Kirbert

Well, I didn't get any help here, so I asked some of the mechanics at the local Honda dealer (who actually weren't too familiar with the job) and looked at their copy of the repair manual (which was helpful but not too clear). I have now replaced the rear speakers in my 2004 Civic LX Coupe, and present the steps involved here.

1) On the back side of the right side seat back, at the lower left corner as viewed from inside the trunk, there is a little flap of rug held down by velcro. Peel it open and remove the two screws underneath. Fold that seat back forward, roll the hinge plate rearward, and lift the right side seat back up and out of the car.

2) Remove a single screw that holds that hinge plate. This allows the left side seat back to be slid to the left and lifted up and out of the car.

3) Along the rear edge of the seat bottom, near center, there is a single screw that must be removed. Then yank upward on the front of the seat bottom and it will pop loose from two places along the front edge and you can lift it out.

4) Remove the trim on the inside of the C pillars. This is a grab and yank of the entire panel; ignore the little access panels along the top edge.

5) Remove the large interior panels on each side of the car. There is a large access panel on each side that was hidden by the seat backs, but they provide access to nothing. There is a single screw under a snap-in cover behind the handle on the armrests that must be removed. If you have the older style front seat belt attachments with a little rail that the seat belt slides on, you'll need to remove those; my 2004 didn't have those attachments but rather a more conventional single bolt attachment that didn't need to be bothered. Pry the panels off starting at the rear. There is one gray push-in pin on each panel that will pop out as you pull the panel back; don't bother to try and remove it before pulling the panel back.

6) Now you can remove the deck trim panel. Pop the bulb socket from the high-mount brake light out of the fixture by twisting it. Apparently, older models had a separate trim piece surrounding the keyhole that must be popped loose from below, but the 2004 does not. There are three nifty fold-back attachments along the front edge that you must release, then you can pry the whole panel up.

Reassembly is obviously the reverse, but there are a couple of things to note. First, the guy who designed the use of four of those hateful little white snap-in attachments along the rear edge of the deck trim should have been dragged outside and shot. It took me more than an hour and probably a dozen attempts accompanied by lots of profanity before that went together right. Consider looping a piece of string through each white snap-in pin and feeding the strings through the holes before sliding the trim into place; this will give you something to pull on to try to get those pins into the holes correctly. Alternatively, just throw those four pins away and install clip nuts on the panel instead, and feed screws in from below to secure the trim.

Obviously, be careful that all seat belts end up fed through properly during reassembly.

One other thing you'll want to know: the polarity of the speaker connections. At the right rear, the pink wire is + and the blue/yellow wire is -. At the left rear, the blue/white wire is + and the blue/black wire is -. Honda uses special connectors to their speakers, so if you don't have a suitable adapter you'll need to cut those plugs off and splice on the connectors that come with the aftermarket speakers.

Don't buy aftermarket speakers with magnets that are overly large. The torsion bars for the trunk lid wrap around the speaker magnets and are suitably shaped to clear them, but speakers with big bulky rear ends may cause interference. The Sony XPlod's I installed clear OK.

After connecting up the wires, be sure to secure them up against the bottom of the deck with tape or something; don't just leave them hanging. This is a luggage compartment, and you don't want the wires getting tangled up with stuff you toss in the trunk. You also don't want them getting rubbed by those torsion bars every time the trunk lid moves. Finally, the release latches for the seat backs are right there, and black so they are hard to see, so the temptation is just to feel around for one and yank it -- and you don't want to be yanking your speaker wires instead.

As always, it's a good idea to test the speakers before reassembling all that trim.


BTW, this speaker replacement is highly recommended. The OEM speakers are garbage.