Tips on 2003 speaker intstall
 

So im going to take out the rear shelf, anyone have any pictures of the process
help is greatly appreciated

i have no pics, but i do have a write up....

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Proper procedure says to remove the rear shelf cover to replace the speakers.. I chose not to do so and it worked correctly for me, but you may experience different results

both procedures include removing the trunk liner ( black plastic piece in the rear of the trunk) - this is self explanatory for removal


If it was me, i would try option 2 and if you are not satisfied of how well teh speaker grills line up, perform option 1.

Option 1: Removing rear shelf.
Lift up on rear seat bottom and remove from vehicle. There are Several bolts at the bottom of the seat back that hold the seat in, as well as the seatbelts, remove all these bolts.
At the top of the seats if you pull back on the seatback you will be able to see 4 black clips that hold the seat in, use a screwdriver to depress the clips and the seat should come loose.
Now you have to remove the pillar covers from the sides of the passenger compartment, these are just held in with body clips as well, just pull on them and remove.
The rear shelf cover is next to come off. guess what.... more body clips. pop the body clips loose and you in business. reverse to re-assemble

Option 2: this was what i went with the SECOND time i put speakers in....
Pull up on the grills. the grills will come right out with a small bit of persuasion WARNING: you may not be able to re-install the grills very well without performing option 1. The grills are held in by tabs that are folded over to the shelf cover. the speakers will not come out easily this way.. the cut outs in the shelf are smaller than the speaker, so a little finagling will do the trick ( its much easier to push them out the top from the trunk )

Before you get digging into it also, you might want to make sure that your speakers came with some new mounting screws. The stock screws were too short when I installed some Infinity Reference series speakers in the 00 SLE.

are the clips really hard to see cuz im having trouble finding them

the clips for the seatback? yes. you have to pull back the seat and they are about 2-3in down behind the seat

the easiest way I found to find those clips is to take a long screw driver at the far left side, and slowly go to the right until you hit a clip, then you have a general idea of where it's at. Pull back on the seat, but try not to pull too hard or from the very top because it's possible to bend the seat.

how hard is the dang shelf to get out havin a lot of trouble with that

it's not too hard at all. Once you get the seat out like Toasty said, just take off the plastic C-pillar panels (rear side panels) and you then unclip two plastic rivits from the carpet of the rear deck where the seat back once was. It then pulls straight up/out.

If you don't mind crawling into the trunk, you'll notice openings in the frame where you can actually see the clips. As the others mentioned, I used a longish flat head screw driver to depress the clips.

finally got them in i shoulda taken pictures for those that are visual learners but im just happy to have them in