Good morning all,

This past weekend I took on the task of replacing the failed mid-range door speakers in my 2004 XJ8. Given that it is now 2024 and I haven't seen a post about someone doing it in the last 6 years or so, I wanted to share what I used in 2024 and how I did it to hopefully help another poor soul wandering the chaos.

I chose to buy my speakers through Crutchfield as a result of there being a brick and mortar store down the street from me. The speaker specifics I went with were the "Kicker 51KSC6504 KS Series 6-1/2 inch 2-way speakers" which run at 100W RMS, 4 Ohm, and retail for $129.99 a pair. The cone is polypropylene with a silk dome tweeter in each speaker. Regardless of what you choose, make sure the speakers are shallow mount and have no or minimal protrusion. Here is the link to the speaker's webpage on the Crutchfield website:
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_20651K...51KSC6504.html

I continue to run the original Jaguar 320W 8 Channel Factory Amp, 40W for each of the 8 channels. The channel routing diagram for what area each amp channel powers is as follows:
Channel 1- Driver Door Tweeter
Channel 2- Driver Door Mid
Channel 3- Pass Door Tweeter
Channel 4- Pass Door Mid
Channel 5- Rear Door (Driver's side) Tweeter & Mid
Channel 6- Rear Door (Pass' side) Tweeter & Mid
Channel 7- Subwoofer 1
Channel 8- Subwoofer 2

Installation took my father and I about 5 hours total with this kit. You need to use the adaptors provided by Kicker so that the speakers can be centrally mounted in the original cutout and on the original Jaguar screw holes. A nice pair of sharp plastic cutters and sandpaper is especially helpful to round edges and truly give the adaptor a flush and smooth finish. With this set of Kickers, no modification had to be made to the door panels and the original Alpine branded speaker grills, it looks factory. NOTE FOR CUTTING AND CREATING NEW CONNECTORS: The YELLOW wire is GROUND and the WHITE wire is POSITIVE.

Now to how they sound... AMAZING. These speakers truly added something to the car's audio system that was missing. Even though they are running at 40W instead of up to their 100W capabilities, these are a night and day difference with those junky Alpine speakers from 2004 and allow for a future upgrade of the car's amplifier. There is a nice range for highs and lows, good bass, and just an overall great listening experience. There is no clipping, even at the highest volume levels. In the rear doors both the mid range and the door tweeter run off of the same channels (5 and 6). Some choose to disconnect these rear door tweeters and just run the mid range speakers, I kept both of them plugged in and it sounds quite pleasant. I'd even claim it sounds better with both of them plugged in and running. The silk dome tweeters in the new speaker add a lot to the highs of the songs and sound great working alongside the original door handle tweeters. If you've been debating whether to upgrade the speakers, take this as your sign to DO IT! This car already turns a lot of heads around my college campus, on the highways, etc, these speakers have added to that allure.

My next projects will be new subwoofers along the back dashboard and new front dashboard speakers, stay tuned for the future guides and reviews for those!

Questions and comments welcome, I'm always happy to share and give advice about what I learned with this confusing and loosely documented sound system.

 

"Chaos" you say? Make it earn it's living, then.

Try to find and transcribe a 33 RPM vinyl "Hans Stuck Drives the Great and the Powerful" produced in cooperation with Mercedes-Benz. Hans Stuck, the original, not the copy, took one 1930's onward F1 racer out of their museum at a time, drove it to its best around the notorious Nurbergring with microphones all along the track.

The studio then blended the soundtracks of the whole collection of Benz'es finest as if they were racing each other, same hour, same track, even same driver, and he was a good 'un.

"Your challenge. if you choose to accept it..." Is to find an appropriate track, AND NOT public highway and see if modern tires and Jaguar claws - with that soundtrack as your competitive pressure - can BEAT the competent Herr Stuck's lap times - in cars approaching a hundred years old!

"The copy", his son, Hans Joachim, avoided being branded the slowest guy on wheels, by a wide margin as well.

Times change. Priorities change.

The guy we envied most had a new, but lowly, Karmann-Ghia.. and a party room large enough for Klipschorns driven off push-pull-parallel KT88 beam power pentodes in class AB1 through Acrosound TO-330's ......serving the centered king-sized bed ....shared with some right loverly ladies, as it was rumoured.

Oncoming road traffic not a distraction, y'see.

And "valve amps" are legendary for "superior transient response".

I did say "priorities?" Youth, is indeed wasted on the young.

Wait 'til you are deaf as I am and are reduced to working by sight, smell, and touch - but can no longer remember why, or for what?

The "other good news" about a Jaguar is that when your 23 yer old Wife of 34 years and her 95 year old Mother tire of my "too loud" Galician bagpipe music and fire-off their traditional Chinese Opera duet as a tweeter-beating counterstrike?

Jaguar's windows won't actually break!
No matter how badly you might WISH they would!

You'd have to know Chinese Opera?

Pearl River valley, not Shen valley..



At least its is good to put a name to a vibration.

Until you "outed" your new speaker system, I was blaming departing airliner traffic at nearby Dulles Airport.

 

This sounds like the kind of adventure one would take up on a weekend at Summit Point Raceway, I'll stick to Hans' soundtrack though. The Chinese Opera is all yours.

 

Chik'n!!! Wotever happened to "Misery Loves Company?"

Soundtrack was AWESOME, some of those beasts were inline 8's with desmodromic valves, hit insane RPM for the era, some were supercharged the "old fashioned way" (screamers) and AFAIK ALL of them ran on a mostly-methanol witch's brew with a trace of sulfuric ether, acetone,. etc for cooling the valves or such.

Ken Purdy's chapter in "The Kings of the Road" said "The Germans raced as they made war, with method, foresight, and efficiency."

Truth told, they did racing far BETTER, given every war they ever started was lost by year two and over by year six. Check it out. Roman era onward. They only SEEM warlike 'cos they are going to keep trying at it until they get it right. Roman era onward.

Anyhoo.. the DB aero engine folks:

A team went around the track taking surface temperatures to select the tire rubber compounding and inflation pressures, others checked air temps, density, and moisture content to select from "957 different fuel injector combinations." Mind, old Ken DID exaggerate a tad, now and then - his chapter on Rolls-Royce "World's Finest Motorcar" 'quality' was a stitch!

But good luck finding a copy.
Google may outperform my wetware, but I had a helluva long head-start!

Summit Point is grand. But do breakfast at a marina in Nizza, on the med, then dinner at the Meadowbank Exiles Club, Twickenham, the Thames river in the back garden, across from the Star & Garter, and it is a less repetitious ride by half!

Given the mercantile Dutch drive up the center of the road to get a fair return on EU taxes, French change sides if the politics are dodgy, Germans can't exert a calming influence as they are smart enough to stay on motorways their OWN side of the border, not use French motorways unless at gunpoint...else ****-drunk to blend-in better and blame it on Rooshin tourists?

Bit of a challenge in it?

Kinda like driving in Maryland, yah?