Weak Driver Door Speakers
 

I own a Jaguar XK8 2001

Currently been questioning my sanity over whether they designed the alpine system in the xk8 to be passenger side dominant. My sub woofer and tweeter on the driver door are significantly lower than that of the passenger side.

Yes they increase with volume but the passenger side will always be louder. Now the issue with this is that I wouldn't hear the bass enough on my side which throws my musical feels off (I'm a musician so it's a sensory
​​​​ Ick)

Yes I've also tried balance but it throws off the front and rear speakers that work as they should. It's like the driver door just has an issue.

Mind you it has been having latch issues but according to the wire diagram I don't think it's related, correct me if I'm wrong.

Go through all the balance settings using full front left and right and full back left and right. If you listen carefully you should hear whether any individual speaker is not working properly and probably needs replacing. They have their own wiring separate from everything else.

Richard

If you scroll through the settings you'll see a setting for Left/Right/Center bias. I'm not near the car now, so the terminology isn't exact. But you choose a setting. For center, all speakers are at the same volume. If you choose a Left or Right, you're telling the stereo that the driver is on the left side or the right side. Then the stereo will "reduce" the volume of that side. This is on my 2000 'vert. I assume it's the same on the coupe.

Thanks for your responses! I'm aware of the settings. I have already done that weeks ago. But when set to center. That issue is still there. And setting more left only make the back and front speaker out of balance because it's like it's something with the door rather than radio settings.

And balance and fade are set to L=R and center

Hi ocwolfy,

At this point your speakers are likely 23 years old, so you can't rule out a failing voice coil. It's not difficult to remove the door panel to inspect the speaker connector for corrosion and to test the speaker directly. Use the Advanced search function under the Threads tab in the upper right corner of this page to search for lots of information on speaker replacement.

Cheers,

Don

Thanks! I'll inspect them this weekend. I actually have extra speakers from a junk yard as well so I'll test and report back if I find what the problem was

The issue could also be caused by a degrading foam surround (they connect the speaker cone to the speaker bracket and tend to crumble to dust after a couple of decades). You can order new foam surround kits from www.simplyspeakers.com and do the repair yourself. Very economical and easy to do....

Hey I got a used 97 xk8 last year in the spring and my speakers all worked but sounded like garbage. I put in an aftermarket cd player and bought new speakers for all four corners to install and found every one of them had deteriorated speaker cones and all four cones were literally separated from the speaker cages, and all crumbled more with every touch to them. You could carefully pull a door panel off and check them, if ones gone most likely there all gone.

Just giving a little happy ending update, the plug wasn't clipped in, it would make contact from time to time as the car moved or vibrated but ultimately never would go in fully to power the speaker as intended. just clicked it in and it worked proper. I'm guessing the previous owner was a little careless with anything he did on this car. Another problem down!

Nice! You got lucky there, as I said mine were all trash…but gave me a good reason to replace all speakers and add an amp and subwoofer. I’ve found things like that with mine too, I recently had the dash cluster out and found that the trip mi/km button was just completely not plugged in, making sense as to why it never worked or lit up! I also get an intermittent airbag light due to a wiggly connector at the clock spring. Stuffed some foam behind it to keep it tighter but it still comes on here and there. It’s on the list….you know what I’m talking about, we all have that list of little bugs and issues to address….i mean come on it’s a jag! Check one off the list but by doing that fix you added two more am i right?

Exactly! Shoo I fixed so many things and all of a sudden I woke yesterday morning to go for a commute and my mirror finally developed that fault where there's a spot in the middle. Basically the liquid/adhesion is starting to fail. Now I have to remove it and clean the liquid out before it drips into my black interior 🙂. No more dimming mirror for me but honestly I don't mind. I have ceramic tints now lol.

Hi ocwolfy,

The leaking auto-dimming mirrors can usually be repaired. Two companies I have used are:

Radar Mirror - Auto Dimming Mirror Repair

Sybsema's Electronics - Auto Dimming Mirror Repair

Prices may have increased, but the last mirror I had repaired by Radar cost about $100 plus shipping, and turnaround was about a week or so.

Cheers,

Don

Thanks!!