Want to take my 2010 Yukon XL Denali with 180,000 miles for a family trip from Michigan To Florida - Can you help me make this a success!
- Thread starter bobby2175
- Start date
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avalonandl
Full Access Member
I put additional weather stripping aroung my front doors, made a noticalbe difference
I'm working on the speakers now but have a question (never done speakers before).
I purchased the Kappas. Front door speaker went in pretty easy with the GM retrofit cable from Crutchfied.
I haven't yet pulled the a-pillar to see how the tweeter is installed, but do I need to put the crossover in that came with the new speakers or can I just connect to factory wiring?
Here are some pics of the sound deadening I'm doing. I'm doing 2 layers on the outside panel and still figuring out what to do with the inside. It's a little bit more difficult with the wires, cables, cutouts, etc.
I also was very thorough in looking for rattles. One major culprit were bolts that had loosened with time - I retightened everything. The other one was the intrusion beam. Although GM added a rubberized deadener under it, it is completely inadequate. You need to isolate it or it does rattle.
First layer start
First layer finish:
Start of the second layer. You can see how thick this material is:
Almost finished 2nd layer, plugged some small holes and installed an acoustic panel behind the speaker location.
This is an unbelievable amount of work. it's worse when you are a perfectionist. It's easy but requires a lot of cutting, measuring fit up, etc. I did not spare any part of the exterior side of the door unless it was reinforced or wasn't going to be feasible to cover.. I found metal all the way up to where the window sits and covered it. This meant fishing my hands through the cutouts and sticking two layers down. I found that my hands and arms could twist and bend into places I never knew possible.
This does add a lot of weight to the door. I will have to figure out how much when I'm done here. I was also going to do some before and after dB measurements but my dB meter arrived two days later and I couldn't wait for it. I will get some readings after I get this driver's door done and before I start the others.
After spending a day and a half on this, I'm questioning how much benefit I'll see...but this was my rabbit hole I decided to go down.
I'm also not going to be as thorough on the inside sections of the door and see if I need to add more later as it's much easier to do.
After I get through the doors, I also plan on covering some of the high noise areas above the wheels, but this may be after my trip.
More pics to come.
I also was very thorough in looking for rattles. One major culprit were bolts that had loosened with time - I retightened everything. The other one was the intrusion beam. Although GM added a rubberized deadener under it, it is completely inadequate. You need to isolate it or it does rattle.
First layer start
First layer finish:
Start of the second layer. You can see how thick this material is:
Almost finished 2nd layer, plugged some small holes and installed an acoustic panel behind the speaker location.
This is an unbelievable amount of work. it's worse when you are a perfectionist. It's easy but requires a lot of cutting, measuring fit up, etc. I did not spare any part of the exterior side of the door unless it was reinforced or wasn't going to be feasible to cover.. I found metal all the way up to where the window sits and covered it. This meant fishing my hands through the cutouts and sticking two layers down. I found that my hands and arms could twist and bend into places I never knew possible.
This does add a lot of weight to the door. I will have to figure out how much when I'm done here. I was also going to do some before and after dB measurements but my dB meter arrived two days later and I couldn't wait for it. I will get some readings after I get this driver's door done and before I start the others.
After spending a day and a half on this, I'm questioning how much benefit I'll see...but this was my rabbit hole I decided to go down.
I'm also not going to be as thorough on the inside sections of the door and see if I need to add more later as it's much easier to do.
After I get through the doors, I also plan on covering some of the high noise areas above the wheels, but this may be after my trip.
More pics to come.
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I don’t believe you’ll need the crossovers, but Crutchfield has an excellent helpline. I’ll bet they’ll be able to answer the question for you.
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Hi Dave!
This was actually why I was asking. They said I should install it at the tweeter when I called yesterday, but I saw comments within the forum when I was researching it that said you didn't need it.
Crutchfield's view was that if I didn't add it at the tweeter, I'd blow it. They wanted me to tape off the wires for the door speaker because I won't use it and only connect to the tweeter.
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Wow, that makes no sense to me. The system was designed to use those tweeters in the a-pillar and I anticipate would be driving them separately through a built in crossover, accordingly. I wonder if they were thinking that you upgraded the head unit and amp. In that case yes, you would need the crossovers.
I completely agree with you and I was really confused when talking with them. I even told them I wasn't changing the head unit. I'm going to try calling them again today before I get to it, but I'm inclined to skip it.
I haven't looked at the gmt900 tweeters but on the gmt800's the "bose" crossover was just a soldered inline filter cap in the speaker wire directly behind the tweeter
and.... a quick look online at a 900 tweeter, confirms this is still the case
iamdub
Full Access Member
What speakers? A component set with the separate woofer, crossover and tweeter?
The Bose amp already crosses over frequencies for each speaker. I'd connect the tweeter to the factory wires as-is. A component set is mostly a waste since the frequencies have already been modified for the particular speaker they're going to. So, you can't run the wires feeding the door speaker into the crossover then out to each of their respective tweeters as you would with a "traditional" setup where a full range signal is sent to the doors.
If anything, maybe add a "bass blocker" capacitor, like what Wes just mentioned. They have them that are designed to be connected to the wires going to the speaker/tweeter.
