W124 dash speaker replacement (5.25")

[CarpeDiem51392]

I recently installed 5.25" speakers in the front of my w124 (1987 300D) and thought I would share

This pertains to the front dash 120mm speakers in some (or maybe all I do not know) w124's.


Before doing this I did some searching for drop in replacements, but found nothing. Rainbows can still be found for a price, but I'm cheap. There are quite a few options on German Ebay but for some reason they won't ship to the US. This being the case, I decided to go with the cut in route.

Obviously if your car is in pristine condition (mine is not), I'd advise against this.

I'm a newbie DIY'er and forum member so bear that in mind....

I'm going to skip everything that has been covered (quite excellently) in other threads and assume you have two open dash speaker holes ready to go.

I used Blaupunkt (keepin' it German) 5.25" GTx 542 speakers. Around $45 with free shipping from Amazon. Careful buying speakers as the driver side mounting depth is somewhat tight, not sure the exact dimension but it's easy to measure.

Well, alright then..........Pictures!!

1. Here is the speaker sitting in my new widened hole. I used a Dremel ($40 at Home Depot) to widen the the thin steel opening and a razor blade to cut away the "plastic" covering and foam of the dash. Using the Dremel will spray debris everywhere so I'd advise covering the windshield defroster vents or whatever else you see fit.

2. The sheet metal screw I used to secure the speaker. I used the existing 8mm screw that secures the dash (not by itself) as well. You can see this in picture #1. Drilling a hole in this tight space is challenging.

3. Grill and plastic strip back on. I broke the corner of my plastic strip, I think it accents the cracked dash nicely.

4. Driver side finished.

A couple notes...

The upper corner grill hook (top left for driver side, top right for passenger) would hang up on the underside of my speaker and make grill removal difficult. I tried to keep the speakers as far inward (towards the head unit) as possible to alleviate this.

If some part of your speaker sticks up too much it may interfere with the plastic "spider webbing" under the grills. This happened to me. In my case I sniped off the webbing that was hitting and it was enough for clearance. Just be aware...

That's pretty much it, just trial and error take it SLOW. Sip on a beer and enjoy yourself.

Overall I think it sounds awesome, and I'm very pleased. No issues so far.

Hope this helps someone, I tried to keep it short so any questions let me know. I have a few more pictures as well but I didn't think they would be helpful so I didn't include them.

Cheers!