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1) The only way I can think of to tell if the doors are wired for the speakers without taking off the door panel would be to remove the glove box and kick panel in the front passenger footwell and look for the connector with the other end of the speaker wires there. Neither job is too tough, but it would probably be quicker to remove one door panel. If you do look for the speaker wire behind the front console, you may have to dig around a bit because when it is not plugged into the Saab amp, they tend to tuck it away behind a few other things. On my 2000 9-3 base, they had it tucked behind the "lip" on the edge of the center console...sort of right behind the area where the heater air flow knob is located. In my case, both the speaker wire connector and the Saam amp power/ground connector were taped together and tucked away. You want to look for two black plastic modular connectors. One will have the four speaker wires going into it (all four of these wires are some base color with different colored stripes), the other will have a black wire and a red wire going into it for the Saab amp ground and power, respectively.
2) If the doors are not pre-wired, it is possible to fish speaker wire through the sealed cable bundle by the door hinge and into the area behind the dash. Others on this board have discussed doing it, but it is time consuming and you have to be patient. Perhaps someone who has done it can describe the procedure again here.
3) The tool to remove the head unit is called "DIN puller". You can make your own DIN puller using some sturdy coat hanger wire and making a U-shaped piece of wire for each side. I tried this and it did work...although the wire is not as stiff as the metal in a regular DIN puller so you had to fiddle with it a little to get the head unit out. The cheapest place I know of to get a real DIN puller is Wal-Mart. I think the one I eventually got cost under $4. The trick to using a DIN puller is to put them into the holes and apply pressure so that the back end (the end you stuck into the holes) pushes outward toward the doors. This pushes some little tabs out of the way that hold the head unit in. As you are pushing out, pull gently on the head unit and you should feel it release and move forward. (You can grab the head unit gently by the cassette or CD opening...depending on which head unit you have).
4) The 6.5" speakers I installed in the door were 1-7/8" deep and there was still room to spare without getting in the way of the window when it is rolled down. It looked to me like you could fit a speaker in there up to 2-1/8" or maybe even 2-1/4" and still be OK. Just check the specs of the speakers you are considering. To find the dimensions of various speakers, you can either go to the brand web sites for the various manufacturers or go to a site like http://www.crutchfield.com and look at various 6.5" speakers. They have depth measurements listed in the descriptions for each speaker.
5) I have heard that some people have tried splicing the wires from their door speakers into the speaker wires for the dash speakers and driving all of them from the head unit (in other words, without installing an additional amp). While that may work if the door speakers do not draw too much power, I am not really comfortable with it. The Saab head unit is not really designed to drive 6 speakers.
6) I used the two-channel MTX 2120 to drive just the two door speakers, leaving the dash and rear speakers still driven by the Saab head unit. By connecting the 8-pin DIN connector on the back of the Saab head unit to the amp's inputs, you are only sending a non-amplified signal (called a pre-amp signal) to the amp. The amp then amplifies that signal for the door speakers. Other people who have installed larger 4-channel amps in the hatch area (or other location) often then use those four channels to drive the door speakers and a subwoofer.
I hope this helps.
Mark
posted by 216.140.17...
, Sat, 27 Oct 2001 23:02:15, Sun, 28 Oct 2001 12:50:56
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