Speaker wires in doors.

[quattrojames]

Both my N/S front door speaker and O/S rear tweeter cut in and out. I've 'wiggled' the wires where they pass into the door and there are loose connections, I know this is a common issue.

Has anyone fixed this before? I just wondered how much cable is in the door to play with, can you just repair the exisiting cable, or did you need to splice in a new length of cable? I was thinking of just using bullet crimp connectors, unles someone more electrically minded can recommend anything more appropriate?

Cheers :thumbsup:

 

[RyanJonS4]

You should prob solder and heat-shrink them but crimps will do the job.

Is there any chance of a close up pic of the connections on the door itself james??

The reason I ask is that when I replaced the interior handle on mine, I unplugged the two plugs (1 for the mid and 1 for the tweeter I presume?) and didnt note which way round they went I plugged them back in but its a 50/50 chance I got them right!!


Cheers

Ryan

 

[quattrojames]

Yes sure thing :thumbsup:

I've not even looked in the rubber shroud yet, but hope to have a go at it within the next week or so.

I'll look into the heat shrink, I've never used it. What do you heat it with?

 

[BILKO1]

Hotair gun if enough space or cigarette lighter works fine. If you are going the bullet connector route try to get some that seal themselves to save water ingress problems in the future. I'll try and find a link to the connectors, i think BT use them in the boxes at the side of the road.

 

[1wheelonly]

james, ryans advice above is deffo a better option mate, like he said bullets will fix it but will also create more probs later on, as you know there isnt alot of room in there so adding a crimp/ bullet will create more stress points to break down again.
if you could strip down enough to replace rather than repair obviously that would be better, not always the case though i know, so soldering and heat shrinking as small as poss would be better in my opinion.
i have a cab and they suffer the same way with the ariel going through the gater into the boot, i had to repair mine.
heat shrink can be heated up quickly and easily with a ciggy lighter, it doesnt take much for it to shrink round at all.

 

[RyanJonS4]

I use it at work with a normal blow lamp but I should use a soft flame blow lamp really. I'd offer to send you some, but it would prob be a bit too big for the job, trouble is the cables I use it on are upto 4 core 300 mm2, where as speaker wire will be a couple of mm2 at most.

It should be available on ebay tho if you want it to your door, or any electrical supplier should sell it.

 

[1wheelonly]

bilko1 is advising on GEL CRIMPS, very good advise but usually like he metioned are used for bt cable and cat5 etc which is single core and alot smaller, therefore not going to be the best to use, plus if your doing more than one cable at roughly the same place this again will create probs as the said area will become fatter with the repairs and you want to keep it as straight running as you can with the rest of the loom

 

[1wheelonly]

here you go, heat shrinks great stuff, use it all the time
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BLACK-HEAT-SH...s_ET?hash=item5635a30e7b&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

 

[quattrojames]

Cheers guys

I think the bullet connectors will just be a PITA either now or in the future, I reckon some solder and heatshrink will sort it in and look neat and professional to boot. I will try and pop the rubber shroud off tomorrow and see what size the cables are so I can order some up, there is indeed plenty to choose from on ebay :thumbsup:

 

[quattrojames]

I should have known it wouldn't be that simple......

I had ten minutes free so thought I would pop off the door gromet and see what size the speaker cables are so I know what size heatsink to get

The gromet end of the rubber shroud is fixed to the door by a peice of plastic which is held into the door by sprung tabs which act as a bard holding it into the door. The only way to get these out seemed to be to bed them out with a large screwdriver The cables inside are all held in a fabric wrapped shield, I imagined they would be grouped together, but not by something so impenetrable! I will need to cut into this to identify which cable is what. I didn't take any pics as most likely the camera would have been flung!

I think my plan is going to be to pop the door card off to give me more space to work and a better view of whats happening. Ironically one of the rear door cards needs to come off anyway for another job (relocating the electric window switch) but not the one with the dodgy speaker

It looks like a tricky job, updates to follow

 

[AndyMac]

I looked into doing this when I had my drivers door speaker playing up, but only at low volume. IIRC the problem is the connector inside the door pillar. It gets elctrically dirty over time and can cause problems. However Audi in their usual ludicrous way have buried this connector inside a second skin up under the dash, near the bonnet release, and the only access is via a tiny and very sharp hole that you cannot get your hand into. To make matters worse the connector isn't directly inside the hole its offset from the hole so you can't actually see it. I gave up in the end.

But remember if you're gonna be popping door cards off, get a load of spare pop fasteners from your dealer before you start. They are designed to break when releasing the door card so you'll need a few spares, they're only about 20p each. They look like this:

 

[quattrojames]

Cheers Andy, I have a few of those spare ordered from pjmspeedy for when I finally run out of excuses and have to pop the rear door card off to sort the electric window switch out! :thumbsup: