By: Phil (Cobra Jet from BimmerForums.com)
Well, bmwpower and I spent a good 4 days designing and implementing my new stereo system upgrade and after all of the hard work, it really paid off and the system turned out exactly as planned and as I had hoped.
The other reason it took 4 days, is because we both work and have personal issues to tend to, so we only had so much time to work on it during the weeknights.
I wrote this up to help others, since there was jack squat online on what to expect and how to do go about doing certain things with this specific model of BMW; E36 M3 COUPE or E36 3 series COUPE.
Anyhow, here's some sound advice for those looking to upgrade their systems in the E36 M3's (or 3 series) 2 door coupes (this may apply to the convertibles and 4 doors as well, but I cannot confirm this for sure).
*** FIRST, BEFORE PERFORMING ANY WORK - DISCONNECT BOTH BATTERY TERMINALS from the battery!*** Also be sure to have all of the proper tools on hand before starting your work, it makes things much easier.
Also, we utilized the M3's factory speaker wiring, and factory wiring harness from the factory stereo, it was easy to do and the best way to do this install. The only areas where I have added my own wiring was for the rear speakers, subwoofer, amp turn on lead, the (+) main power feed and the (-) main power feed. The rest of the BMW's wiring is perfectluy fine to use and will save you lots of time.
Kick panel speaker upgrade info
Upgrading the factory kick panel speakers with a 6.5" woofer IS possible, BUT it does require a little amount of effort, pre-layout and cutting of the metal area where the factory 5" was mounted.
In order to tackle the kick panel speakers, you will need to remove the following parts/pieces to make life MUCH more easier (which is what we had done, and trust me on this, it's better to do what we did than not to).
Before starting anything, REMOVE the front SEATS, it will make the kick panel area more accessible and easier to get to for cutting and layout procedures (trust us on this one!). We left the passenger seat in and it was hell trying to cut out the speaker hole on that side. The driver's side we removed, and the process went real smooth compared to the passenger side.
1) Remove the large lower dash panels on each side of the car. One is located under the glove box, the other is located under the steering column. When removing the one under the steering column, be sure to disconnect the (2) small electrical connectors once the panel has been lowered. Each panel is detatched from the main dash assembly by removing the (3) screws which hold each panel onto the main dash assembly. Once those screws (3 per side) are removed, you can disengage and remove those panels, place in a safe area so they do not get damaged.
2) Removing the actual kick panels is tricky. On each kick panel, there is a small plastic slotted push button that secures the panel to the body. Use a flat head screwdriver and turn this little button so that it is vertical. Once you have done that, you can now try to remove the kick panel. The plastic button will release the pressure off the kick panel once it has been turned. On the driver side, you will need to unscrew the hood release lever using a Phillips head screwdriver. Remove the lever, place it and the screw in a safe area so not to lose it. In order to remove each kick panel, you need to PUSH the panels towards the front of the car to disengage the L shaped clips on the rear of each panel. There is a plastic L shaped clip on the top and bottom of each panel, which secures it to the inner body structure. Once you think those clips are released, pull the panels towards you towards the back of the car. Once you have released the kick panels, you can remove them from the car and place in a safe area so they do not get damaged.
3) Removing the speakers is easy! I believe it was an 8mm socket that needs to be used here. Each speaker is held in by (4) bolts, of which may be 8mm (check the size). Once the 4 bolts are removed, the speaker can easily be pulled out. Disconnect the (+) and (-) leads from the speakers.
4) In order to fit anything larger than the factory 5" (or 5.25") speaker, you will also need to remove the factory foam/insulated padding. This padding also had a speaker baffle on it in which the factory speakers sat inside of this baffle. If you are installing 6.5" speakers (or bigger), those baffles will get cut off, they cannot be used.
5) Use the template (or make one) and make sure you PREFIT the speaker, and decide EXACTLY WHERE the speaker will be seated under the kick panel - once you make that cut into the metal, there is NO turning back. I cannot stress this enough, PREFIT the template and make sure where you want that speaker, is how it will seat or be seated and be 100% certain there will be NO obstructions behind the speaker, or when the kick panels go back on over the new speakers. This is all trial and error, there is no way for me to tell anyone how we mounted my speakers, only because it took a good amount of time for bmwpower to place the template, review the layout and be 100% sure where we were going to mount the speakers, that NOTHING was going to be in the way, and there was not going to be ANY interferance at all once the kick panels were re-installed. PREFIT, PREFIT, PREFIT!
6) Once you have outlined the template of the 6.5" speaker you are going to install, PLACE A TOWEL or TOWELS down on your carpet to avoid metal shavings and/or spark "dust" from getting all over everything. Proceed to CAREFULLY (I MUST STRESS CAREFULLY, because there are numerous wiring harnesses very close to the speaker location on the driver's side!) cut the along the outline you have made. We used bmwpower's Dremel tool with a metal cutting disc, which made it easier to cut/trim the hole out then trying to use a regular metal grinder, or snips, etc....
7) After the holes have been trimmed, cut etc - then, fit your speakers in the holes. They should fit perfectly, with no obstructions, etc and should also fit flush against the metal. Once you have decided the speakers will fit with no problems, before mounting them, you can either leave the space behind the speakers empty, or you can fill them with speaker fiberfill material for insulation purposes. We chose to fill the hole with a small amount of fiberfill. Now, re-attach the (+) and (-) leads from the factory harness to the corresponding tabs on your speakers. Mount the speakers in their locations. Once you have the speakers mounted, the old factory foam/baffle you previously removed, if you have not done so already, cut the old speaker baffles off. Now, place the foam over the same area where it came from and trace/outline the new speaker on this foam. Cut and discard the excess foam after cutting along your trace. Remount the foam on the metal kick panel wall, it should fit well around the new speaker. This will be held in place by the kick panel once it is re-installed.
8) BEFORE mounting your kick panels, be advised that the stock kick panels will no longer mount or fit properly OVER the 6.5" woofer. If you force them over the woofer, the "ribs" on the back of each kick panel will touch the woofer's surround and possibly damage it, plus it will obstruct the movement of the woofer. In order to remedy this, we used the Dremel again and we ground away ALL of the ribs on the back of each kick panel. They were completely ground down and flattened out so it was smooth when done. Once you grind away all of this plastic (ribs), you can proceed to re-install the kick panels on each side. If you were successful in properly planning and doing your PREFITs in Step # 5 above, your kick panels should now fit over the new 6.5" speakers with absolutely NO interferance or mounting problems! Now you are done the front kick panels, re-installation of all removed parts is the reverse of removal.
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Door panel speaker install
In order to remove the factory speaker grills AND speakers, you will need to remove both driver and passenger door panel. To remove those panels, you will need a small torx bit (I forget the size offhand).
1) Open the door you are working on. Remove the door handle lever outer bezel. To remove, slide the bezel towards the outside of the door. Each bezel is held on by 4 plastic nubs or clips on the backside of the bezel. BE CAREFUL, they can be broken easily, so have patience.
2) Remove the decorative bolt caps under each door handle. These can be removed using a small flat head screwdriver by prying under it and popping it off. Put those aside so they do not get lost.
3) Using the small torx bit, unscrew the (2) torx screws under each of those decorative caps you removed. There are only (2) torx screws per door.
4) Once you have removed the bezel and the (2) torx screws on each door, you will now want to pull on the door panel, towards the interior of the car (or towards your body). Careful in doing so, so you do not damage the door panel, or any other parts of the car. You will need to pull with some force. You should hear some distinct "pops" as the clips on the back side of the door panel release from the metal door shell. Once you have the door panel slightly removed, BEFORE ripping it off the door, make sure you disconnect the (+) and (-) leads from the tweeter and the midrange!!! I forget how many clips there are on the back of the panel, but once you have pulled on the panel and it is loose, you can pry the rest of the panel off AFTER disconnecting the factory speaker leads.
5) Now that the door panel is removed, you can see the mounting mechanism for the factory speakers. You have to UNSCREW this mechanism from the actual speaker grill. It resembles a large circle that is threaded onto the speaker grill (think of a Mayonaise lid on a Mayonaise jar). Once you have unscrewed the tweeter and mid range, you are now ready to do your door speaker installation.
I will say this now, anything other than the factory BMW mirange will require some creative thinking on how to get the speaker to mount behind the door panel, and how you will be able to attach that speaker to the door panel utilizing the factory location AND the factory speaker grills. All I can say is we came up with a very good way of doing this and it worked. It took some brain power, but we were able to devise a way of keeping the aftermarket 4" speaker attached to the door panel in the factory location, using the factory grill. The issue at hand in this area is the factory BMW speaker is NOT a 4" speaker, try more or less a 3 inch or smaller and also the way BMW designed the mounting point to the door. I cannot elaborate anymore on this area, just because each install could be different due to types/brands of speakers being used and the depth of the speaker being used.
To utilize the factory door grills to keep a factory look, a 1" tweeter will fit into the factory tweeter location. In order to do this, it requires the cutting and trimming of the inner factory tweeter grill. What you have to do is remove ALL of the excess inner plastic portion of the factory grill WITHOUT distorting the outer circumference, or damaging the factory grill itself. This requires PATIENCE and the use of the Dremel. If using the factory 4" midrange grills, the SAME process is needed. I will say this, it took about 2 hours in total for the modification of the (4) speaker grills. Once you have removed the excess plastic from the interior of the factory tweeter grill, you can insert your aftermarket 1" tweeter into this grill. It should fit snugly, without anything needed to hold it in place.
After you are done figuring out how to install and have installed your aftermarket speakers onto the door panel, re-sinatllation is the reverse of the removal process above.
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Installing an aftermarket stereo
When installing an aftermarket radio in a 95 - newer BMW E36 M3 coupe (PLEASE CROSS REFERENCE THE PARTS LISTED BELOW BEFORE ASSUMING THEY WILL WORK IN YOUR VEHICLE!), you will need to have the following parts, which are available from www.crutchfield.com:
1) BMW wire harness - It is Crutchfield part # 120709195 and costs $12.00. This is the connector to mount onto factory wire harness where the factory stereo used to plug in. This will eliminate the need to cut your factory harness if you do not wish to butcher the car and will make your installation easy.
2) BMW antenna adapter (noted by Crutchfield as the "Volkswagen Antenna Adapter") Crutchfield part # 097DIN2, cost = $3.00. You will NEED this if you intend on using the FM or AM on your new stereo. The BMW factory antenna lead will not fit onto an aftermarket radio due to it's design, it's not standard.
All I can say in this area of installation is, be sure to follow ALL "pin out" guides, manuals, or wiring diagram layouts you have in your possession before attempting to do an aftermarket radio install. Carefully go over each wire and what purpose it may serve, or what it may connect to. Be sure that the wires you are connecting are the correct wires. I did not connect any of the speaker wires from the Crutchfield connector to my head unit, because I am using an aftermarket amp which uses RCA wires. I also did not use the factory BMW white turn on lead, I ran a separate turn on lead which was my choice as well.
Running RCA wires from your aftermarket stereo to the rear of the car
If you intend to run an aftermarket amp and will be using multiple sets of RCA wires, run those RCA wires down the DRIVER's side of the vehicle. Here is the best way to run those wires from the stereo location to the rear (trunk) of the car:
1) Remove factory head unit. To do this, pop open each little square on the front and use an Allen key to turn the little Allen head screws until they are lose. Once those are lose, you can pull the head unit out towards you and remove the factory harness connector on the back.
2) Remove your OBC (if you have one still there) and remove the "sunglasses" pocket below that. This will allow access behind those areas in order to run RCA wires.
3) Remove driver's side seat, kick panel, the door threshold and the large under dash panel on the driver's side (this was previously mentioned above for the kick panel revisions and speaker install, see that area for removal instructions).
4) Look into the stereo hole, you will see to the left a small hole/cavity, or area large enough to fish wires down into. This is where you will want to start inserting your RCA wires. Insert the RCA wires down into that hole, until you see them starting to appear where the OBC opening is. Once you have them there, you will want to take an old wire coat hanger and disassemble it. Take your RCA wire you just inserted down into the OBC opening and tape it to the end of the coat hanger. Once you have secured the RCA to the coat hanger, proceed to fish that wire down through the OBC and pocket openings to the left, there is a small area where you can push the wire through. If you are in the correct area, you will see the coat hanger/wire come out at the very back, or end of the center console towards the floor/front of car. Once you see this, remove the RCA from the coat hanger and finish pulling the rest of the length of RCA wire though. REPEAT this step if you are running multiple sets of RCA's. ***NOTE: You will also repeat this same procedure when installing an indepenent turn on wire lead to the head unit for an amp.
