New front door speakers for Grande Punto!

Ever thought to yourself:"Gee, those speakers in my GP there sure don't sound too good..."? Well, first you probably switched the HeadUnit (HU) to something better, maybe even if it cost you the Blu&Me? Well, fear not, if you bought a decent HU you won't miss that nasty contraption called Blu&Me. After the initial excitement from getting a new HU has settled you will start to feel the sound quality from the stock speakers lacking. Well then, get your ass off to the local store to get yourself some nifty new 6,5" speakers 'cause today WE WILL BE INSTALLING FRONT DOOR SPEAKERS IN OUR GP (that's short for Grande Punto, you know?)!



First you have to remove the three allen screws (one is hidden in a compartment behind the door latch/handle) and also the four normal screws at the bottom holding the door panel on the door frame. Then pull the control console up and pull out the plugs.

A good idea is to prepare a small plastic bag for each door to hold the components you remove so that they will not get lost!

Now start to pry the panel outwards, I started with the outer lower corner until the fasteners give in and the panel come loose. Keep pulling until the door panel is only hanging from the top. Grab the handle and pull upwards until the door panel comes off. You cannot remove the panel until you have unhooked the wire for the door opening mechanism. This should be a simple task. Next you should undo the stock tweeter speaker cable plug. You should now have removed the door panel!



Now get your ass inside if it's cold OUTSIDE, else find yourself a spot in the sun and prepare to go on... I chose to go inside, below is a picture of my left front door before I really started messing things up...



PLEASE USE YOUR COMMON SENSE DURING THE FOLLOWING STEP, SINCE ADDING TOO MUCH DAMPENER OR APPLYING TOO THICK A LAYER MAY PREVENT YOU FROM BEING ABLE TO PUT THE DOOR BACK ON. IF THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR YOU TO FIGURE OUT, DON'T PROCEED!!!
First thing you may want is to put some resonance dampener on the larger surfaces of your door to keep it from rattling along with your music. I believe the brand name out there is Dynamat, but I chose some CHEAPASS bitumen plates I found at a local retailer. As these can be pretty stiff to work with (not everything works best when stiff) you can use a heat-gun to gently heat up the plates after you have cut them into shape. Please be careful as the heat-gun might very well melt your door panel if you get too close or heat it up too much, SO DON'T! Below you see the result of my efforts. Do bear with me: My panel did not ALL OF A SUDDEN TRANSFORM INTO A RIGHT-SIDE DOOR PANEL, I simply forgot to take a picture of the left-hand one for this.



Next thing I wanted was to further dampen the doors, so I bought some spray-glue and some sound-dampening felt. CAREFULLY I glued the felt on the inside of the door panel, making cutouts where necessary. ALSO, PLEASE DO NOTE I ACTUALLY DID NOT ONLY MAKE NECESSARY CUTOUTS, APPARENTLY I THOUGHT MAKING A HUGE-ASS OVERSIZE HOLE AROUND THE SPEAKER WOULD MAKE SENSE! Finally I made a hole for the tweeter using a cup-drill.



Take care when making the hole for the tweeter it just looks better when it is a "snug fit".



Now is the time for mounting your mid-woofers, as mine were too long to fit into the door I had to buy a set of adaptor-rings to get them out of the door frame. I secured my adaptors using rivets. Prepare the installation by running whatever gauge wire you deem fit through the adaptor.



Now screw in your speakers and go get your "now-quite-heavy" door panels



Make a small hole in the door panel and feed the wires through. I have chosen to have the crossover in the cabin which is why you see two wires coming from the door, one for the tweeters and one for the mid-woofers. Now see if you can find your plastic bag full of all the bits'n'pieces you removed earlier and try fitting your door by first connecting the door locking wire and then sliding the panel down at the top. Get the allen-screws and regular screws in again and push the panel back in place. I actually added quite a bit apparently, since there is now a very small gap between the door panel and the door frame, but it is not something i ever see during normal use.
Finally put the console back in and you should be ready too wire everything up and give it a test drive!



You should now be able to enjoy several things...
A: The music
B: Less road noice
C: The sweet-ass sound your door now makes when you close it, more of a "THUMP" than a "CLANCK" now!

Getting "ACC" for aftermarket HU in a Grande Punto.

