We're getting there!

[Ozark Lee]

My daughter and I made a ton of progress on her 944 over the weekend. My gear came in from odometergears.com so I yanked the instrument cluster and fixed the gear. I have no idea what the real mileage is on the car but at least we can keep up with maintenance schedules. I don't know what I did but the tach came back to life after repairing the odometer. I received the replacement turn signal/wiper/cruise stalk as well and replaced that at the same time - it works perfectly! We replaced the radiator hoses and flushed the cooling system. All vital fluids except the power steering are now changed and at their proper level.

I expect my new eBay steering rack will be in sometime this week. I ordered the new rubber mounts and the banjo bolt washers from Pelican on Saturday and I imagine they will be in at about the same time.

Other than getting the car sufficiently into the air to gain access to the rack, what are the tricks to replacing the rack? It looks fairly straightforward, knock off the tie rod ends, unbolt the mounts and the hoses, and then - this I'm not sure about - disconnect the steering column.

I thought the odometer gear/control stalk was going to be the big job for the weekend but the stereo turned out to be the bugger. She bought some 4" x 6" Sony speakers but they came with no grills. I wound up cutting out the holes slightly so that the speakers would recess into the door panel but the back of the magnets hit the window guide before they seated in the hole. The factory grill doesn't seat well either due to the tweeters protruding beyond the face of the speaker - there is about a 1/8" gap between the factory grill and the door panel. I tried to find aftermarket grills with more depth and they are scarce, no, not available, for 4" x 6" speakers.

The stereo part is actually low on the priority list to me while the steering rack is very high. Any pearls of wisdom from the gurus on steering rack changes?

...Lee

[onZedge]

I have not changed out a steering rack (yet), but I do have experience with the speakers. The factory holes are 100X150mm, or slightly smaller than 4X6". You can buy "metric" speakers, such as Blaupunkt, to fit the factory holes known as "4X6m". I really liked the Polk 4X6" coaxials I bought, so I had to figure out how to fit them without cutting sheet metal.
I first used 3/4" self-adhesive foam weatherstrip tape around the metal speaker opening. Then I used 3/8" nylon spacers between the speaker and the door sheet metal. This took care of the clearance problem between the speaker magnet and the power window frame as well as the spacing issues between the speaker and the factory opening.
The next problem was the protruding tweeter prevented use of the factory speaker grille. Since I bought the speakers from Crutchfield, I called their service center and asked if they had any leftover 4X6m Blaupunkt grilles from a recent installation where grilles were not required. They did, and sent me a pair for free. The Blaupunkt grilles I got were the wire basket type deep enough to accommodate the protruding tweeter. You might want to try local stereo installation shops to see if they have any leftover 4X6m grilles that might work. If you really want to use the factory grilles, you could always apply some of the foam weatherstrip tape around the back perimeter of the grille and use appropriate nylon spacers between the grille and speaker to clear the tweeters. The foam tape and nylon spacers can be used on the rear speakers as well, but there is no tweeter protrusion issue since no grilles are needed. You can get the weatherstrip tape and nylon spacers at Lowe's or Home Depot and, of course, longer sheetmetal screws to accommodate the spacers.

This is what my installation looks like:

I CAN'T UPLOAD PICTURES YET, BUT I WILL EDIT THIS POST LATER WHEN I CAN

[Rot 911]

Lee I noticed you are from the KC area and sometimes over by me (Jefferson City). There is a great group of 944 guys in the KC area called the Kansas City Wrenching Society. You might want to get hooked up with them. They get together often for wrenching sessions including a get together down at the lake each fall, which I always attend. You can find them here: http://www.kcws.org/

[onZedge]

Just in case the stereo percolates up on your priority list, here are some ideas you might ponder. The inherent acoustics of a car interior make it the worst place to enjoy music, especially when you decide to start the car up and drive it! I found that the combination of more speakers/smaller amps is far superior to a pair of speakers with a huge amp. An equalizer, appropriately sized subwoofers and strategically placed additional tweeters are a must to be able to effectively reproduce the dynamic range that most classical music demands, and compact discs have to offer. Oh, and ZZTop sounds awesome as well.

Not pretty, but 100% functional:



Passenger Side:



Front Tweeter Location:



Rear Tweeter Location:



Subwoofer Location (two 8" Polk db subs):



I use the internal 4-channel amp in the head unit to power the speakers located in the four factory holes, a big 2-channel amp for the subs and another small 2-channel amp amp for the five tweeters.

[Blondie]

Astounding...