5) Label each RCA as to what it will be connected to on the stereo end and on the amp end. Peel back the driver's side carpet and run the RCA wires from the rear of the center console, behind the gas/brake/clutch pedals UNDER the carpet. Run the wires across the floor towards the kick panel and run them right down the inner door sill (under the threshold area) and go towards the back of the car. Once you have connected the RCA's to the head unit, and connected all of the other necessary wires to the head unit/car harness, you will now want to re-install all of the pieces you have removed. Re-installation is the reverse of the removal process noted above. At this point, you should have the entire stereo/OBC/pocket area all back together and the dash/kick panel/threshold and carpet back in place.
6) Please check a Bentley, Haynes or other source for rear seat removal, as there are different kinds of rear seats due to the various interior options and vehicle make/body styles. Afer you have removed your rear seats, continue to bring the RCA's to the trunk of the car. The way I did this, since I have a COUPE is, once I had the driver's side right rear seat bolster removed, I ran the wires up and under it, and under the rear deck through the factory speaker location on that side of the car. That was my best route and easiest route to the trunk. ****NOTE IF YOU HAVE A CONVERTIBLE, you may run into an issue of the back metal FIREWALL. If this is the case, you will need to figure out HOW to run the wires into the trunk. (Bmwpower may have some leads on this, as we had to run RCA's to his 325i convertible trunk a couple of years ago and I forget the procedure we did). Once you have the RCA's in the trunk, you can re-install the rear seats.
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Mounting an amp, or other stereo components in the trunk
There are VARIOUS ways to mount an amp, or other components in the trunk. Too many variables to list here and too many different kinds of combinations. Each individual owner's choice of how the trunk will be designed is soley up to their discretion.
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Earlier, when I stated above that we utilized the factory speaker wires and other pertinent wires from the factory harness, this harness is found in the trunk on the driver's side of the vehicle. You will need to remove the left inner trunk lining wall, and remove the factory amp (if your vehicle has one). Once you have removed the amp, there are (2) factory harnesses/connectors which contain ALL of the car's speaker wiring, etc....
All I can say here is CONSULT ALL of your PIN OUT documentation, aftermarket stereo component wiring diagrams, crossover diagrams and amp wiring diagrams. I used all of the factory speaker wires which was easy to do when following the associated documents.
Before cutting any of the harnesses, I must stress - BE SURE that what you are cutting IS INDEED the correct wire you are cutting.
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Well, I think that basically sums it up on how to do an aftermarket stereo install.
I tried to cover the important universal areas that are unique to the BMW E36 M3 or 3 series COUPE.
Everyone has differnet ideas, different ways of doing things, different stereo systems and/or choices. Bmwpower and I found the above to be VERY HELPFUL and it made the installation process somewhat easy to do. Alot of our time was product layout and planning, only because we wanted to do it right and correct the first time around to achieve the results we achieved. It was well worth the above effort in my opinion.
You can install 6.5" woofers/speakers in the factory location, BUT as noted above, it's not a "plug and play" issue at all. Don't be fooled, it does require some time and some amount of planning to do what I did.
Would I recommend it to anyone? No - not just anyone. I would recommend this to people who have the time, patience, and some skills that can do thier own work on thier cars. If you lack patience, or the ability to create/modify existing areas of your vehicle, it's best to leave it up to someone who can do it for you, even if it costs some extra $$$. If you want 6.5" speakers up there, or different speakers in the doors, etc - you may run into what I have run into with the above.
What tools are required and recommended to make the job easier?
DREMEL with various bits (without this, life would be VERY difficult)
Standard Phillips head screwdriver (star)
Standard flat head screw driver
small jewlers flat head screwdriver (to pop off small decorative caps over screws/bolts)
Wire cutters
Wire strippers
heat shrink tubing/electrical tape
voltmeter (comes in handy)
Metric wrench or socket sets for various nuts/bolts
factory wiring diagrams for your specific model (can be found online, in Bentley, Haynes, or other manuals available with these pinouts/wiring diagrams)
drop light - flourescent works best
towels
metal coat hanger (for fishing wires through small areas)
scissors or cutting knife
PATIENCE (lots of it! )
If running RCA's in a coupe, get the 16 ft. RCA cables - if installing RCA's in a 4 door, you may need 20 ft, or 24 ft, depending on what the next available length of RCA cables available.
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I hope the above was helpful. Again, I thank bmwpower for the time, help and patience required with this install, it was well worth it.
If anyone has any questions, feel free to post them. Remember to always research your specific application and cross reference diagrams and/or part numbers, every install could be different.