Replace stereo

[Alan W]

Okay, one of my winter projects has got to be replacing the factory fit business radio tape deck head and the CD multi changer.

This is what I plan to do and would welcome any comments or suggestions.

I want to maintain the integrity of the original spec of the car so when I remove the original head unit and multichanger I will keep it.

I plan to leave the footwell speakers, amp and door tweeters in situ but disconnect them.

Having looked for a head unit that won't look too out of place in the dash I have come accross this one which has red illumination:

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stor ... yId_165474

Budget yes, but has some good reviews and seems perfect for my needs.

I then intend purchasing a pair of secondhand doorcards into which I will install decent oval speakers with built in tweeters just below the armrests and retain the uncut door cards.

Because the stereo is 4 channel I may replace the rear speakers and set up the fader 70/30 just to add a little 'ambience' to the sound.

My first concern is the wiring side of this

Any comments?

Alan

[BladeRunner919]

I plan to leave the footwell speakers, amp and door tweeters in situ but disconnect them.

Why disconnect all the front speakers?

[Southernboy]

Doorcard speakers are limited under the armrest...Firstly you have the curvature of the armrest below...secondly the metal door skin extends behind the doorcard about 40mm+ which again restricts the lower side of a speaker...then you have a depth issue to avoid making contact with the glass of the window and the winder mechanism... The small "pocket" for storage on the doorcard limits how far across you can go towards the front end of the doorcard...the extent to which the speaker protrudes into the car towards the seat is also limited...if you want to actually get some sound out of the speaker it needs to be away from the seat as much as possible...
This was my solution to the space issue...
Doorcard marked for cutting...


Components I made to allow a flush fit with the largest diameter speaker and the smallest diameter grill...I shaped the wire mesh covers myself, and had the metal surround lazer cut to fit my application..


...and fitted with a 5" dual speaker...The mesh is solid enough to bump without denting...

[Southernboy]

Here is an image of the doorskin behind the doorcard... as you can see..the metal of the door extends from the hinge backwards to elliminate the use of the space there...if you superimpose a doorcard on this you will see that the actual available space is extremely limited...

[Alan W]

Mmmm.. that looks kind of tight.

I was thinking along the lines of 6"x9" speakers as opposed to circular, something along the line of these:

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stor ... 65870#tab1

Speakers aside, If I install the new head unit can I connect straight up to the current factory intalled set up (amp - speakers) by using some kind of adapter plug?

Would this liteally be plug and play with everything working?

[Robert T]

I have seen at least two alternative solutions to this problem over the years - the first and simplest look to be to mount the speaker in the pocket end, using the pocket to house the speaker - the second involved building a kind of pod to mount a pair of speakers in along the bottom of the door without impeding on the door/window mechanism.

Also, be aware that there is a waterproof membrane inside the door which you will not want to puncture when fitting speaker components - this keeps water from the window out of the car - holes in this are a frequent cause of water in the footwells.

Cheers R.

[Southernboy]

I connected my doorcard speakers to the feed for the tweeters...short length of dual core wire spliced into the tweeter leads...works perfectly.
6 X 9's will not fit without extensive cutting of the metal inner skin at the bottom of the door. If you have a look at the pic of the door without the card on it, you can see how far up from the lower edge of the doorcard the metal skin extends...this interferes with the cone at back of the speakers, and would need to be cut to allow the cones to fit. I used the lazer cut circular metal trim fitted to the outside of the doorcard so that I could use the 4 screws to hols the speaker to the inside of the doorcard vs mounting the speaker to the door inner skin. This kept the speaker as far away as possible from the window winding mechanism inside the door cavity. The "rectangular" hole in the metal skin is large enough to accommodate a 6 x9..but the doorcard armrest will not allow you to place the speaker at that height without cutting most of the armrest away...It's a PITA !
Another problem with mounting speakers in the doorcards is...speakers of say dia. 5" come with plastic outer cvers with the mesh stuff...these covers will be aprox 6" - 7" in diameter...so they're also impossible to fit on the outside without being interferred with by the armrest...hence I made my own mesh covers from "heavy" stainless mesh so that once fitted, they would occupy the minimal space as well as be strong enough to withstand a knee banging up against them without denting in. I simply sprayed them black before fitting rather than have bright steel finish.
I actually made up a second set like mine for a mate in Durban...he has also fitted them in his Z3...they are discreet enough to be inconspicuos, and yet if you choose a decent powerful speaker, it delivers excellent sound...to the point of improving the clarity and volume in the cockpit by at least 80%. This is because the speakers are basically free to emit all their sound vs being at foot level or behind the seats.
If you're interested, I can have a set of these made up for you here and post them over as a kit...you will need to source your own speakers there though. If I recall, I used Infiniti dual cone speakers...they have a tweeter in the center, which meant I could dump those useless OEM tweeters at the top of the door, and use their connection wires to extend to the new speakers.
Option is to get some polystyrene and carve a "surface mount" container and use fiberglass to manufacture a solid structure which will hold a speaker...there is a company in Germany that supplies these, but at a huge price...They are at :- http://www.jehnert.de if you want to have a look....

[Del]

Probably me being a "keep it simple old cynic" but I just upgraded the existing speakers (one of mine had blown anyway) with similar sized ones. In my view the Z3 is a poor acoustic environment in any event. That way no cutting, no expense on extra door cards and the original look is not compromised.

[Southernboy]

You're right..it is a poor acousyic environment...however, one must consider the contributing factors...
1. Soft top....this allows for the most exterior noise interference.
2. Poor insulation in the side body panels - this creates voids where noise can reverberate as in an empty vessel
3. Quality of insulation on doorcards - these are made of pressed board with a laminate of Vynil.
4. Quality of boot carpet insulation - allows far to much road and axle noise to filter in
5. Limited / poor positioning of speakers - my spine and feet don't hear as well as my ears...

