1st Gen - Testing out Access Cab speaker brackets (6x9)

I've been threatening to find a solution for us 1st gen folks wanting to stuff a 6x9 driver into the rear suicide doors. I formally started that process at the end of last week by ordering $80 in misc adapters for Toyota vehicles (not Tundra specific) that adapt factory holes to fit a 6x9.

Specifically, in looking at the factory opening shown here, I had my sneaky suspicions those holes are using a standard spacing, and someone manufacturers a bracket out there that will fit the holes while also allowing a no-cut/no-drill option to put 6x9 here. (More after the pic)

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I started by ordering the following four products off scAmazon, for easy exchange if needed.

Nulth brand, for 2002-2013 Camry/Corolla/Yaris rear deck, that has ~1" height standoff:

$23 NuIth 6x9" Rear Deck Speaker Adapter Spacer Ring for Toyota Camry/Corolla/Yaris 2002-2013 Install Aftermarket Radio Speaker Mounting Bracket

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CG2YNWPX

Nulth brand, also for 2002-213 Camry/Corolla/Yaris rear deck, but fairly flat:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CG2YNWPX

Red Wold brand, for 2012-2018 Camry or 2014-2018 Highlander, also 1" height standoff:

$24 RED WOLF 6 x 9" Front Door Speaker Mount Adapter w/Speaker Wiring Harness Fit for 2012-2018 Toyota Camry/2014-2018 Highlander Installing Aftermarket Speakers, 1 Pair

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D4QXCGZ9

Finally, good 'ol trusty Metra, this is Metra 82-8146 (Crutchfield link) although I know they also sell a part 82-8152 that sits flatter, and looks really similar to the flat Nulth brand (2nd link above) which makes sense because 8152 is for roughly the same year-range Camry. Anyway, 8146 also sits about an inch high.

$17 Metra 82-8146 6" x 9" Front Speaker Adapter for Select Lexus and Toyota Vehicles, Black, Apple

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IIC6CPE

Only for the sake of documentation, Metra says that 8146 bracket fits the following:

• 09-13 Lexus CT (front)
• 03-14 Lexus GX (front)
• 07-14 Lexus LS (front)
• 04-14 Lexus RX (front)
• 03-14 Toyota 4Runner (front)
• 05-14 Toyota Avalon (front)
• 02-11 Toyota Camry (front)
• 07-14 Toyota FJ Cruiser (front)
• 08-10 Toyota Highlander (front)
• 08-14 Toyota Land Cruiser (front)
• 10-14 Toyota Prius (front)
• 08-14 Toyota Sequoia (front)
• 04-09 Toyota Solara (front)
• 05-14 Toyota Tacoma (front)
• 07-18 Toyota Tundra (front)
• 09-14 Toyota Venza (front)

I knew I was liable to be returning one or more of these products, so ordered all four at the same time, knowing it'd only be one single return to scAmazon, with multiple parts, and I could do a single dropoff so it'd get lumped in with a bunch of other returns and the cost would be negligible for both of us....


Today, I finally popped off the rear passenger door, and got to test-fitting.

The tl;dr results:

• The bolt pattern used by the Metra 8152 of our rear doors matches the bracket for the 1st gen AC rear door 6½" speaker bracket nicely.
• All except the flat Nulth Camry bracket "could" work, with some cutting and trimming and drilling of the bracket but ....
• Anything with a rise that puts the speaker sitting higher than ¼" above the surface of the inner door skin will come into contact with the lower half of the door card (plastic door panel). 1" is far too high, and ½" is probably also pushing it. And due to the OEM metal tab which holds the OEM plastic speaker housing in place, you can't flip the brackets inside out
• Your speaker mounting depth, **if** the speaker was sitting flush, like ... if you were to make your own bracket out of flat ABS plastic stock, would need to be less than 2¾" from basket to magnet in order to seat itself in the door, so even with a flat bracket, you'd need to be thoughtful about which driver you choose.
• I plan to keep and potentially hack up the Metra bracket, see if I can figure out a way to make it work, but I also want to do a little exploration to see if anyone out there makes a 6x9 with a mounting depth of 2½" - 2¾" with specs I think are worthwhile.

Here are some pics. I'll update this thread later with more replies, I am going to hit fleaBay's website and look up the OEM brackets for all of the vehicles in the bullet list above (under the Metra bracket), to see if any of them happen to have a more-flush fitment. It may be totally possible to simply adapt out another OEM Toyota bracket to fit in our doors.

Here's the OEM speaker bracket, retrofitted with an aftermarket JBL Club. I'm adding this here to show the fitment and angle of the speaker, which is anything BUT soundstage-friendly. The top part of the speaker fits into the armrest portion of the door card, and the lower half fits fairly snug up against the lower half of the door card. That lower half - the bottom three rows of boxes on the OEM bracket - was where nearly all of these brackets were having fitment issues, if the bolts lined up.

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This is the first flat Nulth bracket. Not quite tall enough to span the holes, and even if it had been, the lack of any height would've had any speaker hitting the metal bracket at the top of the opening. It would also require using short screws becuse they would likely hit sheetmetal in the door.

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This is the next Nulth bracket. This one is interesting because, if you rotate it 180°, the bolt holes actually will line up, but that wide swooping flange and the ears sticking out as far as they do makes it come in contact with too much stuff on the door. You could technically make the bracket work with some trimming. BUT, the driver would still sit too high in the door, and would make contact with the door card. This could be an option if you trim the excess ears off, and had a bandsaw that would allow you to cut the bracket at an angle from top to bottom.

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Here's the same Nulth bracket rotated 180°. Bottom two holes line up. Top to would line up also, but that metal shelf bracket in the door for the grab handle, you'd need to trim the plastic to fit around it. And yeah, the speaker would still stand too high up.

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I didn't end up taking pics of the Red Wolf bracket. That shit was a joke overall, and even more stupid, they wanted $25 which was more than Metra's roduct, but the Red Wolf piece was a total piece of piece of crap. Very flat, very plasticky, I imagine it would be really noisy without applying foam to the cracket. I'll give Nulth that benefit - their design and structure is very rigid and well thought-out for a brand I've never heard of, and probably didn't exist prior to scAmazon, and won't exist in a couple of years, I'm sure.

Which leaves us with the Metra bracket. Perfect fitment in all four holes, at least on the passenger side. The two brackets in the bag are identical shapes, one is not a mirror of the other, so I'm going to assume that metal tab with the square holes inside the door is on the bottom for the other side of the truck. When I saw how well this bolted in, I was, like, "Oh shit! We have a winner! You can even see the lower holes up top, clearly matching the bolt pattern of the 1st bracket I showed here, that was too small, I guess.

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So naturally, I did what one does, and looked at what our overall mounting depth needed to be if we installed a speaker here, thinking this was "THE" bracket for us to achieve 6x9 fitment. A driver would need to have a mounting dept of 3-15/16" which actually opens the door to a lot of high-power options that would potentially kick as hard as a cheap 8" sub. Wouldn't that be nice?

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I was stoked until I went to fit the door card back on. Clearly, we have contact with the door card for anything sticking out. I guessimated about ¾" too tall on the bracket. Some pictures to show the issue.

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This is as far as the door card will go on using this bracket - and mind you, this is w/o a speaker installed... Avg speaker has ~14" height. So THIS IS WHY Toyota decided to stick with a 6¾" driver, and angle it downward, eh? Otherwise they'd need to reshape the door card and flare it out at the bottom eh?

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So I guess I'll keep on hunting, but sadly, I'm pretty sure even if I found something perfectly flat, I believe the cone throw on the speaker would contact the door card and make hell racket, but beyond that, there's not a reasonable way to use a flat bracket w/o cutting that metal tab out of the door, which I'm not willing to do. I'd rather make use of a 7" driver in the rear, like the ones PowerBass makes, I guess?

Maybe more on this later, but felt it deserved its own thread.

 

Saving this to read at work tonight. Now I need to get some sleep.

 

This is how you science, right here!

Seems like a missed opportunity. I feel like they COULD have fit a 6x9" in there if they'd oriented it horizontally, angled it downward like they did the OEM speaker, to where it runs under the whole armrest. This is almost worth buying a JY door and messing around with to see where you could cut a door.....

 

thx @Shifty You just saved a couple hundred FGT owners seeking audio nirvana in an AC, about 10 hours research.
If I understood your query on Rt vs Lt rear door, the metal tab that holds the Toyota std speaker bracket is at the top of the speaker porthole for both sides...
Longshot, but would be nice if someone finds 'The One' 6x9 to fit the 'porthole' and then pops out a 3D printed prototype mount bracket?
Might easily replace the "best type and place for AC subwoofers" threads....

 

I'd buy it

 

You could go old school and cut the door card and poke through topping it off with a fancy brand speaker grill

 

That's what I was thinking too.

 

@robabeatle has the balls to do something like that. I don't think I could do it.

 

8” subs in the doors. That’s a mod worth hacking for. The 6x9s won’t add much for me. Unless you can get some 6x9 dedicated woofers. Sound stage is all up front, rear fill isn’t a need for me in a truck cab this small. I would like to have some 3.5” mids in the dash, 6.5” sub / mid in the door, tweeters on the sail panel or next to the mids in the dash corners, and a 10” sub that would hide in the factory storage box under the back seat, or the mythical dual 8” in the rear doors.

 

Found some!!! Carry on with the experiment @shifty`

https://www.crutchfield.com/p_13699046/JL-Audio-C1-690.html

 

I mean, it may be do-able, knowing the cage measurements of the 8" driver may actually fit without cutting. Like, the angled cage may work, depth will be your constraint. I'll see if I can pull some specs on, for example, my 8" kicker Comp shallow mount subs, like the 6x9 measurements I was running off of here. And also here are the measurements. The cage would need to be roughly 6" wide at max, which again, may be feasible. And also, a pic of the inside of our rear door card, with the boxed-in area being where a driver essentially hits.

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I think custom made angled adapters would be the way to maximize mounting depth and door card clearance. Needs to be a free-air designed sub as the door will not make a great enclosure without a lot of work. Although I believe there is plenty of room in the door for an enclosure, would be an agonizing build. Probably made with glass after some forms were placed inside with rigid foam maybe

 

The easiest way I can imagine to throw an 8" in the door would be utilizing this section, where some wiring enters the door. That could be probably accomplished in the following way, and potentially easier:

• Pop out the plastic insert for the rear door pocket, i.e. cut/melt the plastic rivets circled in yellow to remove the pocket itself, and either replace it entirely with a new light-weight housing, or otherwise
• Your 8" (maybe even a 10") would need to be where the red circle is, I'm highlighting the blue plastic clips for reference, although I think the red circle needs to be closer to the right in this pic
• It would sit effectively inside the pocket if you did this, but there's nothing saying you couldn't convert the pocket into a cloth-faced speaker cover, make a cloth cover that snaps over the opening.
• You'd need to do a chunk of work to the latch mechanicals inside the door itself, for the latch, sitting above my red circle, and it may require minor relocation of whatever the wiring/stuff is in the door (I'd worry about rattles from that latch mechanism though)

I think if someone had a complete damaged AC door shell with the door card still intact, this would be something you could easily spend time on figuring out. But with the resources I have at-hand right now ...

Some pics of all that, and also a side-by-side of the rear driver's OEM enclosure, next to the actual panel where it sits so you can sort of see the angles and relationship of the door card to the driver and its enclosure.

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