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I myself don't own a malibu but my sister does and I joined this site to get/exchange ideas from other owners. Well she was unhappy with the factory stereo performance in her car.
First thing we do is we decide to replace all the factory speakers in the car. Come to find out there are 6x9s in the rear deck and some maybe 6.5s in the front doors and some tweeters in the windshield pillars. We decide on Phoenix Gold RSD components in the front and Phoenix Gold RSD 6x9s in the rear.
The front door speakers were funny to me. The basket for the factory speaker is actually the bracket too. I removed that and just traced the outline of the speaker/bracket and made a cut out from 3/4" MDF and then cut a hole out for the Phoenix Gold midbass. I screwed the MDF bracket into the door and the speaker to the bracket. I had just enough clearance for the window to roll down with no problems. I used the factory wiring to wire up the speaker.
The factory tweeter location was pretty easy. I unscrewed the factory tweeter and used hot glue to secure the Phoenix Gold tweeter on the pillar.
Now to wire up these speakers I used the factory wiring. There's a panel on the driver side of the dashboard that I removed and that's where I installed the crossover. It's a nice lil cubby hole just big enough for the crossover and in there you'll also find the door speaker, tweeter, and radio wires. It was confusing at first but I traced the same color wires(tan/gray) on the harness from the door speaker location. On one side of the harness there is one pair of wires and the other side is two pairs of wires. The one pair is going to the door speaker location. The two pair side is one pair going to the factory tweeter location and the other is wires coming from the radio. I made my connections to the crossover from there. Wires from the radio went into the input section of the crossover, door speaker wires went into the midbass output and the tweeter(windshield pillar) wires went into the tweeter output. The passenger side had pretty much the same scenario. I had to make MDF brackets, removed the panel on the passenger side of the dashboard to make the crossover connections. The wires on that side are green/light green.
The rear deck was challenging also. There was more trim to remove. The 6x9s back there had the same basket/bracket assembly as the front speakers. I had to drill new holes for the new Phoenix Gold 6x9s but you'll have to do that from inside the trunk because of the slope of the backglass. I wired them up using the factory wires. There was brown/yellow on the driver side and blue/light blue on the passenger side.
Well got everything back together and it's louder according to my sister but she says it's still missing something and I'm like yeah I know what you mean. She doesn't want spend alot of money on subs/amps. I suggest she go with 500rms watt amp and a single 12" sub.
We ended up going with a Sony Xplod 2ch. amp (1000 watts peak it says)bridged to a single 12" Kenwood subwoofer in a 1.3ft sealed box. I ran 4 ga. to the battery, 4ga. ground in the rear, and I got a remote wire from the airbag fuse location in the center console(so far so good). Now for signal I just used the rear 6x9 wires to run into the speaker level inputs on the amp. Everything's wired up and she was impressed with the outcome of the whole project. It has a pretty impressive amount of bass considering we're still using the factory radio.
This was my first and probably only 2008 Malibu install that I've done. I apologize for no pictures but any suggestions, questions, criticism???
First thing we do is we decide to replace all the factory speakers in the car. Come to find out there are 6x9s in the rear deck and some maybe 6.5s in the front doors and some tweeters in the windshield pillars. We decide on Phoenix Gold RSD components in the front and Phoenix Gold RSD 6x9s in the rear.
The front door speakers were funny to me. The basket for the factory speaker is actually the bracket too. I removed that and just traced the outline of the speaker/bracket and made a cut out from 3/4" MDF and then cut a hole out for the Phoenix Gold midbass. I screwed the MDF bracket into the door and the speaker to the bracket. I had just enough clearance for the window to roll down with no problems. I used the factory wiring to wire up the speaker.
The factory tweeter location was pretty easy. I unscrewed the factory tweeter and used hot glue to secure the Phoenix Gold tweeter on the pillar.
Now to wire up these speakers I used the factory wiring. There's a panel on the driver side of the dashboard that I removed and that's where I installed the crossover. It's a nice lil cubby hole just big enough for the crossover and in there you'll also find the door speaker, tweeter, and radio wires. It was confusing at first but I traced the same color wires(tan/gray) on the harness from the door speaker location. On one side of the harness there is one pair of wires and the other side is two pairs of wires. The one pair is going to the door speaker location. The two pair side is one pair going to the factory tweeter location and the other is wires coming from the radio. I made my connections to the crossover from there. Wires from the radio went into the input section of the crossover, door speaker wires went into the midbass output and the tweeter(windshield pillar) wires went into the tweeter output. The passenger side had pretty much the same scenario. I had to make MDF brackets, removed the panel on the passenger side of the dashboard to make the crossover connections. The wires on that side are green/light green.
The rear deck was challenging also. There was more trim to remove. The 6x9s back there had the same basket/bracket assembly as the front speakers. I had to drill new holes for the new Phoenix Gold 6x9s but you'll have to do that from inside the trunk because of the slope of the backglass. I wired them up using the factory wires. There was brown/yellow on the driver side and blue/light blue on the passenger side.
Well got everything back together and it's louder according to my sister but she says it's still missing something and I'm like yeah I know what you mean. She doesn't want spend alot of money on subs/amps. I suggest she go with 500rms watt amp and a single 12" sub.
We ended up going with a Sony Xplod 2ch. amp (1000 watts peak it says)bridged to a single 12" Kenwood subwoofer in a 1.3ft sealed box. I ran 4 ga. to the battery, 4ga. ground in the rear, and I got a remote wire from the airbag fuse location in the center console(so far so good). Now for signal I just used the rear 6x9 wires to run into the speaker level inputs on the amp. Everything's wired up and she was impressed with the outcome of the whole project. It has a pretty impressive amount of bass considering we're still using the factory radio.
This was my first and probably only 2008 Malibu install that I've done. I apologize for no pictures but any suggestions, questions, criticism???