All the above are issues that can be remedied to some degree with minimal cost but some considerable effort in time and labour.
1. soft top lining is all that can be added to reduce noise there.
2. Body panels are double walled, and can be removed from the car, or accessed from the inside by removing covers / trim etc...these can be clad or lined with sound proofing materials cheaply. Products like builders flashing is excellent.
3. The inner face of the doorcards can be surfaced with a layer of foam which has one face lined with aluminium foil. It needs to be shaped and trimmed to allow the doorcard clips to still access their respective holes.
4. The boot carpet is pathetic. More in tune with a 60's Ford Anglia than a BMW. This can be re-trimmed with a dense fibre carpet as well as lined throughout with flashing.
5. Speakers can be upgraded to units with modern specs and greater output power. They can also be increased in size from OEM 4" to new 6" - 61/2" units. The addition od doorcard speakers detracts from the "oem" look, but are worth the loss and should have been sorted during the design phase of the car...Slack / poor design by BMW.

The cost of flashing is so low and easy to apply, it sould be on everyone's list of winter upgrades. The inner face of the doorcards can be covered with this material too. It is barely 2mm thick and if applied with care it will also provide excellent protection from water. I recently re-trimmed my boot with a product called "super aerotouch"...this a velour type product which has an overall thickness of around 12mm including the base material. It isn't a DIY task I would recommend unless you are very patient, and have a full week to do the transition in stages. Alternately it is best left to a professional trimmer. Speakers are fairly costly, especially for top quality brands...they are simple to remove and re-fit as a DIY task though.

In summation it is largely an easy DIY (BOOT CARPET EXCLUDED)...it only requires determination to extract the most out of the little you've been given by BMW in the way of cockpit insulation to radically improve the audibility of your system in a Z3.

[Gazza]

I replaced the fronts and added dashtop tweeters, kept the rear speakers and added a sub, sounds good to me

I have kept the original equipment because my S54 is going to be worth £millions in years to come

[Southernboy]

....yes Gary...from your mouth to...s ears mate....

[Alan W]

Or how about this...

Remove factory footwell speakers and amp,

Install said JVC head.

To get optimum frequency range split connect to two 3 way crossovers splitting the signal into high, medium and low frequencies like these:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Phonocar-5-34 ... 136wt_1328

Then:

Repace footwell speakers with 6.5" woofers like these:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SPEAKER-CONE- ... 788wt_1311

Fit special shallow mid rage speakers into doorcards like these:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mercedes-C-Cl ... 172wt_1091

Use existing tweeters

[Southernboy]

sounds good....it will certainly improve the quality of audio...

[Southernboy]

As you can see on the Merc speakers...the actual speaker diameter is considerably less than the total diameter...when you cut the hole for it, allow about 3mm outside the foam rubber lip of the speaker...you still have the problem of the speaker mesh cover though, which is still larger than the overall diameter of the speaker...which means you either have to leave it off, or figure out a fitting like I did..whwere a really tight fit was possible by mounting the speaker on the inside of the doorcard where the armrest is a negative curve and doesn't interfere with mounting it...problem is the cover...on the outside...

[Alan W]

Okay, can someone please tell me so I can get my head around the factory installation...

I take it that the factory fit amp has a live feed that is either constant when ignition is on or live when the head is turned on?

Also, would I be correct to think that from the head there are four sets of speaker wires, two sets for the rear speakers and two sets for the front - and that both front sets go to the amp and once amplified from there go to the footwell woofer and door tweeter.

If so, has the amp got a built in crossover to split the frequencies so that the low range goes to the footwell and the high frequencies go to the door tweeters or do they use a 'choke?'.

Many thanks for your patience in this... want to fully understand how it all works before I remove / modify / upgrade..

Alan

[Robert T]

Which amplifier are you talking about Alan? The one on the back of the left-hand footwell speaker or one in the boot? I'm guessing you mean the one in the footwell, as you haven't mentioned a sub-woofer, which was part of the factory Harmon Kardon speaker setup.

In which case, the footwell amp is fed from the headunit, and then the wiring must go across the car to feed the right-hand footwell speaker. From memory, the tweeters do not go through the amp, as I seem to recall the tweeters worked when I hadn't connected the amp remote connection.

There is a relay on the amp, so I'm pretty sure that the headunit only needs to supply a minimal amount of power to operate it and the amp will take its power from a separate permanent supply, so you need a switched output for when the headunit is on - on mine it was labelled remote control - beware that some headunits have an "ant pwr" or "antennae power" for motorised aerials and on some of these, they only provide this when the radio is on, but not when using another source.

Cheers R.

[Alan W]

Okay, I may have come up with a reasonably cheap way of keeping the factory fit business head and CD multichanger and getting a better sound

Remove factory fit woofer footwell speakers and amp.

Replace woofers with something like the 5.25" edge woofers or similar.

Working with the wiring at the amp plug which should be 2 channels L & R and a power feed and earth for amp... I would get my speaker wires and on the end of them fit RCA adaptors (about £5 on ebay) which are designed to allow you to connect old heads to modern amps.

Then fit a 2 channel compact amp behind dashboard like this (and there are loads on the market under £50) and power / earth it from the originasl amp cables so it comes on automatically when you turn head unit on

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/231079381216#ht_4876wt_1156

Plug it all in and away you go

There would be a variety of ways to wire up the tweeters and you could also add passive crossovers?