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Soul's '03 325xi - first time audio install

5K views 30 replies 8 participants last post by  soul786 
#1 ·
Got my first car and couldn't be happier, car-wise. Audio-wise I've always hated what was in the car. It's a stock non Harmon Kardon system which makes the install a little easier, just my prior listening experience not so good.

After getting maintenance out of the way (bought used, needed some minor work), I had some money aside for the first thing I'd do with the car, AUDIO!

I work at one of the big box electronics places in Canada so I had access to some decent deals and decided not to go too too crazy and bought a bunch of Infinity Kappa amps, sub, and speakers. I'll also be installing a single din Kenwood Deck; here's what's on tap:

Kenwood BT901 Single DIN Head Unit
Kappa Four (Speakers)
Kappa One (Sub)
Kappa 120.9w 12" Subwoofer (1)
Kappa 60.9cs Components for the fronts (passive xover)
Kappa 62.9i Coaxials for the rear

I know Infinity and the stuff I'm putting in is Blah and overpriced and this and that, but it's what I had access to and for my first install I'm happy with what I have.

That aside:

I'm building the sub box and amp rack myself and HOPEFULLY will get all of this done by myself.

Here's the car:



Ok on to the fun stuff, first up the work on the trunk.
 
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#2 ·
On to the Sub box:

The Kappa 120.9w calls for 1cubic foot in a sealed enclosure so that's what I went with. Measured out what I needed and began cutting.

Turns out my woodworking skills aren't the best but it turned out okay in the end.

I used PL construction adhesive with pre-drilled screws to begin holding everything together, later sealed it up with silicon.







And here's where you'll notice my wonderful woodworking skills, the top piece was definitely an eighth of an inch too long :mean:





Had to use a scroll saw to cut the hole for the sub, which wasn't ideal but the trusty router failed on me



Mounted front:



Spent quite a bit of time with a rotary sander and took care of the long edges and made everything as flat and smooth as I could





Took care of sealing the inside of the sub box with some silicon next just to give me peace of mind

 
#4 ·
The carpet took a little longer than expected to come in but when it did I finally got to wrap the three pieces up and make em look a heck of a lot better.

I ordered from a place called yourautotrim, decent seller and got what I needed for a cheap enough price. 15ft of carpet for 35 shipped ain't too bad.



And so the wrapping began:



Worst part though was I had no spray cans to use with the contact cement so in some cases it got on a bit too 'globby'. Turned out okay just not ideal







And it's all wrapped up:



And of course another test fit:

 
#5 ·
Next I wanted to get the sub out of the way and mounted into the enclosure:







I also wanted to make sure I had the best possible connection to the sub so I drilled a hole directly through the mdf and strung wire through it. Hooked the up directly to the sub, then sealed the hole with more construction adhesive and silicon.



Dropped in the sub

Used the foam seal supplied and screwed it all down nice and tight





Silicon sealed the back too





And all in time before this torrential downpour :eek:



Before I start on the amplifiers I'm going to do the door speakers, rear deck speakers, then the car deck and steering wheel control.

More to come soon :)
 
#6 ·
I have an e46 325i, same exact car (minus all wheel drive lol). I did some major upgrades with arc audio ks amplifiers, voce components, and jl woofers ran off a jbl-ms8 (used to be bit one, want to switch back) going digital from an iphone. Bmw e46 are a pain in the ass, but if done properly can yield excellent results. Look forward to seeing more of this build and let me know if you have any questions on e46!
 
#8 ·
Your fabrications look great. Im guessing you have carpenter experience. Why do you have dual speaker wires coming out the back of your box? if you have dual voice coils its still advisable to do all of that wiring inside the box to limit the wires coming out of the box to one set.

Running your wires will be "fun". be careful removing the panels so you dont break any clips. Are you running your speaker wires into your doors or using the factory wires?
 
#9 ·
I ran two because I was running a smaller gauge than I preferred. The Kappa has a switch that handles the internal wiring between 2 and 4 ohms so those wires are just two strands for positive, and two strands for negative.

And for carpentry experience I WISH lol. It was quite a bit of work and a lot more mistakes than I expected but I'm happy with the result thus far.

I want to try running the wires through the grommets in the doors so I'll tackle that tomorrow. Worst case scenario I'll splice into the back of the dash wires and factory wiring will take me into the doors. I don't want to do it like that but that's my fallback option
 
#11 ·
Yesterday was a hell of a day.

Got started with the interior taking it all out: seats out, rear seats out, 50% of the dash out...



And with a lot of the interior ripped out





Running the RCA's







And into the trunk



The blue remote wire takes the same path, speaker wires were run too. Getting them in the boots for the doors was damn near impossible as I forgot to roll the windows up before disconnecting the batteries :mean:

Today I'll get a few more pics of how everything with the wiring is run before putting the interior back together.

