I did manage to get a few more pictures when I did the front doors and speakers. First up was removing the door panels, which is covered in other places. I've been trying to eliminate rattles in the interior, which it seems all of these trucks have a lot of. Pulling the switch/tweeter pods showed me that they have been part of my problem. The white plastic powder in the picture below is from the tweeter rattling in its mount.
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The stock speakers were still in okay condition and weren't torn or anything, but they were also loose in the doors. They are just held in with a clip rather than being positively mounted with screws. New, the foam shroud would have prevented them from moving, but mine had deteriorated over the years.
Making a new speaker shroud, with a hole for the wiring:
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My new speakers are Morel Maximo 6 components, so I had to mount the crossover somewhere. There's a convenient pocket in the door panel between the speaker and the map pocket where they fit perfectly. I used some of the foam I had cut from the speaker shrouds because the sheet metal on the door is not perfectly flat.
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The factory wiring harness in the door has a crimp connection that splits the signal between the speaker and the tweeter. Any crossover functionality is built into each speaker, which is convenient but is a bit of a power waster. I only needed to run one set of wires to the crossover, so I unwrapped the stock harness, cut out the connector going to the speaker, re-wrapped the harness, and ran the tweeter wire to the crossover. I could have left the connector dangling in there, but it's just one more thing to rattle.
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Don't forget to check your clearance to the speaker with the window down. I've got around 3/8" clearance here. Yes, the bottom of my door is rusty. It will get fixed eventually. I did replace the window scraper seals while I was in here, which hopefully will slow the rust down.
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Because the stock speakers mount with clips, I had to drill holes in the door for the speaker screws. All mounted up:
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Difference between the door cards is shown below. The plastic backer looks the same between the door cards - it is not! If you're drilling holes for the Escalade trim, measure directly off of the trim. Do not use the ribs or shapes in the mold as reference. I learned that lesson the hard way....fortunately the holes are hidden by the trim.
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The inserts on Escalade door panels do not extend all the way to the top of the pocket. As a result, when you install the trim on normal door panels, it sticks out more than it would on the Escalade panel.
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All done! You can also see the tweeter placement in this pic, though I hadn't put the grille on it yet. Many tweeters are a bit too big to mount here, so measure before you buy if you're planning to do this. I'm a big fan of this location because it raises the soundstage away from your knees and widens the stereo effect noticeably. The stock tweeters are also not very good. Even though I have not installed the amplifier yet, sound is dramatically improved even running off of (aftermarket Alpine) head unit power. Mainly seems to be from improved speaker frequency response and a much less harsh sound from the tweeters, so it doesn't fatigue the ears as much. Speaker sensitivity is a bit lower than stock because they are meant to be amped, so for now I'm taking it easy on the volume and equalization to make sure I don't end up with distortion from overruning the head unit.
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