Standard Beetle Speaker Kick Panel Install:

Video Transcript:

Hi, I'm Sam with jbugs.com and I'm going to go over one of the best ways I found to install speaker kick panels in a standard Beetle. Now, speaker kick panels are our preferred method of installing speakers in the front of a Volkswagen Beetle. A lot of times people will actually cut holes in door panels to install speakers. That really isn't ideal. Water is designed to drain through your doors. That's why you'll actually see a plastic vapor barrier behind the door panels. And additionally, if you look closely underneath the bottom of your door, there are drain holes. Those holes are there so that any water that gets into the door can drain out of the door. And because of that, unless you have a weatherproof speaker, uh you really don't want your speakers getting wet. Another reason we don't like installing speakers indoors is because there is no real way of running wires from the front apillar. Now, you can do it, and I've seen it done many times. People will actually just drill a hole next to the check rod and then run the wires uh into the check rod hole, or they'll drill completely new holes and just run the wires through there. But again, not ideal as you're opening and closing the doors. There's a good chance those wires could get pinched. So, in our opinion, speaker kick panels are the way to go. One of the common questions we get about the speaker kick panels is, does it affect leg room? Well, no, actually it doesn't. I still have all the room I would have had from the factory. That's still the factory metal down there where my foot's touching. And the kick panel doesn't even sit on the floor. It sits on top of the heater channel, or in this case, above the heater channel. So, I put together this video with a couple of key tricks that I've learned to get a super clean installation of the speaker kick panels. A couple of tools that might make the job easier. A drill for opening the hole for or jigsaw to cut the hole for your speakers and your speaker kick panels. Sharp knife or razor blade for cutting the carpet once the panels are installed. Pair of scissors, especially if you're running a loop carpet so you don't get any snags. And a power drill for driving in selftapping screws and mounting the speakers. Depending on your particular speakers, your car, whether or not you're going with carpet, etc. We'll also determine any additional tools you might need. But again, these are just a couple of the key tools that I use. Nathan, what did you do here on the kick panels? Cut some holes with a jigsaw, drilled a hole, and then went boink. We used a speaker drill for reference on where we wanted to make certain we had room for that. And then we took the round template to cut the hole. Did you test fit the speakers in these holes? Yes. And they fit perfectly? Yes. So, we can get that stuff prepped and ready to go there. because of the way that the speaker kick panels would normally sit. They are essentially just reverse molds of this area here. And with that, when you pull that panel out, you kind of the standard piece of carpet that would sit there ends up leaving the top edge of the kick panel exposed. We would normally set the speaker in and then move it far enough back to the point where the magnet isn't going to contact the body back behind. Now, we got a little bit of space there. That's fine. and we just got it taped here and taped there. And then we'd come in with our carpet and line it along the back edge of the door jamb. That's option one. And that's a normal standard installation. However, we have a 3D printer and that gives us the option to do option two. Because we have a 3D printer, we can actually make a spacer ring to hold the speaker off the kick panel just a little bit. Give us the space off the back that we need. And the nice thing is is we eliminate a lot of the gap that would have been up the top here. Now, we still run into the issue of not totally covering the top edge of the kick panel here. So, we can just take a strip of carpet and glue it across the top, wrap it over before we install the kick panel. So, what we'll end up doing is cut some of this strip off the back carpet here that's just overlaying off of the back of our rear seat and use it to cover that top edge there. And that will eliminate that big top gap where you would normally have this panel spaced off where you'd be able to put your hands in the backside like we would have done like that. You don't want stuff falling back there. So, I think we're going to go option two, put that panel all the way forward and that way this edge will be much less of a gap. And with the carpet tied in place there and that screwed in place here and here, I think that's going to be the way we're going to go. We'll just have to have Nathan print up some spacer rings on his 3D printer. Over here, we've got a scrap piece of carpet glued on top of this. I already went through and taped this up in place and put a little mark on here above where the other carpet overlaid. So, this is going to get covered up. Most of what is going to be our speaker grill. We want to make certain that it just looks finished. So, Nate, you want to go set that one in place? Yeah. And over here, let's see. We've got that piece just literally marked up in place, but nice and tight up against the body. Nice and tight up against the body. Virtually no gap. And we're not even screwed in or just taped in right now. Just