Need to upgrade the speakers 94 aerostar , like to know what sizes fit the front dash and side panel speakers? Any suggestion to remove the front dash speakers and the side panel speakers?

Is it the front speakers are 4" round and the side are 6x9 ?

 

I've an '89, and I sort of doubt that the dash speakers are the same as your '94, as the whole dash is different, but on mine I'm pretty sure that they're 3.5" in front, as are the ones in the rear hatch. The side/rear on mine are almost certainly std 6x9, from when I looked at them.

I had all of mine out, because somebody had ripped out an aftermarket system before I bought mine (as a basket case), so although it had six speakers bolted in, only one was actually connected, and three of the speakers had bent frames (voice coils rubbed) or open circuit (overloaded), so I've had to play with all of them at one time or another.

Regards,
Al S.

 

Sides are 6x9. I replaced my '93 side speakers with high quality Alpines and the fronts (under dash grill) with small round (3 1/2"?) but they were a bit smaller as I recall, had to use some "funky" fastening techniques.

The worst part about all of mine is the BAD sounds, any amount of bass really sounds bad. I even replaced the flimsy side speaker brackets w/ plywood backing screwed tight to the inside of the side panels, no big help. If anyone knows how to eliminate this crappy distortion, please help!

Mark Biederbeck

 

Bass requires power. Lots of bass requires lots of power. I'm certainly no audio expert, but do you think you might be pulling enough current to tax the OEM wiring? It doesn't seem to be very generous for information signalling, by my standards.

Then again, I still think the box-stock system with the optional EQ sounds pretty fine, so consider the source . . . I don't expect much in car audio reproduction. I'm not using my 'star + tunes in a mating ritual, so I don't need it to beat up the car next to me, if you know what I mean. If I can hear Papa John's sustained-fourth at index 2:32 in "Monday, Monday", I'm happy. Though that's not very easy to do, at least, not for me. I probably listened to that song for 20 years and never noticed it, it's so poorly mixed at that passage. It couldn't have been my ears, could it? Nah.

Are you using remote amps or bi-amps? ISTR that you have some premium aftermarket system? Have you upgraded the wiring from your amp to the 6x9s? I'd start at 12ga; it's likely more than most would need, but you only want to string it once. You might run one length as a bypass of the OEM wiring, as a test, and crank it on just the one side to hear how it sounds.

Regards,
Al S.

 

I replaced the factory radio with kenwood with cd last summer, the sound from the stock speakers were so bad...I just want clean sound. I can not turn up the volume to overcome the wind&engine noise. I looked at the dash and I am so afraid to open it up without any damage. Reading the msg ..it seems like even replacing the speakers will not help.

Any past experience suggested I should not do it myself? There is an option to me is hook up the pre-out to a preamp and just mount 4 new speakers instead.

 

I didn't use the factory speaker wire, it was replaced with what comes in the Alpine box. What I can say is that when I listened to my combo on the test box in the stereo shop, it sounded fine. Not so in the van. I am definitely talking about mid-range volumes here. You can't add much bass or you get distortion. My Ranger has stock speakers (ext. cab premium sound) and just replacing the head unit made a world of difference. I just can't understand why the Aerostar sounds so bad. I've had two different CD units (Pioneer, crapped out, replaced with Sony) and two different brands of speakers in the back (Alpine, then Jensen 6x9 3-way). I went from the flimsy sheet metal mounts to a wood backing plate directly screwed through the panel with machine screws, plus a foam back-up tray for the speakers. Still sounds BAD. Will a power amp help with the sound (i.e. less distortion?).

Thanks,
Mark Biederbeck

 

I think the problem is just poor design on Fords part. First, the speakers in the front are just floating in the dash, there is no box around them at all, just a bunch of air. Speakers are meant to be in boxes, or at the least in areas that are small. In the door are fine as the doors provide a virtual box. No such luck in the dash, just lots of air. Now lets move to the side speakers. First off, this is not even a good place to put speakers. The harmonics of the Aerostar are horrible. One of them fires sideways behind the drives seat into the door, which the sound bounces off, if it didn't hit the legs of the people in the middle seat, bad acoustics. The second speaker fires almost into the seat in the back. Not much good there. Also, there is a fair amount of free space in there too, my Aerostar just came with 2 speakers and the FM stereo so I dunno if Ford put boxes in the ones with speakers there. Now to the liftgate speakers, placed to low. They fire into the back of the rear seats, unless they are angled up, but I doubt Ford did that. They are also really small.

Thats about it for placement, now onto design. ONE GROUNDWIRE FOR 6 SPEAKERS???? Are they nuts, the wire isn't even thick no wonder it sounds like crap. I dunno what they were thinking when they made that. Makes going aftermarket really hard.Also, the front speakers aren't real 3" they have a diff hole patern. They also used the wrong size speakers everywhere. They should have used 6" rounds in the doors and tweeters in the dash, now that would have worked with the air thing. The middle speakers should have been 4x6 maybe, just woofers, or eliminated all together. The rear speakers should have been 6x9s(or 4x8 maybe??? whatever fits) encorporated into the pillar by the lift gate. 6x9s in the lift gate would have been acceptable too.

Now here is what I did to mine: cut for 4" Polk speakers in the front, 6x9s in boxes under the middle seat(Pointing at a 50 degree angle towards the top of the front seat, they fit great there. And to top it off, 2 12" MTX thunder4000 subs powered off a Jensen 500W amp behind the rear seat, fits great in the shorty I have. Powering the speakers is a 50x4 Sony Xplode head unit. Oh, yeah, and that ford wiring crap...GONE...its all 12 or 14 guage monstercable now.

C(-)ris

 

I remember now when I replaced the front dash speakers that the mounting was "crappy", didn't fit real well. I did mount a foam liner behind one of my side 6x9's, didn't seem to help at all. It was a molded but flexible type, supposed to use where you have a lot of open air.

I agree with everything you say, I ran seprate speaker wires instead of using the factory junk. Unfortunately, I use my van too much w/o the rear seats (oooohhh my acking back) to use floor space for speakers.

Mark

 

I like my computer speakers 4 sat/w sub, it is not expensive,good looking and giving very good volume of sound. My brother suggest me to get another set of alteclansing computer speakers/w sub,without spending hundreds got everything in the box, mount the 2 sat front pillar and 2 sat after the front seat, combine the preout L/R rca jack to one small Y jack plug it into the sub-woofer module. Now the fun part is how to get the power to the enclosed amp in the box. The speakers powered by 110v wall plug, is it possible bypass the power amp? This could be a nice project for the holiday..

 

You could always try a DC/AC converter. You would have to get a pretty high wattage one though and make sure you find one that hard wires to the battery not just into the cigarette lighter. If you don't you will go through a awful lot of fuses.I really like the idea though. Creative Labs/Cambrige Soundworks makes some 3 or 5 piece sets that would work well. If you got the DTT2500 and had a deck with front and rear preamp outs all you would have to do is grab 2 RCA to minijack adaptors and run those from the back of your deck into the amp box for the speakers. It should work pretty good. Good luck.