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| Message: | OK- so after looking at Capt W's photos I just had to take the plunge and drop some amps in the trunk. Was going to go w/ JL Audios everywhere and got turned on to PPI (Precision Power) components from a buddy who swears by them and told me that they were worth the $$. Since they're manuf (imported?) from down here in So Cal and were less $$ than the JL's, I thought I would give them a try and see what I thought. Ref: BMW tips wiring diagrams, photos, and the advice of my 4 year old who told me how to do everything. Objectives: Clean, crisp sound until my head throbs, tight bass but not enough to blow the dentures out of the old folks next door. Supplies (prices): PAC Line converters X 2 (11.00 ea) JL Audio XR525 component speakers front (225.00) JL Audio XR525 coax speakers rear (150.00) JL Audio 10W6 10" woofer/subzone .86 cu/ft encl (125.00) PPI 600.4 Amp (375.00) PPI 1250 mono amp (175.00) Stinger RCA Cables (6.00 ea) Misc 4 guage cableage/ties/tools (50.00) 26 Pin housing + pins (PN A3041ND- Digi-Key $1.87) 1 bottle Cabo Wabo Installer Lubrication (42.00) 3 day weekend and a good buddy from my old town flew down to help with the efforts. Cleared out the garage, started with the driver's door panel, and started cussing:  Driver's door panel was stuck on tab in center left of photo- this is the one that makes you have to pull on the panel to get it off. Mine was stuck on the plastic receiver on the back of the panel and wouldn't budge. Finally was able to pop the top of the panel off and slide panel up which allowed plastic insert on rear of panel to slide off panel. Here’s what the panel looks like with its shorts down:  JL tweeter was too big to fit back into stock location on pillar; took a few times to get it where I wanted it and then hot-glued it into place.  We ended up taking the driver’s door panel off about 6 times due to different problems that perked up; one of which caused more &*&%$*&%$% when after all was said and done the driver’s door wouldn’t lock. Seems that the plugs weren’t fully inserted into the switch even though I SWEAR that I had seated them. We did the car reboot, no joy, and had to remove the switch only to find out I hadn’t seated the plugs fully….. Rear Deck: Best info I got was to be sure to put towels down so the prongs that hold down the seat bottom don’t trash the seat backs when you’re sitting on them. Rear deck was fairly straight forward:  The amp placement was originally going to be on a shelf I constructed but the PPI website porked me…the 600.4 is 24” long. Had to mount them inverted under rear shelf    Power was also straightforward:  4 Guage into the amp was a pain- set screws were flat and wire pulled out. Had to braze the wire to give screw something to bite into:  Crossovers got mounted on the side courtesy of BMW tips-  On the right side of the above photo you can see the 26 pin plug I made to plug into the factory harness (thanks for the info here, guys). This was awesome as the 26 pin harness would be a tough cookie to tap. Tapping into the 12 pin harness is easy to do.    Subwoofer placement in the E39 is tricky. You could have a greek wedding in the trunk and nobody would hear it…decided to mount the sub firing thru ski hatch. Tried to remove seat back with no luck... Had to use persuader to get hatch door off….  My buddy convinced me that the cancellation would kill me, and that I’d have to baffle the sub from the trunk if I wanted good bass (he wasn’t going to be happy unless we went to home depot…). Designed ramps for the sub to sit on to make sub face parallel w/ seat back:     Red ratchet strap is temporary until I get a black one; effective nonetheless.  The sub encl prohibited me from removing spare tire so I took the floor out and notched the wood so it would raise enough to allow me to remove tire (or else I would have had a flat today). We started this Sat and finished Monday at noon; about 50 manhours involved in the install. Tweaking took about 4 hours and ½ the contents of the Cabo Wabo (it still sounded good the next day to our surprise…). Results: The mids/highs are exceptional! The bass is weak at low volumes (stock headunit shortcoming?) and comes alive the louder I get. I’m not very experienced with these amps so I’m still looking for the sweet spot on the sub system. I ran the 6 ohm sub parallel to get the 1250 mono to push 375 watts to the 10” at 3 ohms; am considering wiring the other voice coil to the sub vs taking the lead off the other + sub post (if that makes sense). The two 8” JL’s I had in the Yukon were tighter at lower volumes but not as effective at the higher volumes. While enjoying the fruits of the weekend’s labor after dropping off my buddy at the airport yesterday, the sunroof made a horrific grinding sound at the stoplight when I tried to tilt it up and is now inop; sunroof install instructions anybody??? Will trade for 1/2 a bottle of Cabo Wabo... Thanks for all the input that got me here fellas. ~John | ||||
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