DIY Rear Speaker Deck

[JoeyD1005]

Whats up my dudes,

Just wanted to share a pretty simple DIY project I undertook while I had the seats out for new carpet bits. I had looked around and see that a lot of people DIY this project but theres very few threads showing how it can be done. Feel free to ask any questions and I can clarify anything needed.

During cleaning, I noticed that my speaker deck leather was delaminating itself from my rear speaker deck. At first, I tried to just re-upholster the deck as is with some UV treated Vinyl from a fabric store. However, it didn't work very well. Unfortunately, the deck was just too far gone. While not being completely awful, I wasn't happy with it so I decided to salvage just the upright portion of the section, and make the upper horizontal part. See the process with comments below:

Materials Used:
1) 1/4 Furniture Plywood I used a pre-cut 2x4 foot piece (If you chose to run a layer of foam backing behind the leather, you can probably get some cheaper plywood, I wanted to get a finished side to work on as I wasnt going to go for a soft touch approach)
2) Finishing Washers and Machine Screws / Nuts
3) Body Filler
4) 3M Super 77 Spray Adhesive
5) Upholstery Staples and Gun
6) Fabric of Choice, I used UV resistant Black vinyl
7) Some sheet metal I think I used 18g




As You can see, the re-upholstery of the original deck left a lot to be desired...





Pick your media of choice - in this case the humble brown paper bag from the grocery store. Lay it down and create a template from your original deck. Following that, test fit in the car to trim any pieces that interfere with the fit once in the car. Tracing usually needs some fine tuning I find.




Transfer the template onto the sheet of plywood and cut your pieces. I chose to use 2 separate pieces and hinge them together. If you're a mad man on a table saw you can probably do some kerf cutting to make the bend.



Like a dummy, I just went ahead and made some of those hinges without thinking about it. Basically I cut some rectangles out of the sheet metal, and bent them in a bench vice. If you have a metal brake this would be cleaner, not to worry though, hammer and garage floor work just fine once its bent. I didn't have a good way of measuring the exact angle of the seat back to horizontal section from the original so I just eye balled the bracket angle on the axis of the original deck.




Jumped ahead again so apologies about the lack of pictures along the way. Basically All I did was make a total of 3 angle brackets from the sheet metal. And then measure distances so mounting hardware would be even. Then test fit everything in car.





Next the last thing to do is use some of the body filler to smooth the gap between the horizontal and first upright sections. Electric sander makes quick work but holy crap does this kick dust. Then some of the Super 77 and wrap the vinyl over the pieces. Last thing to do was install the speaker mounts and attach the original upright to the speaker deck.

Hope this helps some people!

Joe

[Dmitry at Pelican Parts]

Hey Joe - that's a solid write up and well documented. If you'd like to submit the article to us and possibly have it added to our list, check out the link and details below. Thanks!

DIY Tech Article Submission