How to Replace Door Speaker 1994-2002 Dodge Ram 1500

Hey friends, it's Lenny here at 1Aauto. Today we're going to be working on our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500 and I want to show you something fairly basic. Removing and reinstalling the inside door speaker. It'll be super easy. I can do it, you could do it too. As always, if you need any parts you can check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.

Okay, so we've got a couple Phillips head screws, one here and one here. We'll take those out. We've got our two screws. They're both the same. This right here to move around now, that's nice. Cool. All right, we've got another screw up here.

Get that out of there. It looks the same as the other two, nothing special. Set all three of those aside. Now this door panel, we're just going to feel around, make sure that there's no more screws. Sometimes you'll feel a couple coming along the bottom there. This does not feel like it has any, so we're doing all right. We have a couple of plastic trim tools. The reason why we're using plastic is because we're going to be going up against the paint. If you're worried about your paint, then of course you don't want to scratch it up with metal. Let's come right in here like this. Just going to go right along.

Okay, lift this up. As you go you're going to just kind of jam it towards the forward position or I guess towards the front of the vehicle. There we are, and that's just because on the backside of this you've got all these little clips and they go inside these hooky dos. These things, I don't know why Dodge did it, but they've got some so you need to slide straight up and down, you got some that you need to slide forward and back. Whatever, I'm sure they had their reasons, but anyway, we've got this almost off now.

So now what we're going to do is we're going to get the wiring off of the back here. So the next thing we're going to want to do is disconnect this right here. There's a little tab. You can usually grab it with your thumb. If you can't, small pocket screwdriver. Just grab it, pull it away, give this top area a little wiggle. Should want to slide right out. Awesome. So right here there's a little tab. You can use your thumb if you want and try to push it. Just be careful for a pinch. I'm going to use this. I'm just going to push right here, that lets this come up.

Now if we come to this side we can lift right up on this. Awesome. I'm just going to go right like this and see if I can get it to go down and through. This is great, now we can get our door panel right out of the way. Keep on plugging away. So here we are friends, we've got our left side door speaker here. We're going to remove the four Phillips head mounting screws. That's what those look like. They're all the same. We'll set them aside so we can't lose them. I'm just going to grab the speaker, give it a little wiggle.

It's been on there for a long, long time. Pull it out of there carefully. All right, before we remove that, I'm going to use my forky tool and go right along the door here and just try to get the connector to come off with the door. It's just held in by a little push pin, so I'll just get this in there. There it is. That gives us a little bit more slack to see what we're dealing with here. You got yourself a little push tab, okay. If you can't push it with your thumb, that's fine. Just use your pocket screwdriver, go right in between here. Give a tug while you're doing it and it comes right off.

Trying to get our speaker connected in, just going to try to grab the electrical connector. Get your lock, lock there. Should slide in. Give it a tug. Nice. Okay, I'm just going to bring this down here. Get the little push pin pushed into its hole. Just press that into its hole, that holds it nice and tight. We can take our speaker and we'll mount it up. All right, so it's going to be time to get the door panel on here. Before we go ahead and do that, we're going to take out all these push pins. All right, and we're going to put them right into the door panel and then we'll put the door panel in and the push pins will hold it to the door. To do that, you're going to use something as simple as this.

It's a little forky tool. Just like that. Give it a little twist, whatever you got to do to get these puppies to pull out. They make them nice and long for you. That's what they look like. They got like a little ear there and that's where it's going to slide over the door panel. Then these little ears right here are what hold into this hole. We'll take all of these out and we can continue. So these little tabs, the push pins, got that area right there that I showed you before, it just slides right in. Okay, bonk. There we are. Do the same for all of them and then we can continue. Okay, friends, let's get this door panel on. I'm going to take the electrical connector or the electrical harness here, try to bring it up and through. It can be a little tricky sometimes.

Try to get out of the way. I'll just give it a, you know, there it is. Just you have to be a little forceful with it sometimes, that's okay. We've got our electrical connector right here for our mirror switch. We're going to plug that in. You can tell which way it goes because it has this little number right here and that lines up with the nub in there. Slide it in, give it a tug. Don't pull the whole thing right off the door though. Put that back on there. Cool. All right, let's bring this up. What we're going to pay attention to now is the door handle. I'm just going to try to pull the door handle through its hole. Slide this over. Awesome.

We've got our lock. Just take the lock, just bring it right through the hole. Awesome. Bring the door panel down. Get it so all of our little pushpin/pitons are going to be lined up with our holes. Once you get a couple of them started in, generally speaking, all the rest will be lined up. The hardest ones for me to see are the top ones, but it is important to get them lined up. Awesome. Down along our side here. Same thing along this side. Just line up as many of them as you can before you start bonking them in. One in the center here. That is lined up but not going in. There it is, yeah. Awesome.

You just want to make sure that your door lock can flow up and down easily. If I can't, this could be wedged a little bit. Maybe the bar got bent in some of the process that you were doing. If that's the case, well, you're just going to have to pop this back out of the way and see what you can do about bending it because you want this to make sure that it can go up and down. That looks really great. I would say we can continue. So now we're going to take our long screw and we're going to go right up in here. Just try to find the hole real quick and then we'll get out of the way.

We don't need it to be too tight. We don't want to break the plastic or anything, we just need it to pull this right up against. That looks pretty great. We can move along. Grab our switch here. This is just going to slide in. Let's take a look at it. It goes in the back side first, and then the front side. Bonk, bonk. Very nice. We're going to grab our little cup with our two mounting screws. Put it facing the right way. You got your holes, you can see where it goes right down into the door. Phillips head. Start that one in. Start this one in. Okay. We're just going to bring it all the way down. That's snug. Awesome.

Thanks for watching. Visit 1aauto.com. Your place for DIY auto repairs for great parts, great service, and more content.