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I see infinity has the 6532 EX and 6532 IX speakers. Is one better than the other? Not getting a lot of info on Crutchfield.. Appreciate your time and thanks for your posts
Looks like the ex are discontinued and the replacements are the ix. The ix seem to go lower in frequency down to 53hz vs 57hz for the ex. I am assuming that you can probably get the ex off eBay cheaper since they are discontinued. The specs are almost identical so up to you if you want to do some leg work and find the ex’s or buy from anyone and get the ix and pay a little higher price. I think I saw retail for ex was $99 and ix are $109. These are only for door speakers they are 6.5”
When you put the sound deadner on the speaker did you put it between the speaker and its mount? Also did you enclose the backside of the speaker or just put deadner on the door behind it? Thanks, appreciate you
First of all, thanks for your great post with its detailed info. Its helping me a lot along with camfused's post. I got the grills off and the speaker bolts out but for the life of me cannot figure out where the little tab is that unlocks the harness?
Dennis2020 I plan to run active 3-way up front via Audison APF 8.9 (has built in DSP)
What do I need to do with the factory tweeter wires?
Should I disconnect the center channel, or leave it to run off the factory amp?
Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this thread. Some of the better known audio shops in town have not been able to answer most of the questions that have been addressed here.
I referenced this thread and installed 6 new polk audio speakers in my 2014 Es350 today. I bought the red wolf speaker harness adapters that BUKI recommended. I had to reverse the polarity, no big deal, that was for just the front 4” speakers at each dash corner. I installed Polk Audio DB402 dash speakers and 2 pair of Polk Audio DB652 at the 4 doors. I didn’t replace the rear deck sub woofer. As a few CL members have said, the sound improvement was pretty dramatic. The OEM speakers, premium sound, no ML and no NAV, were surprisingly light and small compared to the polks. I bought through crutchfield and they included all the speaker adapters and wire harness adapters, except the front dash speakers. I had to remove 2 mounting tabs from each front dash speaker, they have 4, in order for them to fit into the well and secure with 2 bolts per speaker. I also had to trim a bit of metal out at each mounting tab to allow the bolt to fit inside the slot of each tab. I’m very happy with the results, I did have a problem with the right rear door. I think the latch may be funky, the white ended door lock cable, runs from the latch to the interior door handle lock lever, would not move properly and I had to mess with it a bit to allow the door to lock and unlock. I think the latch is going bad, I had to leave the cable disconnected at the door handle for it to lock and unlock, otherwise the door would not unlock and open. I got lucky, I closed the door and it wouldn’t re-open, I was able to finally get it to open by rapidly cycling the lock unlock buttons. It’s the only door I had a problem with. I never use the back door from the inside, I suspect it’s probably had the problem since I’ve had it, because a few times passengers tried to get out from inside and I had to power unlock it for them, when I removed the panel both cables popped out of their slots and it’s possible the lock cable wasn’t installed all the way in before I took it apart. Anyone who’s dealt with that issue is welcome to chime in, like I said I think it’s a latch going bad? Otherwise all is well and for about $210 to Crutchfield and $15 to Amazon, I’ve got a very good sound upgrade.
My lock cable ripped out of lock lever(plastic) at the latch. I chose to replace the latch, due to the ball not snapping into the lever very snugly, got an Aisin latch off Amazon for less than half of the Lexus dealer. I didn’t trust snapping the cable back into the lever in the latch and having it come out and jam up the latch again, this time unable to get the door open and having to deal with the panel on and door unable to open. I will save the old latch and possibly cut out the actuator motor and reuse it for another door latch if an actuator motor fails.
Center channel grille is much harder to pry out, be patient and jiggle it a little to get the back snaps to release.
I experimented with it a little bit. My local speaker shop said they usually end up disconnecting these. I disconnected mine, but found the phone volume too low. When it is connected there is barely any sound coming out of it in regular (non 5.1 mode) hard to tell it is even making any sound.. I will probably leave the stock one in.
Center channel= 5 ohm, 116mm bolt spacing, 10mm hex heads. Grill touches the foam surround, you have to be careful about how flush your replacement speakers are. Hex head with stamped metal piece under it is .329".
Hello,
Anyone else has a problem with the center speaker after upgrading the volume sounding low? I would like to know before I start mine.
Thanks.
I'm a glutton for punishment and I was inspired by this post: https://www.clublexus.com/forums/es-...build-log.html so I decided to go ahead and replace the dash corner speakers. In some respects, this was much, much easier than the front door speaker replacement, in other, more fundamental ways, it was much more difficult. I replaced the stock speakers (they're not even true 3" speakers - all the plastic housing masks that they're actually only about 2" paper cone speakers) with a pair of Infinity Reference X REF-3002cfx which are 3.5" two ways that have 3ohm impedance. OEM vs Infinity Reference X REF-3002cfx
Proceed at your own risk.
The easy part: Getting to and taking out the speakers is very easy. Tools needed: a trim pry tool and a small adjustable wrench.
Use the trim tool to pop out the interior front corner (the corner closest to the center of the dash and furthest from the windshield) and then move along that front edge (furthest from the windshield). The clips are easy to disengage with just a little bit of pressure, and then the edge along the windshield are just tabs that hook in - just pull away from the windshield when you have that front edge out. It'll take all of 10 seconds for this entire procedure. You'll also discover that the dash material is really just an enormous piece of very dense foam.
The speaker is held in place by 2 bolts, just loosen them and unclip the speaker from the wiring harness by pressing on the small tab.
The hard part: There are two things that make this frustrating: 1. the non-standard wiring harness and 2. the non-standard mounting holes. There are some workarounds and I spent some time trying to figure it out without having to cut the wiring harness, but the easy way is obviously to 1. splice the wiring harness, and 2. create a custom mount.
If you don't want to splice, this is what you're trying to wire into (female end):
And this is what the harness at the speaker end looks like:
The OEM dash speaker male-end of the harness
I really really didn't want to cut into the wiring or destroy the original speakers so I did what any other DIYer would do: I ordered a spare dash speaker from eBay. To my surprise and delight it came with the wiring harness attached to the speaker so I could play around with it.
I kicked around the idea of creating a custom harness using plastic molds (I actually made the mold, but didn't bother going through with it) or a 3D printer, but I actually found an off the shelf component that worked just fine, after a few minor modifications.
You know what has pins that have the same size and spacing? A wiring harness for a GM speaker (I ordered a Metra 72-4568 harness). This is what it looks like:
Obviously, the plastic housing around the pins doesn't fit, but that's why you see the wire cutters in the last picture. I trimmed that stuff off and voila!
You don't need to be that careful, but just keep in mind that the metal pins are more brittle than they are malleable. Yeah, I ended up having to order a second set of the wiring harnesses.
I also shortened the pins a little so the fit was more flush:
That tail end is from the speaker I bought off of ebay to make sure everything fits. When I put the speaker into the car, I also electrical taped everything together.
The other tough part is that the mounting holes are slightly wider apart than the aftermarket speakers. Probably by about 1/4". It's that frustrating.
Here's the thing though (caution: shortcut ahead) - it doesn't really matter. Why? Well, one bolt fits just fine and can secure the speaker. You can also screw in the other bolt in and the washer portion of the bolt will hold down the speaker just fine. OK, this is purely just my assessment and I may revisit this in the future, but the fit was very tight.
And...that's it. Put the grills back on (slot in the windshield side first then pop in the front) and all done.
The sound is definitely fuller and cleaner with the upgraded speakers. Doesn't make up for that subwoofer, but the dash speaker upgrade is noticeable (especially since I already upgraded the front door speakers).
The right dash speaker has the brown and black. Is the brown negative or the black negative? I would think the black is negative.
Thanks
Actually I ordered the speakers from crutchfield so they included the harness for free, I just asked them since they didn't have a compatible harness. And yes they were off the shelf - I ordered the replacement harness (I broke one of the ones they sent me) from Amazon. I think they were $5.95.
Hi Notabot,
I did all 3 dash speakers yesterday. Thanks for the guide you made it easier. But I was wondering if you could confirm the colors for polarity?
Left dash: I got Red+ and white-
Center dash: Yellow+ and black-
Right dash: Black+ and brown-
I wonder if I connected teh polarity correctly. I follow the marking on the side dash speakers. But the center speaker doesn't have polarity markings.
Infinity speakers
