97 Ford Explorer front door pods.. My first attempt..

[DeeBoy718]

I have a pair of Selenium 8PW3's in my front doors which I placed behind my doors by making wooden rings. They sounded good, but I knew that I wasn't getting the most I could out of them since a lot of the sound was getting lost behind my panels. So I decided to take the plunge, and cut my panels and make pods that the 8's would stick out from the panels.

I measured the door speaker grill, and made a template for the 8s. That rounded triangle is where the stock grill is. Figured it would look funny if I just cut a ring and left that piece of factory grill next to it.





I cut the beauty ring out of birch. You can see the positioning of my 8 behind the grill here and you can see why I said I was losing sound behind my panels.


No turning back now!


Fit like a glove!


Decided to try vinyl. I was going to use tan speaker rug, but thought this would look better. Plus, with the padding behind the vinyl, it would make a seamless line from the panel to the pod.


Sorry, forgot to take pics of wrapping the pod, but I was trying to do my best, first time vinyl job. Oh, and there's 3 wooden rings attached behind the beauty panel to make up the depth for the 8 to stick out from the panel slightly. Oh, and I did seal behind the speaker so that it's in an enclosure.. again, forgot to take pics.


This is how it came out.


I don't think it came out too bad for my first try.


Didn't want to bore anyone with redundant pics, but of course I did the same to the driver's side. I have grills on order, and plan on painting them either the same tan as the vinyl, or a touch darker for contrast. I'm also taking the tweeters out and painting the fronts to match the grills to give it more of a stock look.

[zack_e89]

Looks great man, really like how the vinyl turned out there.

[DeeBoy718]

Thanks, Zack. Appreciate it, especially since I was nervous that I would completely F up my panels. My mid is much better now, and the mid bass is freakin awesome! Thinking about going crescendo to replace the Seleniums. Nothing wrong with them, just want to see if it'll be an improvement.

[dionysus]

Hell yeah bro I dig it!! I got a 02 explorer I've been plotting how to do my pods too because im losing alot behind the door panels too! Was going to go crescendo PWX 6 5s in my back doors but I think im going to go 8s in rear and crescendo comps in front doors, your work has motivated me very much sir!

[MrGeo]

looks awesome, definitely an improvement.

[DeeBoy718]

Thank you, guys. Means a lot. I have crescendo pwx 6.5's in pods I made for the back, and I absolutely love them! They take a ton of power, and sound good doing it! They're not the greatest looking pods, and I do plan on re-doing them, but they sound really good. Here's a pic.



The shape is a bit odd, but it was the only way at the time that I thought I could get them to mount where I wanted them. Here's a pic to show where they're located:



You can see it up to the left of my sub box. Of course, I have one on the right as well. I just wanted to bring my soundstage up a bit, and boy, did they do it!

[DeeBoy718]

I plan on getting another pair of 8's and doing the same pods on my rear doors. I really would've liked to put 8's and 6.5's on my doors, but this is my daily driver, and my wife gives me the death stare every time she sees me taking measurements! Funny part is, whenever she takes the truck to go shopping or whatever, I hear her coming before she turns the corner on our block! She won't admit it, but she loves loud music, almost as much as I do!

[sencheezy]

Man! That looks really great!

here are the doors to my 07 Explorer.

[BigManAC]

Looks 100 times better than when I tried to do my doors the first time. I completely screwed up my doors to the point where I had to go buy new ones haha. Good job man looks great.

[Ji553r]

Nice work man looks great