Stereo question for the stereo people....

[Uncle Paully]

hey guys
i have been wanting to upgrade the stereo in the car and was interesting in finding out what the most difficult aspect of the install process would be on the e34.
my biggist fear is taking apart the interior and the like, breaking some crazy german clips, and having the thing rattle me into submission. then ofcourse there is the whole engine noise thing because these cars have so many wires and electronics.
also, e34.net mentions that you don't need to change the factory speaker wire when you install new speakers and possibly an amplifier. i would have to dissagree. the factory wire is very small and if your running anything more than 50 watts, i imagine you would be better of in terms of performance and maybe saftey, to upgrade the wires.
what do you guys think?
paul

[Phil M]

read this thread, i posted an extensive thing about when i installed my receiver. have you thought about what receiver to put in yet?

http://www.bimmer.info/forum/showthread.php?t=1885&highlight=stereo

the wiring doesnt have to be changed.. they can handle a lot. im not sure why you would really need more than 50-75 watts per channel, if so then using different wire would probably be the way to go. but i think you would have to seriously hack up the interior to get the wires run around. i wouldnt fool with it. running RCA cable to the trunk is fairly easy though.

[Shaun]

hey guys
i have been wanting to upgrade the stereo in the car and was interesting in finding out what the most difficult aspect of the install process would be on the e34.
my biggist fear is taking apart the interior and the like, breaking some crazy german clips, and having the thing rattle me into submission. then ofcourse there is the whole engine noise thing because these cars have so many wires and electronics.
also, e34.net mentions that you don't need to change the factory speaker wire when you install new speakers and possibly an amplifier. i would have to dissagree. the factory wire is very small and if your running anything more than 50 watts, i imagine you would be better of in terms of performance and maybe saftey, to upgrade the wires.
what do you guys think?
paul

The interior pieces you really need to pull out to run new wires are pretty easy to remove. They just use tension clips for the most part. At this moment, my car is completely bare inside save for the seats and the dash while I put down some extra dynamat and run some fresh wires. I've completely yanked the stock stereo harness (it's intact and can be put back in...) and since my head unit doesn't have an internal amplifier, the need for new wiring was apparent.

While I'm doing more work than most here seem to have done, I'd say that unless you're going to go with the full custom route, keep your stock wires for the interior speakers. Running the RCA cables to the trunk is easy without removing too many panels, but even easier if you remove a few more. Had I known it would have been so easy with just a couple more panels out, I would have definitely gone that direction. The stock wiring more than handled my 75W per channel, and it didn't sound too bad to boot.

Good luck with the audio stuff. If you have any questions, you can PM me and I'll try to answer or help out best I can.