Focal 165a1 advice

[AckersMR2]

Hi all,

Just bought my first mr2 and the first thing to change was the head unit, I put in my own JVC unit from my previous car. It has everything I want and importantly the illumination is the correct colour to match the car! (OCD?)
The car came with a nice Sony Bluetooth unit which I've stuck on eBay if anyone's interested

Back to the question, thinking of fitting Focal 165a1's as they appear to get great reviews and their sub £100. What I would like to know is I don't want the hassle of running an amp or sub so will the head unit be man enough? It's 4x50w and 20rms

Also once I've flash taped the doors and cards do they produce a decent amount of bass? Baring in mind I'm currently comparing to the standard fit speakers!!!

[stargazer30]

The Focals A165s are a nice set of speakers and as you've said bargain price at a touch under £100 new.   They have aluminium tweeters though which can be very sharp.  When I had them in my MR2 listening to U2s Pride on full pelt used to hurt!

Ideally they'd be better amped.  I've ran them unamped first them amped them up.  Your HU will run them but at higher volumes like the power you need with the roof down to overcome road noise they'll struggle on 20w RMS.  BTW if your head unit is 50w peak its more like 15w RMS.

As for bass that depends very much on how good you've sound deadened your doors.  Focals on a stock door sound utterly dreadful with literally no bass output, worse than the stock paper ones.  If you've fully deadened the doors, as in the full door and not just round the speaker it'll make them 100 times better, and you should get some half decent mid bass out of them up to the limits of the lack of power from your HU.

If you want really good bass and don't want to loose space in the car check out NathanMR2's under dash sub boxes he's doing.  These are superb, you'd definately need an amp then though.

[AckersMR2]

Thanks for that stargazer, i've ordered the Focal's so i'll see how i get on with them and wether i amp them up later or not?

As for the soundproofing when you say do the whole door do you mean carefully take the plastic sheeting off the door then stick the flashing to the whole of the inside of the outer door skin (not the drain holes) and put the plastic back. then also stick it to the inside of the door card too?

[stargazer30]

As for the soundproofing when you say do the whole door do you mean carefully take the plastic sheeting off the door then stick the flashing to the whole of the inside of the outer door skin (not the drain holes) and put the plastic back. then also stick it to the inside of the door card too?

Pretty much yes, you really can't use too much of this stuff and you'll see increasing benefit the more you use.  The door card is not essential but will help cure rattles as focals at higher volume will rattle the card against the metal door on those plastic clips.  I didn't bother putting the plastic water menbrane back on but I won't advise not replacing it for risk of getting flamed off the rest of the members!   s:flame: :flame: s:flame:    

Another watchout is the speaker baffle.  Most peeps make them out of MDF.  This is good but I found if you do you need to water proof it and fit some sort of rain guard like the stock speaker has covering the back of the speaker.   My focals got a pretty good bath after 6 months without one and the MDF swole up.    The other option is gut the stock speakers and use the plastic stock surround which has a rain guard and is moisture proof.  People will tell you if you get this your door is leaking and it shouldn't but both my MR2s have leaked this way and the plastic guard on the stock speaker suggests Toyota expected it.

[loadswine]

Toyota probably provided a splash cover for the speaker because its a paper cone, whereas most modern  and decent speakers have cones that are water resistant.