For those who may have or are thinking about replacing the factory door speakers with traditional drivers, it is very possible that your speakers are getting damaged by water. Robert8 advised me that he had a Audiofrog GB60 fail in one of his doors. When he pulled it out he said it had obviously been getting wet and the basket was somewhat corroded. This prompted me to pull one of my Morel Mw9 from the doors and sure enough it is getting wet. With the speaker out, I did a water test against the outside glass and there was a literal deluge of water raining down at the speaker hole. Unless you have a marine grade speaker your speaker is eventually going to fail without protection. Speaker are generally tested for humidity but not direct water intrusion unless they are marine speakers. Totally make sense now why the factory drivers have a inverted magnet and voicecoil, it wasn't for mounting space. The back of that driver must be treated to protect it from all of the water because it is getting wet as well.

NVX makes silicone rubber water shields as one way to protect your drivers.

 

Thanks to @Jag Bass and @Robtrt8 for pointing this out over a year ago and also performing the water test!

I was in the process of replacing the 200mm OEM woofers with Audison AP 8 in the doors. Here's what I found: The OEM woofers had water spots on the rear despite their low profile.

For anyone doing this upgrade, it is essential to divert the water away from your expensive new speakers.

I considered using a as suggested but instead fashioned a semi-circular cone above the rear of the speaker using Dynamat so that water drips off to the sides.




A is another option but may get soaked repeatedly with water and break down over time. The woofer thrives by having the passive space of the entire door behind it, so an enclosed baffle is probably not good for optimizing bass.


For those who have already installed their speakers but have not anticipated the water intrusion, you should pull the door card off and check the condition of your speaker (even if you don't drive in the rain, just washing the car produces a substantial amount of water in the door).

It takes just a few minutes and is worth the peace of mind:

 

Do the OEM stock speakers suffer from water intrusion? Do they incorporate some kind of shield? (Didn't see any evidence in the video, above...)

I've seen OEMs use formed plastic shields, sometimes only a sheet of thin plastic, over speaker holes on other makes. Those things don't always work. but they should be noted and equivalent protection installed if replacement speakers are fitted.

It's worth it to verify that any moisture shield is intact before re-fitting the door card on ANY car. The F's seems to be robust, but a 'rain hat' protecting the large speaker's rearward surface would be easy to create.

 

No, I believe the coil drive OEM type door speakers are designed to be exposed to way more water than a typical speaker, hence the reversed magnet design.

 

Tnx, I'm kinda behind on the latest and greatest audio/speaker innovations (even if they ARE 10+ years old)