As most anyone that has a Woodys fairing knows, it comes with four 5" marine speakers. They're ok speakers and worked pretty darn well with my Sony DSX-S100 head unit.....that is, untill I installed a Rockford Fosgate 300 watt amp about a month or so ago. This amp.....
http://www.rockfordfosgate.com/products/product_details.aspx?itemid=120465&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1It became obvious really quick that those speakers weren't going to cut it. Looked around and never did find a marine grade speaker that could handle the power of the RF amp. Finally found and bought two sets of Alpines.....these......
http://www.alpine-usa.com/product/view/spr-50/They arn't marine grade, but I'm pretty much a fair weather rider and the Valk always gets parked inside the garage (even at work, the Valk parks inside alot), so I don't think the weather will be a problem.....however, time will tell.
The problem was that the speakers that Glenn provides are 5"....and the Alpines are 5.25". I looked all over the place and didn't find any 5" speakers that could handle the power of the new amp, but I could find 5 1/4's most everywhere.
So.....after buying the Alpines, I needed to make the speaker cutouts bigger to accomodate the Alpines.
First thing was to cover the bike with an old sheet and cover the head unit with a rag. Fiberglass dust is going to get everywhere.
The Alpines have a template on the bottom of the box. Just punch it out. The mounting holes for the 5.25" Alpines are exactly the same as the 5" speakers that came with the fairing. Just mount the template with the screws that came with the fairing.
Marked the new hole diameter with a silver colored Sharpie.
After marking the first hole, then moved the template to the next hole to be marked. Note that I had to trim the outside diameter of the template some to fit inside the fairing on the first hole.
The marked holes.
Next, I needed a way to round out the holes to a bigger diameter.
Thought about using my Dremel to round out the holes, but the little sanding drums are way too small and I was afraid that if I slipped that I could cause some damage to the outside pretty portion of the inner fairing.
Went to Lowe's and found a nice pack of sanding drums that come with several different grits of drums that you can mount in a drill. Worked perfect. Started with the rough drum and and finished with the fine grit durm. It made short work of it.
After rounding out and finishing the holes, the next step was to mount them. The stainless cap screws that came with the original speakers weren't long enough, so off to Ace. They didn't have any longer cap screws, so I settled on some stainless button head 6/32 x 3/4" screws. Worked great.
Here's the finished install. The Rockford Fosgate amp and the Alpine speakers seriously rock.
The last thing to do was to put the rain shield back on that covers the head unit and then re-install the fairing outter.
Now I can hardly wait for the next time some young turk pulls up next to me with his thump thump stereo blairing so I can fire back and crank up the AC/DC.
Now I can play too.
