Removal of Rear Speakers

dishe · Aug 13th, 2007, 02:09 PM

How does one get to the rear panel to replace the speakers?

My stereo shorted out and blew out one speaker, and the others haven't sounded right ever since (lots of distorted noise). I replaced the head unit, and managed to take apart the doors and replace the front two. Now I've got to work on the rear.

I figured the rear ones are the easy part since they're visible from the trunk, but I see now that they are screwed in from on top! I can't figure out how to get the cover off the top...

Any pointers?
I have a rock-bottom stock '01 XE (I was cheap when I bought this... Manual everything and my seats don't even fold down!)

Oldnissanguy · Aug 14th, 2007, 06:24 AM

Get a FSM at pahtg20.net. It should show you how to get the rear deck cover off. I haven't had the cover off my 01 but removing the cover on my 94 was a bit of an operation.

dishe · Aug 14th, 2007, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oldnissanguy

Get a FSM at pahtg20.net. It should show you how to get the rear deck cover off. I haven't had the cover off my 01 but removing the cover on my 94 was a bit of an operation.

I tried that, and it was very helpful for removing the door panels to change the front speakers. However, I have not been able to find anything about the rear... where in the FSM would that be?

Oldnissanguy · Aug 14th, 2007, 09:34 PM

Pages BT-39 and BT-26.

dishe · Aug 14th, 2007, 10:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oldnissanguy

Pages BT-39 and BT-26.

Ah, it wasn't clear that this teeny diagram is supposed to be the rear panel from the picture. Funny how certain areas are explained in more detail than others.

Looks like I need to remove the rear seat back for this to happen... what a royal pain in the behind!

I'm wondering if it wouldn't be worthwhile to take a knife to that "parcel shelf" thing and cut holes over the speakers to replace them. Then, I can place a nice speaker grill over the hole.

I've got some extra 6x9 speakers sitting around from an installation I never finished on another car. I'm wondering if I can't attach those (maybe need to cut a bigger hole in the metal?) and use the fancy grill the speakers come with to cover it... might be easier than taking out the seats!!

Oldnissanguy · Aug 15th, 2007, 06:46 AM

The rear seats should come out easily. If you have the lay down seats you can just lay them down out of the way. IMHO, before you start chopping up the rear deck, you might want to consider that the current speaker 'grills' are also part of the child safety seat hookup.

BTW, I'm not sure because I haven't done it, but you may have to remove some of the trim as well to get the deck cover out.

dishe · Aug 15th, 2007, 02:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oldnissanguy

The rear seats should come out easily. If you have the lay down seats you can just lay them down out of the way. IMHO, before you start chopping up the rear deck, you might want to consider that the current speaker 'grills' are also part of the child safety seat hookup.

BTW, I'm not sure because I haven't done it, but you may have to remove some of the trim as well to get the deck cover out.

I've got the stripped down XE model, which means no folding seats... seat back would need to be removed.
I've never tried to remove them before, so I'm suprised to hear that this is considered "easy"... Whenever I needed to transport something larger than my trunk (home depot trips), I'd usually take another car with folding seats because I assumed the Sentra XE was more trouble than it was worth to remove.

Looking at the FSM now, I think I may have to kick myself in the behind for not trying this sooner! Thanks for pointing that out...

In any event, I noticed that the child safety seat hookups are part of the speaker "Grill". This has actually been a point of great frustration ever since I bought the car- I actually have a car seat in the back for my 2 year old daughter, but her seat uses a newer standard for attachment that came out after 2001, rendering the current hookups in my Sentra useless (ended up doing it the old fashioned seat-belt way).
So, not only are they useless to any current car seats, they also block a tiny corner of my speakers! Those things are a waste of space IMHO... So, if I could take them out entirely, and stick a 6x9 speaker in its place with a grill covering it (and where the child hookups were), that would be great.

The only problem with this plan is that I would need to cut through the metal frame under the cover to seat the larger speakers. Why did they make this so complicated?

So as of now, my choices are: take apart the rear shelf and buy new 6.5" speakers to replace them, or cut a hole in the shelf, cut a hole in the metal, and insert the fancy expensive 6x9's that someone gave me for free.
Sounds like using the free ones may not be worth the time and potentially destroying my rear deck. *Sigh*

dishe · Aug 15th, 2007, 02:32 PM