I dont recall when it happened, but sometime over the last 5 or 6 years, we have really began to sort of specialize in late model bmws...to date, counting E90s, F30s, F80s, F10s, etc etc, we have worked on almost 50 of them. Due to the rather unique design of these cars' speaker location, almost all of them have featured 100 percent oem driver mounting...which is perfectly fine as we have long since figured out a good formula to extract the most out of those placements. However, it is still kinda nice to go beyond that once in a while.
This particular car is a brand new BMW F82 M4, with the oem harmon kardon package. The decision was made very early on to do the entire build with products from the german company Gladen: You guys prolly know we are big fans of their Mosconi product line, but more rare are their speakers and subwoofers being utilized by us...infact, other than two previous builds, the only other times we used a speaker under the Gladen name has been the OEM bmw underseat woofers.
This one, will be somewhat different.
Joey built the sub enclosures, while i did the rest of the project.
lets get started with the goals:
1. achieve a nice sound quality with some slightly better than oem locations upfront
2. obtain a slightly higher amount of bass output than our typical late model builds (usually a single 10" sub on the passenger side)
3. Design a simple and clean trunk build that still maintains some usability...overall stealthiness isnt a big concern and the car is more of a weekend warrior, but still need to be able to toss a few bags in the trunk without fear of damaging anything.
first a quick gander at the car itself, pretty sexy despite being 100 percent stock at the moment:
instead of our typical front stage residing in the doors, this car received a set of Gladen's top of the line aerospace 3" midrange and 1" tweeter, molded into the A pillars, wrapped in factory matching vinyl:
a few quick build pics of the pillars. first the stock pillars were coated wtih resin to give me a firm surface to mold onto:
then the two rings for the mid and tweeter were aimed and attached onto each pillar:
mold cloth was pulled, resin applied, allowed to harden, and then a resin/filler milk shake was poured into the pods to reinfoce them:
then several layers of filler and much sanding ensued, resulting in a smooth blended shape:
they were then wrapped in black vinyl:
and the gladen aerospace speakers wired up and installed:
The rest of the front stages are the ole trusty Gladen drivers. here are the oem drivers in their enclosures. the floor of the enclosures were grounded down, and sound proofed, while an additional layer of foam went on the back of the enclosure to prevent buzzingt against the metal floor pan:
the Gladen speakers were then installed into the enclosures:
and the enclosures were bolted back into the car, wired up, and everything put back together:
now comes the series of pictures of the wiring as it runs from the front of the car to the back....as usual with late model bimmers, we run all the speaker wires down the opposite side of the car as the main oem power cable going to the battery, to cut down on the possiblities of any radiated noise), the bundle is organized and ziptied evey few inche, where ever there is a stock conduit,it was opened up, the bundle inserted, and then the conduit snapped back together:
This particular car is a brand new BMW F82 M4, with the oem harmon kardon package. The decision was made very early on to do the entire build with products from the german company Gladen: You guys prolly know we are big fans of their Mosconi product line, but more rare are their speakers and subwoofers being utilized by us...infact, other than two previous builds, the only other times we used a speaker under the Gladen name has been the OEM bmw underseat woofers.
This one, will be somewhat different.
Joey built the sub enclosures, while i did the rest of the project.
lets get started with the goals:
1. achieve a nice sound quality with some slightly better than oem locations upfront
2. obtain a slightly higher amount of bass output than our typical late model builds (usually a single 10" sub on the passenger side)
3. Design a simple and clean trunk build that still maintains some usability...overall stealthiness isnt a big concern and the car is more of a weekend warrior, but still need to be able to toss a few bags in the trunk without fear of damaging anything.
first a quick gander at the car itself, pretty sexy despite being 100 percent stock at the moment:
instead of our typical front stage residing in the doors, this car received a set of Gladen's top of the line aerospace 3" midrange and 1" tweeter, molded into the A pillars, wrapped in factory matching vinyl:
a few quick build pics of the pillars. first the stock pillars were coated wtih resin to give me a firm surface to mold onto:
then the two rings for the mid and tweeter were aimed and attached onto each pillar:
mold cloth was pulled, resin applied, allowed to harden, and then a resin/filler milk shake was poured into the pods to reinfoce them:
then several layers of filler and much sanding ensued, resulting in a smooth blended shape:
they were then wrapped in black vinyl:
and the gladen aerospace speakers wired up and installed:
The rest of the front stages are the ole trusty Gladen drivers. here are the oem drivers in their enclosures. the floor of the enclosures were grounded down, and sound proofed, while an additional layer of foam went on the back of the enclosure to prevent buzzingt against the metal floor pan:
the Gladen speakers were then installed into the enclosures:
and the enclosures were bolted back into the car, wired up, and everything put back together:
now comes the series of pictures of the wiring as it runs from the front of the car to the back....as usual with late model bimmers, we run all the speaker wires down the opposite side of the car as the main oem power cable going to the battery, to cut down on the possiblities of any radiated noise), the bundle is organized and ziptied evey few inche, where ever there is a stock conduit,it was opened up, the bundle inserted, and then the conduit snapped back together: