Okay folks, couple of questions:

1) What are the specs (just diameter size) of the '01 LS430 speakers (front tweets, front doors, rear doors and rear Sub)? Can I use the stock Mark Levinson system (amp) to power new speakers or is there some ridiculous ohm/power rating that would make it impossible?

2) Has the dilemma of DVD play on the Nav ever been solved? I heard that you could do it with a stock system, but then everyone else is talking about a required kit. What is the best kit and parts list that will be needed to accomplish external display on the nav as well as headrest and independant sources for the headrests?

Thanks for the help!

Lee

 

I've seen the ML 430 speaker specs posted on a web site once, but can't exactly find them now. I've upgrade my front ML speakers to Dynaudio system 240MkII, so I can give you a basic idea of how they where replaced and my upgraded results. The front door speakers appear to be 6" and are secured by a plastic factory spacer. This provides about 1" clearance to the doors sheet metal and the factory spacer will not easily fit any other speaker and defiantly not a 6.5". So I used a generic 1" Mirata 6.5" speaker spacer and saved the ML speaker spacer and speaker should I ever go back to the stock ML system. The new generic spacer was barely large enough to cover the metal opening in the door from removing the plastic factory spacer. I secured the new spacer to the metal door by sandwiching it in place using 4 nuts and bolts with metal & rubber washers. The Dynaudio MW160 speaker fits into the door panel perfectly now. The sound results when comparing the left Dynaudio MW160 vs. ML mid bass driver where pretty impressive. A much lower and cleaner extension of bass frequencies that even made the door shake now! Turning the volume up all the way, I don't get the distortion that used to be present with the stock ML speakers. The Dynaudio efficiency is just as loud as the stock ML speakers. The tweeters in the dash appear to be about 3/4" and are pointed directly to the center of the car. You can remove the speaker grills from the top of your dash and take a look at them. These tweeters are not easy to remove and because of this I'm still considering mounting the Dynaudio MD100 tweets in the A pillar or disassembling them for the dash location. Still working on acquiring the best imaging. For subwoofer it was listed the LS430 has a 8" free air sub, but I'm going to try to replace this with a JLAudio 10IB4. I'll let you know how that goes.

As for the navigation system playing video. Forum member Vlad has produced a kit using Pioneer's GEX-P7000TV (see forum message https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...threadid=54236) and his web site is www.video-nav.com for more information. Or a company called StreetEffectz has built a kit that does not use a Pioneer video decoder part, but does not have a TV tuner (see new message in this forum titled "New navi conversion DOES NOT require Pioneer GEX-P7000TV". The ability to play video on your factory navigation system is still going to cost you between $495 and $1000.

Hope this helps a little.

 

Any idea where to pick up the IB4s? Seems like they have been discontinued for a while.

TIA.

Ryan