So I followed the manual, I removed the required screws/clips, and I just can't seem to get the front door card clips to release. My trim tools just bend, and even using a thin bar (steel) isn't enough (though I'm holding back for fear of cracking the plastic). Is there a trick to this? Just more force?

The reason for this project: all 4 door speakers and the rear subwoofers are silent.

 

There is a screw under a plastic cap at the door handle, two screws in the armrest, and one or two plastic pins at the bottom of the door. (I think the fronts have one and the rears have two, but I'm going from memory.) After that, it's just popping it loose. It was pretty scary the first time I did it, and mine was the same reason, except the subs weren't silent. Popping the card loose, I started at the lower rear corner. Once it's popped, it came straight out from the door, doesn't need to lift up to clear anything first.

Do you have sound from the tweeters and the dash speakers? The door speakers are a known failure point, and can usually be repaired just by soldering a jumper around the existing wire from the plug to the speaker. I eventually replaced mine with a set of 6.5" speakers, don't recall the brand, but I used the factory speaker as a mount for it by cutting out the driver and mounting my 6.5 to the Alpine Frame, so it just drops into the door with no other adaptation. That even let me use the factory plug!

(My tweeter replacement wasn't so simple. I bought a separate woofer/tweeter set, and mounted the tweeter on the Alpine mount plate after prying the factory tweeter off, and used a Dremel tool to open up the hole a bit, then epoxied my new tweeter onto the plate. Again, this let me mount my tweeter into the door with no other adaptation, although I used the tweeter's supplied crossover and spliced into the woofer wire for the signal rather than using the factory plug for the tweeter.)

The set I got was from Crutchfield, the Hertz K165. I haven't done the rear doors, yet, just the fronts, because one of the door speakers remained dead even after the jumper wire was put in. Markedly improved sound. When I do the rears, I might just do a 2-way and forego the tweeter hassle.

 

Thanks, I got all the screws / clips, but I'll start from the bottom corner and it's good to know it's a "pull out" versus "lift up and pull" as some are. The tweeters are working, but the speakers are all silent. I suspect the contacts are corroded. I'll up the force a bit... thanks for your thoughts.

 

RESOLVED! So... I was prying on the weathershield, which extends out from under the door card, and not on the actual door card. Once I focused on the right part of the door, the card came off in 5 minutes. Soldering the speaker leads took only a few minutes per, and the speakers are back to life!

 

Good deal. I should have remembered that and pointed it out!