HondaCivicForum.com - 97 Civic Coupe Rear Speaker Replacement Made Easy

Those of you looking to replace the rear speakers in your 97 Civic, there's an easier way than to rip out the entire back seat just to get to them.

Contrary to what I have read in my search for instructions, the speaker grills are NOT molded into the rear deck. Those speaker grills have tabs along the outer edges (the edge near the window and the edge next to the car's body) that are fused to the speaker grill's support lip.

If you start by prying up the front edge and work around to the outside edge, you'll encounter resistance at some point. Continue to apply gently pressure with your stubby flat-head screwdriver until those fused tabs break free. Continue along the back edge (next to the rear window) until those tabs break free. Do this for both speaker grills.

Now, with the grills off, you'll notice the speaker screw closest to you is slightly under the support lip and the other one near the middle of the rear deck is further under the rear deck. For the screw closest to you, I simply took a pair of nippers and cut a notch in the support lip in order to access to it with my screwdriver. This notch is covered up once you put the speaker grills back on.

Get a right angle ratcheting screwdriver at Lowe's similar to this: Amazon.com: 8 Piece Right Angle Screwdriver: Home Improvement and you'll be able to get under the rear deck and remove those two screws (one per speaker). The other two, fully-exposed screws are easy. Swap out the speakers and put everything back together. If you didn’t break any of the other tabs along the grill edges, the grill will snap back and stay in place. If they're loose fitting, you can take some weatherstripping putty and place a few small pieces along the support lip to hold the speaker grills in place.

I hope this helps those of you who are looking to replace the rear speakers in your Civic but didn't feel up to ripping out the entire backseat just to get to them.