How to Replace Door Speaker 2013-18 Subaru Forester

Hey friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today I'm working on a 2014 Subaru Forester, I'm going to be showing you how to remove the left-front door speaker. It's going to be a very easy job. I want to be the guy that show you how to do it. If you need any parts or instructional videos, you can always check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.

All right, so here we go. We've got our door open, we're looking at our door panel. We're going to use a small pocket screwdriver, or whatever you happen to have, something small. Right here there's a little flappy door, I'm just going to grab this, pop it open. Behind there, there's a Phillip's-head screw located right there. So we're going to remove that, so a Phillip's-head screwdriver, turning it counter-clockwise of course.

Grab our little screw out of there. That's what it looks like. I'm going to use something like these, these are called trim tools, they're plastic so you won't mar up any of your plastic door panel here. Feel along the bottom, just make sure you don't feel any screws or anything like that, that go in, hold it to the door itself. Feels pretty good. I'm just going to start along the bottom, I'm going to use my door panel tools here.

See if I can find where the little clips are, feel like there's one right about there. There we go. Looks like it's getting tighter up here. Okay, over to this side, do the same thing. Feels pretty good. Just try shaking it around a little bit because it gets tight up here.

All right, so while we're moving it around, I feel like it's getting ready to come loose here. Try wriggling it. Feels as though there's something holding it in right here, so I'm just going to grab something and I'm going to try to pop this off real quick.

Okay, I've got my pocket screwdriver again. Right here there's a little slot, I'll show you it in one second here. Try to get that off. Right here is where I went, right between there and here. Just pulls out these little tabs. Now we're going to find two more Phillip's-heads, one right there, one located down here. You can pick which one you want to remove first, you do you boo-boo. One, looks just like the first one, and grab this one.

Three, just like the other two. Cool beans. Now, grab our door panel, wriggle it around, comes right off now. Behind here there's going to be some wiring and some cables, so you just want to make sure you take a look and see what's going on before you go ahead and hang it. We're going to disconnect all we can. I'm going to take this white one right here, I'm going to try to remember the white goes up top. You can mark it if you need to, or whatever you need to do to remember.

Or just watch the video to see how it was removed and just reinstall it that way. Anyway, right one, pull it. Take a peek, just a little ball. Okay, easy peasy. Going to go with the green, just going to pull it out, lift it. Let's keep on rolling. Down here there should be a little push clip, right in the center. There's the push right there, okay. That's where I pushed on.

There's one right here, I'm going to try and push on that one. Here we are, going to feel around the big one here. That one's probably on the other side, let's see if I can find it. I'm going to try to use a little pick, I'm going to push in on the center right here. I'll show you where I'm pushing. Subaru was nice and they put it in the back where you can barely get to, but let me just push right there, and that unlocks this little clip right here.

So now we've got the door panel off, we can access everything. Right here is our door speaker, very easy to get to at this point. We've got some Phillip's-head screws, there's four of them. And there's one electrical connector. So, first I'm going to take off the connector, I'm going to push right here, just a little slide-y tab right there. Every time we take a connector off, we always take a peek inside. Make sure there's no funny colors, you don't want any rainbow colors or rust or anything like that, and electrical connectors, it's very bad.

That looks great, we'll set it aside. We're going to go ahead and remove our four screws right here, with our Phillip's-head screwdriver. You can use whatever you've got, but a Phillip's-head's what's going to do it.

So here we go, I'm holding the speaker so it doesn't fall. I'm going to take out this last one and give it a little shake, break it free. There we are, now we've removed our left-front door speaker, very simple.

So here we go, it's time to install our speaker. We've got a little hooky-do right here, and a little clip right down there. So when we install this, we're going to go from like this, top-first, and then just like that. Easy peasy. Okay, I got my four screws, I'm just going to pick one. I'm going to start it in the hole. I'm not going to tighten anything down until I have all four of them started, it's very important.

Start it in a little bit here, so it doesn't fall out, cool. Now we're just going to out them all in. Like I said, we're not going to tighten them down. Now it's time to tighten them down. It's just plastic, I don't want to crack the plastic so I don't want to go too tight. Just bottom it out, and that should be pretty much good enough on these. Do all four, and we're going to so the electrical connector.

Grab all this stuff down from here so we can find it. Just a jumbled mess. Here it is, we already checked it, we know it's good. It's going to go right here, right? Easy peasy. There we are. Now we can go ahead and start getting the door panel on.

So here we go. We've got some electrical connectors here, right? We're going to go ahead and connect all these in, and then we're going to move along. We're going to connect in that one down there, and then of course we're going to put in our little cables. Right? Very important. You want to leave these off because, well, good luck getting in.

Here we go. We've got one big one, it's going to go right down here in the bottom. Click. And a couple other ones here, click. This one here goes up higher, click. Easy peasy. Cool. We'll do that electrical connector in one second down there, we'll just hang it so it's ready to go. We're going to do these while I'm up here, and then I'm just going to set the door panel inside it's little thing so I can get down on to there.

So we've got two cables. We've got our green cable, this one goes down to the handle. So I'm going to go ahead and slide it in. And then I'm going to lock it in to this little do-hickey, boom. Right here, the top one, this is the lock cable. This goes in, see if I can get it. Oops. You want to make sure the door is in the locked position here, makes it easier to get the cable in.

Here we are, we're going to lock it in. There we are, perfect. I'm just going to take the door panel, just going to set it up on here. Now I can let go for a second, we've got our cable right here, wire harness. Just going to go into the little light, let me see if I can find it real quick. Yep, okay. So, right here, this is going to go right in.

Let me see if I can find it again, I'll show you. Right where I am, the lock goes facing up, clicks in. Easy peasy. Everything's in there. All right, before I go ahead and clip this in, I'm just going to test it real quick. So we're going to go ahead and unlock it. Now we're going to go ahead and lock it. That works perfect, cool.

So now we'll say that it's ... Let's see, I'm going to go in actually, because that's the door handle I'm going to be testing. So I'll go in, and then I'm going to try to open the door. Cool. Now I'm going to try it again, but I'm going to lock it. Unlock, perfect. All right, let's get this door panel mounted in. Make sure it goes down, no binding. Goes back up, love it.

Door locks, great. There we are, works, works. So here we go, we're going to test the mirror. Left-side mirror. Looks good. All right, now we can go ahead and put the door panel on. So we'll make sure that the door panel's pulled down fully. Right, we tested everything, we're good to go. We made sure we plugged in this light down here, definitely on, nice and bright. Somebody put an LED, that's cool.

There's little holes inside the door panel, or the door itself. That's where the pins from the door panel are going to sit into. So you just take a peek, make sure you've got them looking like they're pretty lined up. Start at the top, work your way around. Just give it a little bonk, bonk-bonk, that's my thing. There we are, feels like maybe one more here.

So we've got three screws. One here, there, and there. So, theoretically we should have three screws left, and we do. So we're going to go ahead and put these in. We're just going to start them in until we get all three started. One screw, two, three. We're going to use our screwdriver, we're we're going to turn them in to the right. Like I said, I'm not going to tighten it down yet, until get all three of them started in.

It's very important, in case you need to shift the door panel around at all, line up the holes, which is going to help you save a little bit of time in the long-run. There we are, this is the last one so I'm just going to snug it right up. That feels good. This one, feels good. Last one, feels good. Close our little door here, nice. We're going to put this on, that's this right here. Let's get this right here, okay. This goes down in there.

Once it's in, you just line everything up, give it a little squeeze. Now, if you wanted to, you can go ahead and clean it down, get off any fingerprints you might have put on there. Or leave them, whatever you did.

Let's test it one...

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