So here goes on the installation of the new speakers. As mentioned before, I went with Alpine SPR-60c component speakers. Crutchfield shows that these DO NOT fit. Boy, were they wrong. I would say that these are a near perfect fit. Including all hardware, speakers, sound deadening material, the cost war right at $435. But, I have enough of everything left over to do my wife's GTI, except speakers of course.
Every part of the install was performed in a manner that can be restored back to factory. I do not cut/splice wires, or drill holes. I get if someone wants to do that, but I generally go with the route of hot glue and connecting to factory harnesses, etc... nothing that a heat gun and unplugging won't fix.
I ordered 2 types of speaker adapters (both are hyperlinks).
The first type that I ended up NOT using. The second type that I ended up using. I bought both of these through Amazon, but I opted to use the latter pair, due to the height of the speaker when it was mounted into the door. By the time I had the seals installed, adapter, speaker, etc... The taller mounts would have placed the speaker into the door baffle.
The taller mounts... fine quality, but about 1.5" tall without seals or speakers mounted. The factory speakers are 1.5" total height.
The smaller mounts I used. They are solid and about 0.7". With the speaker and seals installed, about 1.2-1.3" tall:
Here's the smaller mount compared to the stock speaker, before installing the new woofer.
For the seals, I used Mortite from Home Depot for the adapters and back of the speaker.
On the face of the speaker, I used self stick rubber weatherstrip. The total for both of these products was about $9 with tax.
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I bought some 8/32 x 1" screws, flat washers, split washers, and nuts from Ace for about $8 including tax. This is what I used to mount the adapters to the car. I prefer this over self tapping type in the car. I then used the supplied self tapping screws that came with the Alpines to mount the speaker to the adapter.
The woofer wiring was pretty easy.
I bought 4 of the VW speaker connectors from Amazon and they are a direct plugin for the woofers.
The rear tweeter wires run straight from the woofer posts to the crossover. I mounted the crossovers for the rear, under the armrests:
The front tweeters, I opted to plug into the factory tweeter harnesses, then to the crossover, then back to the Alpine tweeter. This saved me from running the wire from the door into the vehicle, as this can be a huge PITA. I used some thin spade type connector from Radio Shack at under $3. I mounted the crossovers under the side covers for the dash using the supplied zip ties:
You can also see in the pictures that I added some sound dampening material. I am under the school of thought of placing on flat areas with about 30% area coverage is sufficient.
I also wrapped all of the wiring in Tesa tape to make it look professional and to prevent future rattles:
Overall, my wife and I both agree that the upgrade made a substantial difference. You can tell that the DSP does still play some part in the sound profile, but I was able to reduce the front tweeter output, and the woofers have a built in crossover, unlike the factory ones. I'm guessing the lack of a crossover is what's causing the issue with the distortion. I thought it was from the tweeters, but I listened to these with factory tweeters, and they weren't too bad. As soon as I changed the woofers, most of the high volume problems were corrected.
Now, in my opinion, above 1/2 volume is unbearable, but I can say now, that these can go well above 1/2 without distorting... just saying.
Here's a few more pics of the install and final product: