I installed the Hertz ESK-163L.5 system in my 2008 2-door Rabbit. I had a hard time finding guidance for this, so here's mine.
My install was largely based on this guide for the Focal 3-way install:
http://www.r32oc.com/topic/31759-fittingwiring-mk5-front-rear-speakers-3-door/
This guide will herein be referred to as "R32 Focal guy".
Also somewhat based on this one:
http://www.golfmk5.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84764
I removed door panels with the help of these threads:
http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?2749615
http://www.golfmkv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82260
Woofer:
Used the Autoleads SAK-3108 165mm Speaker Adaptor from Amazon UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Autoleads-SAK-3108-Speaker-Adaptor-Volkswagen/dp/B001NSSDBG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386285882&sr=8-1&keywords=Autoleads+SAK-3108+165mm
This adapter made the woofer install plug n' play. R32 Focal guy mentions something about reversed polarity of the adapter wires. I tried the wires both ways on the speaker leads and it made no difference to my ear. Approach the problem as you see fit.
R32 Focal guy shows how you'll need to drill a hole in the adapter to thread the adapter wires through. You'll also of course need to drill out the rivets holding the old woofer in you door.
I've read this is problematic for some, that the plastic of the old woofer flange would melt, so the rivet would lose purchase and spin freely. Knowing this, I drilled intermittently; I drilled each head what I guessed to be "half through", then I let the rivet rest and cool and moved on to the next one. In this way each rivet head came off easily with two doses of drilling, and no damage to the original woofer flange plastic was caused.
The stock woofer was then pulled and the rivet stem ends stuck through the door were pinched small with needlenose so they could be knocked in. Put duct tape on the back side of the rivet to keep it from falling into the door where it can rattle around. Really, do that.
Attach the Hertz woofer to the Autoleads adapter flange with included screws (be careful not to overtighten) and thread your adapter wires out of the hole drilled in the flange (seal hole around wires with white silicon to keep them from rattling). I riveted this back in with 3/16" diameter, 3/16" - 1/4" grip range rivets.
Tweeter:
Sail panel removal quoted from these forums: "you unscrew and unclip it from the door and yank it until it comes off."
I modified my sail panel a bit to accomodate the Hertz tweeter. After you pull out the factory tweeter you're left with a little tweeter basket that's fixed in place by 3 plastic stakes with melted and flattened ends. I sliced the ends off with a pocket knife. An exacto would probably work even better.
Remove the melted plastic heads, lift the factory tweeter basket out, and you have this:
Then I scored out the plastic stakes:
I found the face of the Hertz tweeter to fit nicely in a 1-1/2" sch 40 PVC pipe.
So I sawed off some adapter rings about 3/8" thick
And used em to mount in the tweeters. I ran a bead of white silicon around all contact surfaces.
I did as R32 Focal guy did and snipped off the factory tweeter wiring connector and spliced it together with the Hertz tweeter wires. Note there are 2 factory negatives to splice to the 1 Hertz negative.
Midrange:
The Hertz midrange looks like it's too big to fit. It nearly is. It will press against the door skin and make reinstalling the door panel more difficult. But the door panel will reinstall. More on this later.
I followed suit with R32 Focal guy and cut the female wiring socket off the stock midrange and soldered it to the Hertz midrange speaker contacts, to go for plug n' play. I recommend this. It's a convenience when it comes to putting the panel back on.
Here's the midrange looking too big next to a rule and the stock mid:
Here's a comparison of stock mid and Hertz mid on the door panel interior:
It looks like it shouldn't fit but it will with a little romancing. The other problem is that the Hertz mid mounting flange screw holes just barely align with the door panel mid mounting screw holes. I was unable to reuse the stock u-clip speed nuts to line up to the point of overlap for the Hertz holes and the door panel holes. The supplied Hertz u-clips were virtually the same as stock and also unusable. My schedule precluded finding any u-clips that would work, so ultimately I settled for flat speed nuts of this variety:
The only way I got those to work was to hold them in place with tweezers at the underside of the door panel mid mounting screw holes, carefully starting the screws in. This was not an elegant solution. Someone else needs to find the right u-clip to work for this.
As previously mentioned, the door panel will mount back up but it's gonna be tight. The Hertz mid will put an outward pressure on the panel. This is not a problem for the driver door, but it is an issue for the top handle screw of the passenger door, you know, the one by the speaker:
I was unable to replace the stock screw in this location; the problem was the screw head was too large...given the angle the door panel had buckled out, the head on the stock screw was too large to achieve the angle the screw needed to get started in the threads. Fortunately a socket head screw was lithe enough to get started and did the trick. It's a 6mm screw like so:
Crossover:
I wanted to keep all my door wiring intact, and stock crossovers are cheap, so I sacrificed my crossovers to create plug n' play reverse wiring harnesses for the Hertz crossovers.
My crossovers were held together by a pair of screws fastened with blue loctite. A couple of drops of paint thinner down the screw holes on that loctite will cause it to dissolve and make disassembly easier. Then you can open up the factory crossover.
Unplug the white plug end of the harness from the crossover. To conserve harness length, use a thumbtack to release wire pins from white plug end (white plug end already separated in this picture -- for illustration purposes only).
Strip the loose harness wire ends and you're ready to wire up to the crossover.
The wires are numbered by the 12-pin socket at the other end of the harness, though it only houses the necessary 10 speaker wires.
Using this pin numbering for the speaker wires, connections to the crossover are as follows:
IN(+): Pin 2
IN(-): Pin 1
WF(+): Pin 4
WF(-): Pin 3
MD(+): Pin 6
MD(-): Pin 5 + Pin 7
TW(+): Pin 9
TW(-): Pin 8 + Pin 10
End result:
I followed suit with R32 Focal guy and carved out the original crossover hollow in the door panel foam insert to fit the Hertz crossover. I didn't fix the crossover to the foam though; I used 3" industrial velcro pads to stick it to the door skin. To do this I pulled the foam insert out of the door panel, stuck the crossover into the hole I'd carved out for it, and preparing the velcro pads for adhesion, lined the foam up with where it goes around the woofer and pressed the crossover onto the door. It worked for me.
End Notes:
The speakers sound good, noticeably better than stock. Two musician friends concur.
I used black gaffer tape to tidy up this job and it was really good stuff. The cheapest I came by a roll was about $9 but I really recommend it. Really great stuff. Make sure to tape down all your wires and especially the plastic connectors and don't leave anything to flap or rattle around inside the door.
I covered the inner door skin with stinger roadkill sound deadener. I got talked into deadener by every car audio thread I read. If I had to do this over again I'd skip it. I got into this to replace two blown speakers. I didn't require any higher audio performance than not-blown speakers, and I was once very happy with the stock speakers, so in retrospect I feel silly about the deadener and question its necessity. Is the sound better with deadener? Probably. Can I honestly quantify how much better? No.
My install was largely based on this guide for the Focal 3-way install:
http://www.r32oc.com/topic/31759-fittingwiring-mk5-front-rear-speakers-3-door/
This guide will herein be referred to as "R32 Focal guy".
Also somewhat based on this one:
http://www.golfmk5.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84764
I removed door panels with the help of these threads:
http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?2749615
http://www.golfmkv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82260
Woofer:
Used the Autoleads SAK-3108 165mm Speaker Adaptor from Amazon UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Autoleads-SAK-3108-Speaker-Adaptor-Volkswagen/dp/B001NSSDBG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386285882&sr=8-1&keywords=Autoleads+SAK-3108+165mm
This adapter made the woofer install plug n' play. R32 Focal guy mentions something about reversed polarity of the adapter wires. I tried the wires both ways on the speaker leads and it made no difference to my ear. Approach the problem as you see fit.
R32 Focal guy shows how you'll need to drill a hole in the adapter to thread the adapter wires through. You'll also of course need to drill out the rivets holding the old woofer in you door.
I've read this is problematic for some, that the plastic of the old woofer flange would melt, so the rivet would lose purchase and spin freely. Knowing this, I drilled intermittently; I drilled each head what I guessed to be "half through", then I let the rivet rest and cool and moved on to the next one. In this way each rivet head came off easily with two doses of drilling, and no damage to the original woofer flange plastic was caused.
The stock woofer was then pulled and the rivet stem ends stuck through the door were pinched small with needlenose so they could be knocked in. Put duct tape on the back side of the rivet to keep it from falling into the door where it can rattle around. Really, do that.
Attach the Hertz woofer to the Autoleads adapter flange with included screws (be careful not to overtighten) and thread your adapter wires out of the hole drilled in the flange (seal hole around wires with white silicon to keep them from rattling). I riveted this back in with 3/16" diameter, 3/16" - 1/4" grip range rivets.
Tweeter:
Sail panel removal quoted from these forums: "you unscrew and unclip it from the door and yank it until it comes off."
I modified my sail panel a bit to accomodate the Hertz tweeter. After you pull out the factory tweeter you're left with a little tweeter basket that's fixed in place by 3 plastic stakes with melted and flattened ends. I sliced the ends off with a pocket knife. An exacto would probably work even better.
Remove the melted plastic heads, lift the factory tweeter basket out, and you have this:
Then I scored out the plastic stakes:
I found the face of the Hertz tweeter to fit nicely in a 1-1/2" sch 40 PVC pipe.
So I sawed off some adapter rings about 3/8" thick
And used em to mount in the tweeters. I ran a bead of white silicon around all contact surfaces.
I did as R32 Focal guy did and snipped off the factory tweeter wiring connector and spliced it together with the Hertz tweeter wires. Note there are 2 factory negatives to splice to the 1 Hertz negative.
Midrange:
The Hertz midrange looks like it's too big to fit. It nearly is. It will press against the door skin and make reinstalling the door panel more difficult. But the door panel will reinstall. More on this later.
I followed suit with R32 Focal guy and cut the female wiring socket off the stock midrange and soldered it to the Hertz midrange speaker contacts, to go for plug n' play. I recommend this. It's a convenience when it comes to putting the panel back on.
Here's the midrange looking too big next to a rule and the stock mid:
Here's a comparison of stock mid and Hertz mid on the door panel interior:
It looks like it shouldn't fit but it will with a little romancing. The other problem is that the Hertz mid mounting flange screw holes just barely align with the door panel mid mounting screw holes. I was unable to reuse the stock u-clip speed nuts to line up to the point of overlap for the Hertz holes and the door panel holes. The supplied Hertz u-clips were virtually the same as stock and also unusable. My schedule precluded finding any u-clips that would work, so ultimately I settled for flat speed nuts of this variety:
The only way I got those to work was to hold them in place with tweezers at the underside of the door panel mid mounting screw holes, carefully starting the screws in. This was not an elegant solution. Someone else needs to find the right u-clip to work for this.
As previously mentioned, the door panel will mount back up but it's gonna be tight. The Hertz mid will put an outward pressure on the panel. This is not a problem for the driver door, but it is an issue for the top handle screw of the passenger door, you know, the one by the speaker:
I was unable to replace the stock screw in this location; the problem was the screw head was too large...given the angle the door panel had buckled out, the head on the stock screw was too large to achieve the angle the screw needed to get started in the threads. Fortunately a socket head screw was lithe enough to get started and did the trick. It's a 6mm screw like so:
Crossover:
I wanted to keep all my door wiring intact, and stock crossovers are cheap, so I sacrificed my crossovers to create plug n' play reverse wiring harnesses for the Hertz crossovers.
My crossovers were held together by a pair of screws fastened with blue loctite. A couple of drops of paint thinner down the screw holes on that loctite will cause it to dissolve and make disassembly easier. Then you can open up the factory crossover.
Unplug the white plug end of the harness from the crossover. To conserve harness length, use a thumbtack to release wire pins from white plug end (white plug end already separated in this picture -- for illustration purposes only).
Strip the loose harness wire ends and you're ready to wire up to the crossover.
The wires are numbered by the 12-pin socket at the other end of the harness, though it only houses the necessary 10 speaker wires.
Using this pin numbering for the speaker wires, connections to the crossover are as follows:
IN(+): Pin 2
IN(-): Pin 1
WF(+): Pin 4
WF(-): Pin 3
MD(+): Pin 6
MD(-): Pin 5 + Pin 7
TW(+): Pin 9
TW(-): Pin 8 + Pin 10
End result:
I followed suit with R32 Focal guy and carved out the original crossover hollow in the door panel foam insert to fit the Hertz crossover. I didn't fix the crossover to the foam though; I used 3" industrial velcro pads to stick it to the door skin. To do this I pulled the foam insert out of the door panel, stuck the crossover into the hole I'd carved out for it, and preparing the velcro pads for adhesion, lined the foam up with where it goes around the woofer and pressed the crossover onto the door. It worked for me.
End Notes:
The speakers sound good, noticeably better than stock. Two musician friends concur.
I used black gaffer tape to tidy up this job and it was really good stuff. The cheapest I came by a roll was about $9 but I really recommend it. Really great stuff. Make sure to tape down all your wires and especially the plastic connectors and don't leave anything to flap or rattle around inside the door.
I covered the inner door skin with stinger roadkill sound deadener. I got talked into deadener by every car audio thread I read. If I had to do this over again I'd skip it. I got into this to replace two blown speakers. I didn't require any higher audio performance than not-blown speakers, and I was once very happy with the stock speakers, so in retrospect I feel silly about the deadener and question its necessity. Is the sound better with deadener? Probably. Can I honestly quantify how much better? No.
