Got a few sets of these rare parcel shelf pods, so decided it was time to fix them up. They all suffer from the foam surround on the passive bass radiators disintegrating, here's how I fixed them!
Take one ts-x6 speaker pod and remove the 6 hex-head screws
The front will now come off with a bit of effort (they are sealed on with some kind of sealant to make them air-tight. With the front off, remove the wadding (on this set someone had already removed the wadding)
Next task was to remove the radiator grill. On the inside of the box were a couple of tabs that needed straightening out before the grill could be prised off. With the grill removed, this was what I found
The foam surround had completely rotted! The radiator itself was held by 4 self tappers, so this was easy enough to remove.
Using a stanley knife I removed the remains of the gooey surround. I had planned to buy a re-foam kit, but I have really struggled to find any universal kits in the uk. Getting them from abroad was possible, but at great expense. With this in mind I decided I needed a plan b! I am terrible for hoarding bits n bobs!, on a plus side though I found some off-cut from some black vinyl in my hoard of bits. Having no idea how suitable it would be I decided to give it a try!
Using some educated guess work I made a new surround
Now for the tricky job of forming the surround. I started by using some all-purpose glue to adhere the surround to the paper cone.
The really tricky part was gluing the outer edge to the basket of the radiator, whilst trying to form a curve to allow for movement of the cone.
Once I was happy with my new surround, the card finishing trim was glued back on.
At this point I noticed the dust cap which should cover the washer in the middle was missing. A bit of plastic folder divider came to the rescue. A sharpie marker finshed things off by making the cone nice and black.
the finished bass radiator (probably not as efficient as it originally was when new, but much better than the flaky condition it was previously in.
Back in the pod
Whilst I had everything apart I decided to give the grills a blow over with some black paint and dye the speaker cones using a sharpie marker.
Final job before re-assembling the speakers was to find something suitable to replace the missing wadding.
I didn't take a pic of them all back together as I couldn't wait to try them out, so hooked up a headunit to the bench power supply at work and I have been too busy playing music through them since! Really pleased with the results. Compared to my other set which haven't been repaired there is more bass, they seem to be louder too. Really nice sounding speakers and have really made me question whether I need bother fitting a sub back into my polo. Might just run a set of these and a pair of mb quart tweeters up front. Total cost of repair was around 2 hours of my time, happy days!
Edit: couple of pics of the finish article
painted up the pioneer logo
all done
Take one ts-x6 speaker pod and remove the 6 hex-head screws
The front will now come off with a bit of effort (they are sealed on with some kind of sealant to make them air-tight. With the front off, remove the wadding (on this set someone had already removed the wadding)
Next task was to remove the radiator grill. On the inside of the box were a couple of tabs that needed straightening out before the grill could be prised off. With the grill removed, this was what I found
The foam surround had completely rotted! The radiator itself was held by 4 self tappers, so this was easy enough to remove.
Using a stanley knife I removed the remains of the gooey surround. I had planned to buy a re-foam kit, but I have really struggled to find any universal kits in the uk. Getting them from abroad was possible, but at great expense. With this in mind I decided I needed a plan b! I am terrible for hoarding bits n bobs!, on a plus side though I found some off-cut from some black vinyl in my hoard of bits. Having no idea how suitable it would be I decided to give it a try!
Using some educated guess work I made a new surround
Now for the tricky job of forming the surround. I started by using some all-purpose glue to adhere the surround to the paper cone.
The really tricky part was gluing the outer edge to the basket of the radiator, whilst trying to form a curve to allow for movement of the cone.
Once I was happy with my new surround, the card finishing trim was glued back on.
At this point I noticed the dust cap which should cover the washer in the middle was missing. A bit of plastic folder divider came to the rescue. A sharpie marker finshed things off by making the cone nice and black.
the finished bass radiator (probably not as efficient as it originally was when new, but much better than the flaky condition it was previously in.
Back in the pod
Whilst I had everything apart I decided to give the grills a blow over with some black paint and dye the speaker cones using a sharpie marker.
Final job before re-assembling the speakers was to find something suitable to replace the missing wadding.
I didn't take a pic of them all back together as I couldn't wait to try them out, so hooked up a headunit to the bench power supply at work and I have been too busy playing music through them since! Really pleased with the results. Compared to my other set which haven't been repaired there is more bass, they seem to be louder too. Really nice sounding speakers and have really made me question whether I need bother fitting a sub back into my polo. Might just run a set of these and a pair of mb quart tweeters up front. Total cost of repair was around 2 hours of my time, happy days!
Edit: couple of pics of the finish article
painted up the pioneer logo
all done