Also some 0 gauge soldered up nicely, first time but not too bad



 
#12 ·
So the first day was teardown day, second day was putting it all back together and making sure it's at least driveable.

Here's where things were left off from the day before:



And here's how I ran the RCA's;

Keep in mind there is power running down the passenger side of the vehicle and a large bundle of wires on the driver's side too, so I went down the center channel and the middle of the car to avoid interference.

Behind the Deck:



Inside the center console:



Along the center channel (there is still a center console which goes over this so none of the wires will show; not shown in picture):



Under the carpet again:



Out on the rear seat deck:



And into the side grommet:



Out into the trunk through a hole in the trunk liner:



So that's the RCA's, door speaker wires were the same except along the sides of the car under the trim pieces:







And up into the trunk liner:



Then began reassembling the car:





Which meant all the wires were now in the correct places and could start a test run for my subwoofer:



Quick and dirty wiring to test the Kappa One amp and Kappa 120.9w sub. None of the wires at cut to length yet.







And SHE PLAYS!

No wiring issues to speak of yet, so far so good. Bass is nice, needs a tune of course when all is into the car.

Still the trunk needs to get finished and the rear speakers + door speakers need to get installed. That's a story on its own :D

And here's the deck in the car to finish it off for now:

 
#14 ·
Quick question for anyone that reads this, hopefully gets answered by the afternoon when I go to wire up the trunk:

I have a 5pin relay to set up my remote lead going to two amps and other possible electronics/lights (eventually) in the trunk. I know the leads and where they wire to but my dilemma is how to wire a fuse inline to the wire which will go to a battery source. Where do I fuse it? And what size fuse should I use?

The wiring harness that came with the relay (has 5 wire leads to make wiring easier) is 16 gauge wire.

I think all I've got lying around is 40 Amp mini-anl fuses. :confused:

Any ideas?
 
#18 ·
Hi, very nice install, you can put the fuse in the 87 connection of the relay, a 3 amp will do the job, the 30 go to the amps and accesory. I will recomend you use a relay for the amps and audio system and another relay to the lights and others...

You dont need to use a fuse for the voltmeter
 
#16 ·
You shouldn't have to fuse the coil i.e. the remote turn on wire, you really only need to do an inline fuse from the battery (ideally you could hook up to your distro if you have one) going to the input of the relay. Coil being the 85/86 connections and the input being the 87 with a 30 output.

Fusing will be based on your totally current requirements. If it is just a couple of amps you can do 5 amps.
 
#21 ·
Today was all trunk work. I've got two days off in a row so at least I could get most of it done and leave a little for later.

Started by carpeting a 3/4" board of MDF to mount behind the sub box for all the distribution and wiring. Turns out I ordered too little 4 gauge wire so the only way I could have it all nice was hiding the board behind rather than displaying it :(





Here's a test shot of how the distribution block (KnuKonceptz KNF-60) will mount on the board - using 'industrial strength velcro', this sh*t sticksss



Began wiring the Kappa Subwoofer speaker wires to the amp I'd just mounted to the mono amp rack:





Same for ground and power (those cable management clips were a lifesaver)





RCA's plugged in on the top and on to the speaker amp on the left. Mounted it first:



Same idea with cable management:





Front/Rear RCA's plugged in and this amp's nearly ready:



And a picture of the Kappa One for the subwoofer:



I left the speaker wire alone because the speakers aren't going to be installed till Saturday (more on that later) and both remote wires aren't plugged in as I'm getting the relay situation down pat before putting anything together

 
#22 ·
On to the situation behind those boxes:



Amplifier power and ground unsheathed and ready to be installed on the distro-block



More industrial strength velcro to hold the wiring board onto the back of the sub box



Distro Block goes here:



Voila:



Both amps now connected to the distro



RCA's cable tied and routed as far away from the power wires as possible keeping things neat also, no kinks



0 gauge now wired into the distro, all cable tied and neatened up as best as I could





Rear seats back in place, closed shut for now





Now the tricky part was getting the OEM battery cover back over the battery with two big-arse fat wires to get out too. Didn't have much room so I had to bust out the dremel and make a hole for the +ve and cut a notch out for the ground. Turned out okay. Just the inline fuse (once its in) needs to be secured.



And that's how she sits after today



Fuses still need to be put in, remote wire needs to be put in (relay + barrier strip), voltmeter to get wired (most likely will be to the distro-block with a fuse), and then all the door and rear shelf speakers.