I bought two 4x6's for the doors...cost me $10 a piece at a hardware store but they actually sound really decent lol

...until you start the car. I didnt count on the car being so damn loud.

[legion]

I have the 4x6 Infinity plates.

[Eldorado]

those tweeters in the a-pillars is a brilliant idea...

[onZedge]

I did a lot of experimentation with double-sided tape before I decided on the final location. The rear tweeters were easier because there is literally no other place to mount them back there (small L-bracket on the hatch latch catch mounting bolt). Having a spectrum analyzer and pink noise generator was very handy as well.

[Ozark Lee]

I hate to bump old threads but I came up with a fairly elegant solution to the front stereo speakers.

OnZedge showed some Blaupunkt speakers that had a grill so I went searching for the same or similar. After doing a site search I found that I was not alone in having aftermarket speaker troubles. With the Sony speakers I originally bought - that have no grills - and trying to reuse the OEM covers I wound up having to carve part of the sheet metal out of the door and then had the 1/8" ish gaposis between the cover and the interior door panel.

While it didn't totally suck I hated the gap plus the speaker magnet was crammed back against the window frame. I figured a big rattle was in the future.



I found a set of Blaupunkt PCxb462 speakers online at a place called Sonic Electronics on a blow out special for $29.99/pair with free shipping ( www.sonicelectonix.com ) and ordered a pair.

The Blaupunkt speakers gome with a couple of different mounting brackets, one for a surface mount and another for an underdeck mount. As sent, neither one is useful as the Blaupunkt speakers are also to deep and have the protruding tweeter. With some modification though it all works out. I decided to use the under deck mount as a spacer to get the speaker spaced out far enough that it no longer was mashed against the window frame. The problem there is that the spacer is larger than the grill plate. What I did was traced the perimeter of the grill and also marked the screw holes onto some of the packing material. From there I marked the inside of the tracing with a Sharpy to serve as a cutting guide.




From there I layed out the cuts I needed to make on the thick spacer plate.




You can be fairly sloppy here as this is all going to be hidden once the installation is complete. I used a scroll saw but a jig saw or a Dremel tool will work as well.

The Blaupunkt grill has standoffs molded into the screw holes which are almost the same depth as the spacer plate. In order to get the grill flush with the panel those standoffs need to go.

Standoffs



I chopped them off with a Dremel tool with a cutting wheel. Here is how the spacer fits into the grill after the spacer is trimmed and the standoffs are chopped off.



From here I figured I could just stack everything - Grill, Speaker, Spacer - and be good to go. No such luck. The mounting tabs on the speaker were to big to seat in the grill frame. I used my original template to mark the speaker mounting tabs and nipped them off with a pair of tin snips.



Now it all fits together!



The next step was to futz with the OEM speaker "condom" and mount the speaker. The spacing worked out great but I was really hoping that the Blaupunkt grill would cover the entire perimeter of the old OEM grill. No such luck. While it was better I still had "untrimmed" edges around the Blaupunkt grill.



While I hate to intentionally fold, spindle, or mutilate anything that has a Porsche part number molded into it I decided to use the OEM speaker panels as a base trim ring. Between the Dremel tool and a pair of tin snips I carved out the center of the grill so that my Balupunkt speaker would recess into it.



This doesn't need to be at all precise either as the part that you carve out will be hidden.

The last trick is to get the screws started though the layers of grills, speakers, and spacers and then get that to line up with the screw holes in the door. It is more of a challenge than meets the eye but it is do-able.

At the end of the day I am pleased with the results and it just barely clears the end of the dashboard.



Thanks to all for all of your help on the project. I started to work on the rear speakers today but with 100° F temps I punted and fixed a cocktail instead - it will wait until the morning.

...Lee

[Marcone]

Did the steering rack yesterday...Youre right...

Drain system. Tie rod ends off.. undo rack and remove.

Theres a bunch of hoses to take out and i would leave em on the car if i were you ..cuz theyre a ***** to get out.. especially the little tiny metal one behind the subframe...
Steering had to be removed at the linkage..problem will be putting the new one back on so that the steering wheel is straight. Not terribly hard to get close. Would be easier if you could mark it..but youre putting a different one back on.

Re install and get an alignment. or try to hope the original tie rods can keep the place for you ?

Hope that helps

Marcone

[Marcone]

P.s. .. i have my Tweeters in the top of the door panel above the window button area... looks sharp too..

if getting a sub. Use the spare tire well ... who needs one anyways! lol

Marcone