Tweeter Mod

From Nissan 350Z & 370Z Wiki

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1 Introduction
2 Materials and Tools
3 Procedure (Tweeter Mount Mod)
4 Finished

Introduction

I purchased my tweeters as part of a componet set - Infinity's 60.5cs component speakers. Looking over the assortment of parts I came to the conclusion that the replacement tweeters were large enough to require some modding on my part to - IMHO - 'Make it look right'. This is the way I went ...

You can download this tutorial as a pdf file : media: TweeterMod.pdf - if you print to both sides of the page you will have a gutter on the inside of each page so you can use a 3-hole punch and save these tutorials to a binder.

Materials and Tools

Your tweeters -- DUH!
Electrical wire (Heck if I remember what gauge .. someone can modify (wiki) this .. but I just picked some at Radio Shack a size larger then the factory wiring.)
Various and assorted sockets and screwdrivers.
A garage .. ummm .. yeah .. a garage is nice. If you do this right you should take your time. Kinda hard to do that in a parking lot.
Soldering iron .. and solder.
Testor's Plastic Cement
Epoxy resin

Procedure (Tweeter Mount Mod)

Infinity Tweeter	Front	Rear
The Infinity tweeter is quite a bit larger then the factory. I think the factory tweeter was around an inch in dia while this one is right at 1 1/4 inches.	This is what you get from the factory, the stock tweeter as you see it. Notice that the tweeter cover is part of the factory sailplane casting. This piece is made from ABS. I may be in error .. but it cuts like styrene, smells like styrene when hot, glues like styrene. I'm tempted to quote the bard on 'A rose by any other name ...'	Flip the piece over and this is what the stock tweeter looks like on the back. There is a small metal piece that clamps the tweeter against the factory molding with two screws running into a pair of posts.

Components	Assembly	Making it swivel ...
To the right and top you have the large hand nut. Next down is the tweeter tub (my nomenclature). These are both part of the Infinity kit. The metal thingie below that is the stock tweeter retainer bracket. Finally, the Infinity tweeter and a washer and nut.	Tweeter, tub, basket, small washer/nut and large hand nut as Infinity's instruction sheet shows for the assembly.	The same parts shown from the rear showing how the tweeter swivels. Note: Make sure the nut locking the tweeter angle will not back off. I suggest using Locktite.
Hand Nut	Threaded Basket	Sanded Basket
This screws down on the threaded basket pulling the basket flange in against the tweeter mount surface. Not a lot of room here though. Notice one of the stock tweeter mounting studs peeking through the hand nut.	The flange is intended to be pulled down against the tweeter mounting surface. I decided to mount the basket in the stock tweeter location using cement instead of the hand nut. The flange .. I would remove since it did not fit the curve of the stock mount.	I took my dremel and sanded the basket down to the base of the threads using a sanding drum. It gets pretty thin but I will reinforce everything with epoxy when finished.

Hole - front	Hole - rear
This is the hole for the new tweeter roughed out. You don't have to be perfect but the better the fit the less you have to fill.	This is a view from the back as the final touches are made to the cut-out. The two threaded studs were ground down to allow the basket to fit. I had originally intended to use the stock retainer bracket but in the end decided to use epoxy instead.

Test fit front	Test fit back	Final fit
Test fitting the basket, front view.	Test fitting the basket rear view.	Good enough. Everything fits well enough .. time to cement it all together.
Testors model cement	Filler	Final results
Testors Model Cement (yes, the same as you used to build models) is used to cement everything together and to make the putty. I used generous amounts of the cement to make sure everything had bonded well. Then, I took all the scraps of plastic from making the holes and simply dropped them into the bottle. Give it a couple of hours and you will have a liquid plastic that when dry will form a seem less join with the original .. in fact .. it IS the original!	Use the plastic bondo and fill all gaps. I then used epoxy on the back to strengthen all joints. When completely dry, sand and touch up where needed. There are texture materials available .. but I simply wet the finished surface and patted my thumb against the surface to texture it. I finally cleaned the finished surface and sprayed with a flat black vinyl stain I bought at Pep Boys.	The final results actually look better then the photos show. Because I was taking photographs of black objects I modified both brightness and contrast to make the details pop out. This gives a ... false grain .. that is not apparent in reality.