temporarily. We've got our wire sitting out here. We do have some gap here. We'll have to pull that in with the selftapping screw. We'll just mount it here to here. And once that's in place, again, that carpet will just kind of sit right up there covering all that. And then our speaker will sit somewhere in that area right there. and everything up on both sides will be nice and tucked away. In lie of making a 3D printed spacer, a lot of guys will actually make uh speaker rings out of MDF and uh either upholster them or paint them or otherwise. All right, Nathan, what do we got? Holes. We've got our four holes drilled with our spring tension clips. You grab a pair of pliers and you crimp them down and then you slide them over the holes. Now, we do have these four holes drilled offset from our other four holes so that we can put our speaker ring and mount it to the kick panel. And then we can mount the speakers to the speaker spacer and not run into the same screws that we held the spacer ring in place with. I'm getting smarter in my old age, thinking ahead, not just having a giant gap on the top of the thing. My Super Beetle, that stereo came out really well. I've been looking at that a lot just to figure out how stuff goes together. We're going to get these mounted in the car now. Hopefully, at least we're going to get this one mounted in the car and then we'll do the same thing on the other panel and get it mounted in there. And that little opening on the bottom just for the wires. In all the other times I've ever done it, I put the panel down super low, but in this particular case, we're doing differently. I normally put the kick panels down at the bottom and have it down at the top. Also note that we've got two red marks here. I used those and a measuring tape to get us square for our speakers. So, our speaker is parallel with the ground for proper product placement. Yes. All right. Well, there we go. Perfect. Now, we can put a speaker. All fancy like. Yeah. You know what? Almost don't even need a spacer ring. How did that happen? We were smart, I guess. I don't know. Well, look at that. Uh, sorry. I guess we're not 3D printing spacer rings. Well, we'll see how the other side comes out. Well, especially after the carpet goes on, too, you know. Yeah, it's going to be even better at this point. We could move our tabs to here and up into there and to there and put the grill and the speaker on. And I'm going to do the same thing I did right here over there. And hopefully we have the same luck over here. Yep. We'll find out. Sounds good. We got that speaker sitting over there with pretty much no gap behind it. this one with no gap except for like right there. Little bit at the front. The next step at this point is work on the carpet. Nathan's working on getting that piece in. We're going to get these pieces in and we'll be back. So, we're just getting these pieces mocked up here and here. And we've decided to go with this piece overlapping this piece as opposed to that piece overlapping that piece. This way. Yeah. This ends here and then this goes down like that. Yeah, makes more sense. Yeah. So, I'm going to start by getting this piece glued in here first with this piece peeled back. And that side is now in. It looks really good. So, now we can go through and cut this opening out. I'm going to go through and cut this seam perfectly straight just like I did on that one. And right there, so that those two edges actually butt up together and instead of being overlapped like this, cuz then it gets like big and bulky. So if you trim it straight and you just butt up one side next to another, the surge is a nice trim line and not that big old chunky. So pull that back. Lay that over. Give ourselves a nice little line. And this is just a dry erase marker. We'll just butt up that edge right there. And it should be good to go. Just like that. A nice smooth transition without a big overlap like that. Perfect. Now I'm just taking a sharp razor blade and a utility knife and just being cautious not to snag the carpet. We want to slice it. You don't want to get a run in a carpet. Don't pull it cuz if you pull it, you got to that run in your carpet. Not fun. And then I just use a pair of flush cuts to go ahead and dig out for our speaker mounting screws. Yeah. And that's for just all that. There we go. Nathan's going to put the speakers in. You need to be very careful, especially on that, cuz if you grab a snag of carpet, it's going to yank it. So, yeah, be very cautious. I would start them all by hand. All right, on to the next one. Nathan, did you plug the speaker in? Yes, I did. All right, that seemed like it grabbed. All right, they all grabbed. Put them all in. Good. Good. Awesome. That looks pretty darn good, I'd say. I know. It's super nice having this extra piece right here, which I've just that little piece of scrapped carpet adds from underneath the back of our seat. Just that little piece of carpet right there at the top makes the biggest difference. Yep. Now, we got to move on to the other side. And then the other three pieces and then the front and then that and then have to glue those in. So, you can start to work on that and I will start to work on this. Okay. Nice. Wow. I'm weird with that. Wow. Kick. We've got the full interior installed. Nathan, looks weird. And this view here will give you an idea of what the speakers and kick panels will look like from the driver's seat. With that, I'm Sam and I'm Nate. Later, guys.