Apparently FIAT did not install the "ACC" wire in the harness for Grande Punto whitch means you have to either accept...
A: That your new radio might never want to turn on, or...
B: Re-wire the radio harness (most brand headunits will have plugs on the power wires for just this) and accept that you will have to MANUALLY turn the radio off. Being lazy and all, neither appeals to me. Also, there is the issue of Bluetooth being always on for option B which may or may not drain your battery.

You probably guessed it by now:
Todays project will be adding that nifty "ACC" feed for your new headunit!

You can go about this in several ways, I chose the easy one...
First I yanked up the collar for the gearknob (that sound perverted enough for you?). This is done simply by pulling the leather. You can actually remove it altogether, it will give you more working clearance so I would advise this. The collar is closed with velcro just under the knob. Now you remove the plug feeding your 12V outlet. It requires a little deftness, but isn't that hard really. You should now have something like this (erm, except maybe the mess you can see lying everywhere in the background)



Now feed your wire through the ISO cage and down into the center console, it should appear somewhere or you...
A: Haven't fed enough wire, or...
B: YOU CANNOT EVEN DO THIS RIGHT AND HAVE PROBABLY MESSED UP YOUR CAR BEYOND REPAIR IN THE PROCESS OF REMOVING YOUR OLD HEADUNIT!
In case of "B", stop your doings now and pay someone to do it...
Your next task will be to tap into the power feed of your 12V outlet. I chose the easy way and simply and simply clamped on a device which translates from danish to english to something like "current-thief". The clamp will let you insert two wires, one will be the one you will be wanting to tap into and the second the one you want to "tap away". Knowing a picture says more than a thousand words you can see the device mounted on the picture below.
On a side note, you will se that I tapped into the middle wire. I did this as it is the one feeding the 12V outlet, but putting my DMM (that's Digital MultiMeter for you slowpokes) to the wires they behaved the same (both gave 12V when I turned the ignition key).



You might want to tidy up your work now and hide away that wire so that it will not get caught when you shift gears. Being all generous and sh¤t I even took a picture for you of just this. Cable ties are your friends for this kind of tasks.



Now you should concentrate on the other end of the wire. Be careful not to drop it into the ISO slot and down in the center console, so use a cable tie and fasten it somewhere convenient. What I did now was to simply crimp on a plug and then heatshrink the back end for a nice finish. One the picture below you can see the blue wire emerging from the ISO cage and fitting snugly into the "ACC" feed from the headunit.



That's it, job done. Now enjoy your radio like it was meant to...


I am not sure if it shows properly or not, but the faceplate was definitely NOT A PERFECT FIT. They did not even get the colour right, but for now it will suffice.

A bit of history

08/02-2010: Progress...
Well, the Pioneer DEH-P8100BT was chosen over the competition and I just received it today, after some struggling with the wiring I got it to work and it seems to be all I ever hoped for...
I have also ordered some amplifier kits that I will be asembling soon I hope, since they are in back-order... If anyone out there wonders what these kits might be, take a look here: hed-tafelmeyer
26/01-2010: Crysis... Grande Punto headunit has NOT got any pre-outs anymore as suggested here: fiatforum.com
This basically means that I am now looking for a new headunit, damn...
Nominees for new head-unit:

Sony MEX-BT5700U
+External microphone
+Four line display

JVC KD-R901
+Dual USB input
+HDD compatible
+External microphone
+Bluetooth version 2.0
~Remote included
~Several lines display
~Variable colour
-Bluetooth takes one USB slot

Pioneer DEH-P8100BT
+Three line display
+Steering wheel remote included
+Twin USB input
+USB 2.0
+Twin external microphone
+Bluetooth version 2.0

Pioneer DEH-P7100BT
+External microphone included
~Two line display
~Single USB slot

Clarion FZ709E
+External microphone included
~Remote control included
-No CD drive

Clarion CZ509E
+External microphone included
~Two line display
~Remote control included
~Single USB slot

Alpine CDE-114BTi
+Bluetooth version 2.0
+External microphone included
~Single USB slot
-Single line display

Blaupunkt Hamburg MP68


Got Suggestions? E-mail me at McFrede[secret sign here]mail[this is where the dot goes]dk