ryobi 18v sawzall works well. Just don’t get overzealous.
you can bend it or try bending the top mount where the pods attach back a bit to give you more clearance.
you may also look for a speaker with a surround (gaskety-thing outside of speaker cone where it mounts to the speaker ‘frame’) that has a lower profile - or multiple back and forth curves (or waves) rather than just one curve. I’m doing a horrible job of describing this and the specific term for the multi-‘wave’ surround design escapes me right now but this image below kinda shows what I mean.
https://www.alpine-electronics.nl/f...9_Type-S-Series/S-S65/HAMR-Surround_S-S65.jpg
But more important is to reduce the speaker excursion. You’ll want to limit how low the speakers play (or more accurately how loud they will play lower frequencies) as this is where you get the cone hitting things in front as the cone is pushed farther forward (and backward but that’s not the concern here) to reproduce those lower frequencies. To do so you need to put in a high pass filter (high pass crossover) that allows higher frequencies to play but limits lower frequencies. You can do this with a capacitor in line with the speaker or by using a crossover built into your amp. You’ll lose some of the bass coming from your dash speakers but if you have a sub in the console that can help make up for it.
I hope that helps. Or at least doesn’t confuse you more. I try to explain things in the simplest terms I can, so please don’t be offended if I’m explaining something you already know.
