DIY: Door/Headlight Chime Speaker Replacement

[kyletfoley]

Howdy Doodie!

I have this philosophy that if something came with the car, it should work. This includes the annoying seatbelt/door/headlight buzzer thingy. Earlier this year, it quit working on me. I finally decided to fix it because I left my headlights on one day when I parked my car, thankfully I didn't run out of battery juice. It was a tad snowy today, so I had the car running for a bit to get some heat flowing in there. Make sure you turn your car off before disconnecting any wires.

This is my first DIY, so any suggestions are appreciated!!

This DIY is actually pretty easy. You only need a few tools:

-T20 hex with some sort of long, skinny extension
-A new buzzer - LINKY LINK
-T9 hex
-Extendable Magnet
-Hot Glue Gun (optional but recommended)
-Soldering Iron

The first step is to remove the gauge cluster. It's pretty easy. First, remove this little trim piece in the middle. It requires virtually no force to pop out. I would use two hands to pull it straight out.


Next step is actually pretty important. I spent 45 minutes trying to get the dumb thing out with no luck. Today I learned that not only does the steering wheel tilt up/down, it also pulls back.


So, unlock the steering wheel adjuster and tilt the wheel all the way down, and pull it towards you until it stops.


Once you have it all the way down and back, lock 'er back in place. Now you have decent access to the two bolts that hold the cluster in. They are T20. I had to rig up a contraption skinny enough to fit inside the little slot there.


This is where your extendable magnet comes into hand. Once one screw is fully loosened, stick your magnet in there and pull it out. Use the reverse when putting it back together.


Once both bolts are out, GENTLY pull on the buttons - the cluster will come out very easily. Do not force it. A little wiggling may be required.


Before continuing, make sure you car is off and the keys are out!!! After being pulled out, you will see two connectors on the back. I started with the right one. There is a pink clip on the back the tilts up. Put a little screw driver in there to tilt it up. Be careful, they're fragile. Ask me how I know.


The same deal on the left side....


The right side cable should also be looped in a thing behind the console. Make sure you unhook it.


After removing the cables and unhooking the one, fiddle with the cluster until it comes out from the top


Now is a good time to consider the cluster relocation HUD mod.


After moving to a workbench, you can see popping the back cover off is pretty easy. There are 4 T9 bolts and two stickers that I had use an exacto knife to cut.


There are also 4 tabs that need to be undone after undoing the screws/slicing the stickers. It should just slide right up now.


Behold, the inside! You can see the old speaker doodle here. It doesn't necessarily look broken, but it looks almost 'rusty' inside. There are two legs that are for mounting purposes, a positive, and a negative leg.


Now comes the soldering. I used a digital soldering iron and set it to 750f. If you have a simple iron, that's fine too. The key here is to get a bit on solder on the tip first, then touch it to one of the legs. While heating it with the iron, I had a friend use pliers to pry the leg out of the board. Here it is with the speaker removed.


Once removed, it's time to prepare your new speaker. I found a donor cable and cut it up. I tinned the two ends, leaving plenty of spare wire to fiddle with.


I soldered the ends to the speaker first. I used some hot glue to insulate the connectors. I would suggest that you do the same.


Next I soldered the other ends into the board, paying attention to the positive and negative.


After getting them soldered into place, I hot glued it into place. Use plenty of hot glue here, you don't want this thing rattling around. You need to be careful where you mount this. On the back cover, there is a special slot where the speaker goes. It needs to line up with your speaker placement.



Now reassemble!!

After putting it back into your car, make sure to readjust your steering wheel to where you had it before.



All done! I hope this helped!

[Matt Devo]

nice, I did this a few years back, but opted for a like replacement part, since they are pretty readily available and not too expensive

edit: in case anyone is looking for the OEM replacement, it's a Digisound FE36100PC/W

unaffiliated ebay link: https://www.ebay.com/itm/272979026156

[Pr1ce]

Pictures?

also can you replace with other sounds or parts or is this an oem strictly task?

[kyletfoley]

We’re you not able to see the pictures?

[Pr1ce]

I can now... that’s odd on the computer it didn’t but on the phone yess

[kyletfoley]

Ok good, thought I did something wrong. You can definitely use other speakers, just make sure you get the input voltage right. I wanted to keep the oem sound, although this speaker is slightly less loud. Not complaining haha

[Axis]

I replaced mine too, used one like Matt Devo posted above.

Little trick, open the fuse box door and push on cluster from the rear instead of pulling.

[kyletfoley]

Yeah that’s a good point. I’ve read that you can also take off the lower knee panel thing for easy access, but the fuse box would definitely be easier

[JohnnySLine]

This thread was very helpful for doing the same procedure to my car. Pulled a speaker from a B7 at pick a part.

Quite scary for me with my limited soldering skills + using a butane soldering iron but everything turned out well. I had a small drop of solder somehow end up on the other side of the PCB which caused a scary rattle, managed to get it to fall out of some small hole and onto the floor. However, I had begun to unclip the PCB to see if I could just remove the whole board, but then quickly realised that that would involve removing the needles which was more than what I had signed up for.

Forgot to redo the clips that (I assume) hold in the smaller milage and date/clock displays because when I went to install it the date/clock display wasn't looking correct. I realised my mistake and re did those clips and now everything works fine. Moral of the story is to leave everything as you found it to avoid future trouble.

Anyone who has noticed that they're leaving their lights on more than they used to, do this! It was worth the hassle.

[lskolnick]

Clip the old speaker off high on the pins. Use the pins with spade connectors to connect to the new speaker. 5 mins. No soldering.