DrTrapper

Grizzly-Thanks for the offer. It winds up that I replaced the other 3 speakers and the passenger front door was actually a wire problem. When I hooked up the new speaker, it still didn't work. I then played with the wire and all of the sudden it was working. I will pull the speaker back out in the spring to try to better wrap the wire-but at least for now it's working. And having the new speakers definitely makes a difference in the sound. If anyone is curious, the speakers were Pyle Blue speakers. And the only reason I bought them was that they were technically a Christmas present from my relatives who gave me gift cards-so they didn't cost me anything. :)

I will be pulling the radio out tomorrow to install my ISimple Gateway so I can have my Sirius working in the car again. Going a week having to listen to regular radio has been a headache! :)

Grizzly old man

I rarely ever listen to broadcast radio anymore. I have the 6 disk changer and play home burned CD's in my buggy.

I figure I can't stand what passes for country music these days, never liked rap, and to be a classic rock station all you have to play is all the stuff that sucked when it first came out and at least one led zeppelin tune per day and yer in like flint.

So if I'm gonna be listening to the same 30 or so songs from the past every hour they may as well be the ones I like enough to have burned them to a disk. And the CD's do not have commercials,...

bugo

Now the only speakers that work are the driver's side front speaker and the tweeters. Do I have to pull the door panels off to check the voltage on the speaker wires? I just bought my first multimeter and I'm not positive how they work, but what setting on the dial should I use to test the speakers? If it's the speakers, roughly how much would it cost to have all four of them installed? (If anybody happens to be familiar with any good car audio shops in Tulsa, Oklahoma what is a good shop to go to?) What speakers do you recommend that are a good value? What is a good brand? I've heard bad things about JBL and Jensen, the brands were supposedly sold to other companies that use the name on cheap speakers (I have no idea if this is true or not...) I want something punchy but not too bassy. I don't listen to a lot of hip hop so I'm not concerned about deep frequencies, although I do listen to a lot of electronic dance music so I want the speakers to bump a bit. I listen to a lot of alternative rock music with loud guitars, so speakers that sound good in that range would be perfect. I tried disconnecting the battery for about 40 minutes but it didn't change anything. I would install the speakers myself but the weather has been chilly and I don't really have time to install them.

Grizzly old man

Pretty much any speakers you buy these days will have been manufactured in one of the pacific rim countries. The quality of some products from some of those outfits is severely lacking.

Any 6.5" speakers will work in an HHR. You will either have to buy or build an adapter plate for them as GM made a odd shaped hole in the door to mount them in. You can cut the dead speaker apart and use that for an adaptor too.

The front speakers are rated at 4 ohm and the rear speakers are rated at 8 ohm but your volt ohm meter would read zero {or very close to zero} if you set it in the ohm range and test the speaker at the terminals. The electrical current that would come out of the speaker wires with the radio on would be AC and would vary with whatever the sound being produced is.

PM me and we can talk about how to use yur VOM.

You would really need an oscilloscope to measure the output of a stereo, not a VOM.

You can go to an outfit like Crutchfield

Find what fits your car - Crutchfield

and spend lots of money to get what you need or go to walmart of any other store that sells speakers and probably get the same thing for less money. I have bought really good sounding speakers from folks on craigslist.

Installing them is not that hard. You remove a few screws, unclip and remove the inner door panel unscrew one screw on the factory speaker remove it install your backing plate and new speaker and your done.

You will probably have to either buy or invent something to hook the speaker wire to the speaker. I made pigtails and piggybacked them to the original wire so I could use the standard 1/4" spade connectors on the speakers but keep the option of installing genuine GM speakers later if I so desire.

Your factory car stereo or head unit as folks seem to want to call them nowadays has a pretty good set of tone controls in it. Those settings are pretty much what determine how much bass, treble, and high frequency you hear out the speakers, not the speakers so much really. Granted the speakers do make the sound but it really depends on where you have the radio controls set.

You could have an asswhackinmonsterkiller "System" with 44" subwoofers and a billion watts output power in your car and have the controls set to where it sounds like it is being played through an Edison Phonograph.

bugo

According to Crutchfield: Car Stereo, Speakers, Home Theater, Pro Audio, 4k TV, the base (non-Pioneer) speakers can be replaced with 5-1/4" or 6-1/2" speakers. Crutchfield offers adapter brackets with their speakers. I assume that speakers sold at places like Walmart would not have the adapter brackets, so I would probably be better off ordering them online instead of buying them locally.

The instructions say that two holes must be drilled in each door, and I got a new cordless drill for the holidays so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. The part that I'm the most nervous about is putting the door panels back on. I called a local car audio shop and they quoted me $450 plus the speakers, which sounds ludicrous to me so I'll be doing it myself unless I can find a better deal.

Can I get a decent set of speakers for $50 a pair? What brand/model would you recommend? I'd like 3 way speakers if possible, but 2 way speakers would be fine and I can pay more than $50 a pair if the speakers are good quality.

Thanks in advance.

solman98

Don't waste your money buy brackets. Just cut what's left of the old speaker out and use that as your bracket. Very quick and easy to do. I replaced all mine with coax 6.5" and it made a world of difference. I had hardly any foam left of the stock speakers.

RJ_RS_SS_350

Here's a how-to for what solman is referring to.

Grizzly old man

I don't care for the three way speakers much myself. I tend to cut the wire to tweeter on them because the high frequency bothers my ears. The tweeters in the door pillars are plenty for me.

If you do a search you might find my first posts on this site. I was having problems with my stereo back then.

I tried lots of different speakers but ended up using a cheap set from walmart.

They do have the extra tweeter in them but I just snipped that wire. I made my own speaker adaptors out of a chunk of 1/2" plastic left over from when I made my router table so I did not buy them. It was just left over stuff from another project.

I slapped together some enclosures out of old pallet boards and put the original HHR speakers in them and lashed them up to the Clarion stereo I had in the dash for a while. The speakers had stopped working in the car but still play just fine in the enclosures.

I have no clue why the still work out of the car but the replacements are fine for me.

bugo

Now the rear passenger side door speaker is working fine. Go figure.

Oldblue

Loose wires out corrosion in the magnet! It'll cut out again, give it time.