After test fitting the door speakers (which didn't really fit) I had to read a bit online. Conclusion being modification of the doors is needed. I don't trust myself quite yet so I'll be having a shop install those for me saturday (I know I know cheating), but being a first install I'd like things to turn out as peachy as possible :D

If all goes well though I'll have the fusing, remote wiring, and voltmeter done by Saturday when I take in the car.
 
#23 ·
Nice progress. If you are only running 2 amps then I wouldn't run a relay for the turn ins, you can just split the wire (solder 2 to 1 to make a Y). You are using less than 1 amp to turn the amplifiers on. Also the voltmeter uses a fraction of amp. If it has a light then I would fuse that but generally an analog voltmeter is just a mechanical piece and a digital consumes very little current, negating the need for a fuse.

I say go without the relay because the relay can induce noise. It has happened to me before.
 
#24 ·
I decided I need the relay just for the sake of expandability later. Plus it makes it easier to disconnect the wires from a barrier strip if things need to be moved around.

The voltmeter is a digital readout but that should be okay directly to the distribution block. When that's wired I'll try it out of course to see how it turned out and have a few pictures to show how I did it. :D
 
#28 ·
Got a little bit of time last night to get started on the remote wire relay circuit in the back so here's how that went:

Started by making some notes about where each pin goes on the relay, the wiring harness I had added too much clunk so I decided not to use it and wire my own leads



For more info on how I decided where each wire would go, check out Basic Car Audio Electronics and click the information node about relays for a pretty thorough diagram on it.

Next I soldered up the leads that would attach to the relay and labeled each so I wouldn't get mixed up







Soldered in a diode (1N4004 is what I chose to use) across the coil (pins 85 and 86). If you're doing this, as per my reading online, the band on the diode goes towards the +ve side of the coil i.e the band on the diode should be nearest to pin 85.



Attached to the backplate behind the sub-box



Jumpers on the barrier strip for the 12v +ve connections



Ground strip and power barrier strips in place



Barrier strip wire cut to length and screwed in



Ground and remote taken care of too



Next I wired in the constant 12v directly to my distribution block and wired in a 5amp fuse inline (that the red wire with the orange fuse towards the left of the board.) Made everything neat with some cable holders



That's nearly all the wiring done. Just a voltmeter left.

Speakers are making progress. One is installed but I haven't had a chance to open it up to see how it was done. :D
 
#29 ·
On to the voltmeter:

Being Canada Day I had some time to get this done. Weather was great so I spent a couple hours getting everything up in the center console finished, here goes! :eek:

I got the idea to wire in a remote-wire kill-switch just because I use my remote starter a lot and would rather things be as safe as possible when the car warms up in the winter, thus came along the idea of having the switch to kill the system BEFORE the relay in the back so I could control what was powered on and when:

Used my trusty dremel and made a hole for the switch, mounted it, then worked on the cutout for the voltmeter



Hot glue the back so nothing wiggled out of place



Another shot of what the voltmeter would drop into



cleaned up a bit with a sanding bit



Voltmeter and remote kill switch in place



Now the voltmeter I got (Xscorpion) doesn't have a remote turn on lead for itself, and would always be on UNLESS I put a switch on that too- so I did that also in the little change holder that I never really use

Same thing with a dremel and hot glue





Twisted some positive and negative leads to go to the distribution block



Again under rear seat and into the DistBlock





Remote wire from the head unit spliced and connected to the switch in the console



A close up of the E-Brake's position, there's plenty of room to get my hand around the handle when it needs to be used, doesn't get in the way at all



Wired up the voltmeter to the leads from the distBlock and wired the switch inline also



Everything snapped back into place, wires completely hidden and looking pretty good









And of course a test: Car is on, hit the switch in the change holder and there we go showing 14.1V. Kill switch can stay off and the voltage can still be read.



Finally got around to testing the relay: hooked up the remote lead to the Kappa One amplifier and kept my kill switch on 0.



After the car was on and switch on 0, pulled out the multimeter and checked the relay

Showed 0v [check]

Kill Switch on position 1, relay showing ~12.somethingV [check]

Amplifier turns on [check]

Bass test, BUMPS [check]

And so the wiring and electrical is done.

Voltmeter works the way I want it to, switches all work the way I want. Relay is fully functional, amps get power, no blown fuses.

All in all, the research paid off.

Now I just need them dang door speakers in and I can get to tuning. :D
 
#31 ·
Got a new toy in the mail! :D







It's a DSO Nano v3 pocket O-Scope.

I'll be using it for setting the gains and finding my max head unit volume hopefully later today before I bring the car to the shop for the second door speaker

I've still got a second remote wire to hook up (to the Kappa Four) and some wire cleaning up to do (Kappa One's remote wire is still not to length).

Once that's done with I'll be finished completely with the trunk and electrical work, it'll just be the tuning and rear speakers to get done.
 
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