over the course of our life time, we have worked on some pretty cool cars, but for both of us, this was a true first. With less than 5000 units ever introduced to the US, the original grand daddy M3 is truly one of the most rare cars on the road today.
This particular model, owned by a great guy out of Colorado, and was in california for a full refresh with motor and suspension work. the icing on the cake was that we were going to do a full blown SQ build in it!
But there was a catch, because of the special nature of the vehicle, we were given strict guidelines on what we CANNOT cut: ANY METAL, and where we were to install the speakers (all the locations you see were dictated by the customer). I think this makes perfect sense in that a car like this should be reserved on the interior, not have pods sticking out of pillars or dashes, and a clean trunk build. So its game on!
Goals:
1. achieve a nice level of SQ utilizing OEM-ish locations
2. Install the subwoofer in the front passenger foot well but not hinder the kick panel speaker operation
3. maintain as stealthy of an appearance as possible, anything we fabricate that is visible must carry that theme.
so lets get started.
first, let us marvel at the gem that is an 1988 E30 M3...this was one of my dream cars while in college, the bulging fenders, the stance, the angular shape...love everything about it
the car came with a headunit already installed along wtih some other "audio work" that was pretty bad, the only piece the customer asked us to retain was the JVC kameleon unit, while not exactly our cup of tea, it does offer a decent signal source and if desired, it can always be swapped out later. I went in and cleaned up the wiring a like this is essentially the same as before:
The front stage is pure illusion audio, and consists of a C6 midbass, a C4 midrange and the carbon tweeter. Since the customer asked to put the midrange in the kicks and for us to fabricate a door pod for the midbass, we set out to figure out how best to make it look integrated and OEM.
for reference, this is the oem door, note the map pocket upfront:
after some thinking and designing, joey worked his magic and came up with a set of door pods that are perhaps the best complimentary and stock looking i have ever seen. the shape follows the oem map pocket and naturally extends up to "completion", it is angular like the rest of the car's interior and exterior, and features a trapzoid press fit grille to complete the look.
we had several people come and take a look at the car, and almost all of them thought that was a stock piece
the carbon tweeter, with its unique beryllium copper diaphram, peaks out behind the OEM tweeter mounting grille:
the grille is a cosmetic piece and is meant to be on 99 percent of the time, but should one fancy a glance at the carbon C6 midbass, you can pop it off and see it, though not meant to be really displayed, the pod is still finished with a black vinyl trim panel.
here it is with the door closed:
the passenger side:
let us take a look at how these babies were build...
first the map pocket was removed from the door panel, and a piece of cardboard was used to lay out the rough shape:
then the woodworking began, each pod is essentially a three layer construction. here you see them stacked together before the centers were routed out:
one of the panels is seen here with what will eventually become the grille:
after a lot of work, here are all the peices that will come together to form the pod and the grille:
once they are bonded together, they are test fitted to the door and adjustments made:
then they are prepped, painted with high build, sanded down, and after quite a few repeat cycles, you end up with these:
I then took over and ran two pairs of speaker wires into the doors:
and sound proofed the outter and inner door skin with a combination of focal blackhole tile, and STP mat and foam:
then the door pods were secured to the door card, door reattached, and the speaker bolted in place, and the trim panel inserted:
here are three pics of the grille:
It was my job to install the tweeters, and after looking at it, what i did was to remove the grille from the illusion tweeters, pop the oem grilles off, bond the tweeter to the opening from the back, and then reinstall the factory grilles. and voila! factory looking carbon tweeters
This particular model, owned by a great guy out of Colorado, and was in california for a full refresh with motor and suspension work. the icing on the cake was that we were going to do a full blown SQ build in it!
But there was a catch, because of the special nature of the vehicle, we were given strict guidelines on what we CANNOT cut: ANY METAL, and where we were to install the speakers (all the locations you see were dictated by the customer). I think this makes perfect sense in that a car like this should be reserved on the interior, not have pods sticking out of pillars or dashes, and a clean trunk build. So its game on!
Goals:
1. achieve a nice level of SQ utilizing OEM-ish locations
2. Install the subwoofer in the front passenger foot well but not hinder the kick panel speaker operation
3. maintain as stealthy of an appearance as possible, anything we fabricate that is visible must carry that theme.
so lets get started.
first, let us marvel at the gem that is an 1988 E30 M3...this was one of my dream cars while in college, the bulging fenders, the stance, the angular shape...love everything about it
the car came with a headunit already installed along wtih some other "audio work" that was pretty bad, the only piece the customer asked us to retain was the JVC kameleon unit, while not exactly our cup of tea, it does offer a decent signal source and if desired, it can always be swapped out later. I went in and cleaned up the wiring a like this is essentially the same as before:
The front stage is pure illusion audio, and consists of a C6 midbass, a C4 midrange and the carbon tweeter. Since the customer asked to put the midrange in the kicks and for us to fabricate a door pod for the midbass, we set out to figure out how best to make it look integrated and OEM.
for reference, this is the oem door, note the map pocket upfront:
after some thinking and designing, joey worked his magic and came up with a set of door pods that are perhaps the best complimentary and stock looking i have ever seen. the shape follows the oem map pocket and naturally extends up to "completion", it is angular like the rest of the car's interior and exterior, and features a trapzoid press fit grille to complete the look.
we had several people come and take a look at the car, and almost all of them thought that was a stock piece
the carbon tweeter, with its unique beryllium copper diaphram, peaks out behind the OEM tweeter mounting grille:
the grille is a cosmetic piece and is meant to be on 99 percent of the time, but should one fancy a glance at the carbon C6 midbass, you can pop it off and see it, though not meant to be really displayed, the pod is still finished with a black vinyl trim panel.
here it is with the door closed:
the passenger side:
let us take a look at how these babies were build...
first the map pocket was removed from the door panel, and a piece of cardboard was used to lay out the rough shape:
then the woodworking began, each pod is essentially a three layer construction. here you see them stacked together before the centers were routed out:
one of the panels is seen here with what will eventually become the grille:
after a lot of work, here are all the peices that will come together to form the pod and the grille:
once they are bonded together, they are test fitted to the door and adjustments made:
then they are prepped, painted with high build, sanded down, and after quite a few repeat cycles, you end up with these:
I then took over and ran two pairs of speaker wires into the doors:
and sound proofed the outter and inner door skin with a combination of focal blackhole tile, and STP mat and foam:
then the door pods were secured to the door card, door reattached, and the speaker bolted in place, and the trim panel inserted:
here are three pics of the grille:
It was my job to install the tweeters, and after looking at it, what i did was to remove the grille from the illusion tweeters, pop the oem grilles off, bond the tweeter to the opening from the back, and then reinstall the factory grilles. and voila! factory looking carbon tweeters