Replaced dash tweeters w/ Polk DB351 coax

[petem6]

After lurking over in the CX-5 area, I decided to check how similar the 6 was. Popped off the dash tweeter grills and found similar to what CX5 guys were finding. Had a pair of refurb e-bay Polk 3.5" coax in my parts bin so removed the tweeters w/ angled #2 phillips. Cut the connector off and then stripped and soldered - heat shrinked the joint - and then found a plastic boss that supports the cable interfered. Using a sharp woodcarving tool - shaved it enough to fit.
Result - fuller clear sound more at head level. Had thought to replace the door speakers but this may satisfy for awhile.
Tweeters removed are 4 ohm 25 watt and measured 3.5 ohms. Coax also were 4 ohms so audio head should not see any difference.
Very tight working space - pics show speaker comparison, magnet is 2.75" so a 2" magnet would avoid the difficult trimming.
Solder pic shows the trimmed boss @ the end of the fuzzy orig cable.
A rachet angled #2 phillips like Harbor Freight carries would speed things up - most work is outside looking thu the windshield and reaching around.
My car is the Sport model w/ 6 speakers and touch screen head unit which seems good so far.

 

[aachoo]

I thought the green wire was negative, but you have it hooked to the positive of the Polk speaker. Can you confirm the color of the wires and the polarity. Thx

 

[petem6]

Yep Green is negative - I may have to pull that speaker back out to check if I did it wrong - tho speaker mtg screws only go into plastic so it works fine.
Opps - Wait - look closer at the pic - green is hooked to black - brown to red, had me going there for a minute (hi)

After using it for a day now and trying both MPR (classical) and Country, I'm even more pleased with the improved sound and crispness.

 

[aachoo]

I must have been looking with a squint (freak), you have made the right connections. Based on your write-up I ordered the DB351 speakers from Amazon yesterday, hopefully I will have similar experience as you.

 

[NCMazda6]

I tried a similar setup just for kicks but it sounded terrible on my Alpine H.u. The radio does notice a difference as a tweeter may show 4 ohms but does not present much of a load due to the extremely high frequency response. 3 1/2s are another story but maybe the OEM radio doesn't mind it as much.

 

[josby]

Any pics of the final product before putting the grills back over top of them?

Do you think it'd be possible to get a 4" speaker in there?

 

[petem6]

Any pics of the final product before putting the grills back over top of them?

Do you think it'd be possible to get a 4" speaker in there?

I did quite a bit of trimming to get the 3.5" in there - I'd say 4" would be very difficult. pc att.

Also I went back and trimmed the honeycomb bracing underside of the grill mesh just above the tweeter section so grill does not touch now when clipped back on.

Still quite happy with them - their rating is 35 watts continuous max - and sensitivity is 91db
( produce 91 db sound @ one meter @ 1 watt) so they are not a power hog and stock touchscreen head seems to power them fine.
There are several other installs of polk DB351's in the dash over on the CX-5 section that has also happy users - my post here was to show that different dash on the 6 would still allow us to do the mod that the CX-5 owners had already done and were happy with - as I'm guessing that radio and speakers are much the same.
link to that 13 page thread is here:
http://www.mazdas247.com/forum/showthread.php?123815167-Radio-Speakers-on-CX-5-SPORT-model