yeahbuddy

I have a 68 Cutlass Supreme 4 dr with A/C. My kick panels aren't in the best shape so I don't mind chopping them up. I was wondering if there was any way to custom cut a 6 1/2" circle possibly with a dremel? They sell 1/2"-2" circle spacers that I could possible glue on the front to make room for the backing?

Has anyone done this with success? They sell premade kick panels for a-body on ebay for $99 a set w/o speakers. Don't have that kind of cash to spend on panels right now. Thanks!

oldcutlass

Yes it is possible to do it with a dremel, or keyhole saw or darn near anything that cuts thru plastic. Speaker covers have a fudge factor built in and will cover almost any ugly hole to make your installation look proffessional. Just take your time, bear in mind the emergancy brake pedal location and have at it.

fjross

I have a feeling that if you are looking to get any type of quality sound out of your kick panel speakers that you may want to get a set of blank repro panels. I know that you can buy them with speakers, but I don't think there are of high quality. These panels project out a bit from the stock and help get a deeper speaker in. I have a 71 442 although my brother has a 68 GTO and we both ordered our panels through Ames Performance. Even with the repro panels if I recall correctly, you only have about 2-1/4 to 2-3/8" to mount a speaker before the magnet bottoms out. I ended up using Polk while my brother used Infinity 6-1/2" speakers . I modified the supplied rear spacer ring and used it as a shim to give me some additional room and used the foam speaker baffles from XTC to help project the sound out and help with vibration. The only thing that you will encounter is that the emergency brake pedal will be extremely close to your speaker grills, this is another thing to consider when picking out speakers. The 68 emergency brake pedal is a bit different than the 70-72 since it hinges on the right side of the main bracket and gives a bit more room. I ended up modifying my pedal by cutting it and repositioning it to the right to give me a bit more room for clearance between the speaker grill and pedal.

Dave

Aceshigh

Buy a set of these and call it a day.
http://www.casmfg.com/Chevelle_Kickpanels.htm

I would not recommend cutting your kickpanels to fit in speakers.

I've seen them in a 1970 442 locally and they are very nice.
One thing to be aware of with kickpanels is the cowl drains behind them in my 78 F-body so I would assume
my A-body does the same. So you will need to seal the speaker with a baffle if you plan on driving this routinely.

Here's the picture I took of the yellow 70 442's Custom Autosound kickpanel.
You can see the mold was made to extend out more to fit a deeper speaker.


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