't figure out the trick. Probably involves prying off the grab handle cover. I tried gentle prying and didn't want to proceed with harder prying for fear of tearing or ripping the grab handle cover, so I gave up and pulled out the bottom of the door panel and propped it open with an empty Christmas gift box and installed the speakers flat on my back.

One of the screws holding in one of the speakers was quite tight and I was glad that I own a ratchet and a 3/8" drive No. 2 Phillips socket. If the door panel was off this would have been easy, but flat on my back I couldn't get enough force to remove it and needed the ratchet. Then came the big suprise. The plastic "adaptor cones" fit the speaker, but not the three holes in the door panel. I got around this by figuring out that two of the holes lined up nicely and the third hole almost missed the outside of the flat part of the cone that goes against the door. So, I cut that one, making a notch with diagonal cutters and used the Suzuki sheet metal screw with a washer to tighten against the flat side of the cone. Works OK, nice and tight even if it's not factory. The speaker connector to the speaker wires in the car is a locking type and I had to chop it with my side cutters to remove the lock part so I could insert the Crutchfield supplied wire adaptor.

Tweeters came next. The covers pop right off. The tweeter connection at the speaker was a bitch to remove. It bore no resemblance to the adaptor. The wire disappared down into the dash and I decided to not pull the dash cover to install the supplied adaptor wire harness. I'm still unpacking and haven't found my soldering iron and heat shrink tubing, which is how I'll make the connection for the tweeters - later.

The sound improvement was dramatic, well worth the time and money. A fine Christmas present from my wife.

 

Are your speakers as good as you got til this day?? I hear ya about the front doors spkers there a pain to pull off the first time I installed some Kicker KS65 compo's in my Aerio and they rock. One thing I would subjest it do is put the speaker Dynamat on so it would help with the rattling of the side mirrors.

 

Hello guys,
I know this thread is very old. I am currently looking for speakers to put in my 2003 Aerio but having much luck