madsedan
07-28-2010, 10:27 AM
My brother and I finished the budget system build on my 06 MCS last night by completing the box. Final results are great, a huge improvement over the HK system for sound quality, huge difference in volume level as well. Put the windows down and open the roof at 80 on the highway and crank it up and you have crystal clear sound at volumes that'll get you a ticket in most cities. And I have more features than the stock stereo, such as Bluetooth and iphone hook-up, and don’t have to worry if today is the day the factory amp decides to take a dump on me.
A large reason for doing this was because I knew that the factory HK amp is a gamble at best, it’s possible I would never have an issue, but allot of people are having the amps go out and I'd rather sell mine now when its worth $250+ rather than wait until its fried and useful only as a small boat anchor. The other big factor was that I wanted an iphone hook-up so that I could charge my phone and play music or Pandora radio on trips. My only option if I left it the way it rolled out of the factory was to spend a minimum $150 for a proper iphone hook-up. Bluetooth was also something I wanted but was a very expensive and not so glamorous fix from the dealer to install and I didn’t want some unsightly big pod hanging around the rear view mirror.
In my mind the only option was to try and get as much for the equipment in the car while it worked well and go aftermarket. So I put up the full system for sale, all of it including the sat radio gear, but no takers. Once I listed parting out the amp and front components they went quick, within 48 hours of posting or less. In the end I was able to get a little over $250 for the amp and a little over $100 for the front components. So with almost $400 in the paypal account I went shopping.
I have bought several head units for fitting into my BMW's from Sonic Electronix so I went to their website and picked up a great Alpine head unit and set of MB Quart 6 1/2" components with small crossovers that will fit inside the door. The Alpine was an open box that they had sold and taken back on return before it was installed, it came complete in the original box and I would never had known it was not NIB from Alpine. They also sent a full install kit with utilizes the Mini mounting points for the head unit, the european antenna adaptor and wiring harness so no cutting of the factory wires is required. The Alpine is a model cde-103bt which has good iphone controls, is ready for sat or hd radio if I wanted it later, and has bluetooth built in!
Next was the decision of either ditching the rear speakers and going with a small sub or putting in nicer rear speakers. I have done many builds in my E36's over the years where we would put in nicer front components, a nice head unit, and a 10" sub to handle lower tones in the trunk and left the rear speakers out and it sounds fantastic, so thats what we did with the Mini. If you have quality components with plenty of power from an aftermarket amp you don't need the rear speakers for bass. If you have a small sub in the trunk it sounds so much better properly tuned in a system like this and it makes for a much more versatile and customizable system that can suit ANYONE. You set the crossover point to the fronts to kill the lower tones and have it all produced by the sub (bass is non-directional so having them in the trunk gives a more spatial feel to the sound) and this takes stress off the front speakers for better sound quality with longer lifespan.
Once the decision was made on speaker layouts I went searching for an affordable amp, something with 3 or 4 channels (if you get a 4 channel make sure that is designed to have 2 channels bridged for a sub). The front speakers I bought are rated for 50w RMS so I found a nice Alpine that puts 50w x 4 and has 2 channels that can be bridged to produce 150w RMS for a sub. Once the amp was picked I just needed to decide on a sub so I went online to a mobile audio forum and asked for recommendations for an 8" or 10" that worked well in a sealed enclosure and only needed about 150w at 4 ohm, the JL 10wx-4 fit the profile and I was able to pick it up locally.
Now that I had all the components bought my brother and I spent one Sunday installing the gear. One thing that was key for me was that I wanted as much stealth as possible, I wanted to maintain the factory speaker grills and conceal the wiring in the passenger area of the car, this involved running the front component lines through the tiny harness between the door and the body with the factory wiring, it sucked but we finally got it done, this proved to be the most difficult part of the install. The main thing to remember is that you will need to remove the front door panels, the middle console, the rear seats and side panels, and probably the passenger seat to install all this gear on the down low. Now that I’ve done this once we could do it again in half the time but we were kind of flying blind on this install with a little help from the online community. And if you aren’t comfortable ripping panels apart than get someone that is. It feels like you are about to break the panels but they are designed to be removed and replaced leaving no trace they were ever jacked with.
After the head unit, front speakers, and amp were installed we then built a box. My brother has built many custom sub boxes over the years, did it for extra money in high school and college and was quite good at it. We used ¾” mdf and created an airtight sealed enclosure with .8 cubic foot of internal volume that conceals the sub on the underside for protection and has the amp mounted on top for air flow and temperature control. Anytime you buy a sub it will have the required airspace for a sealed or ported box if you decide to build customer as we did or you can just buy one at a local stereo shop for about $40-50. My sub box is made to fit in the rear hatch tightly with the rear seat backs up and it takes up leass than half the width of the rear storage area. Since the area is small and box is “less than small”, as my brother put it, having the speaker on the bottom firing down would enable me to stack stuff in the back without worrying about damaging the sub. We are currently looking at fabricating a new box with the same airspace but that fits the full hatch area as a false floor that would be level with the bottom of the opening for the hatch, would give me almost full storage again.
The sound of the system is excellent to my ears, gets louder than I’d ever want it, sound great regardless of the music type, and it has the iphone and Bluetooth gear I wanted. The Bluetooth function works great and was easy to install, simply plugs into the back of the head unit, a very thin wire runs under the dash and gets tucked behind the a-pillar, and a discrete little microphone hides at the top of the a-pillar. The iphone was easy to sync with the head unit and I can have several other phones sync up as well in case my wife is in the car. When I listen to rock/metal the music is powerful and clear, when I listen to Jazz the sound is warm and articulate, and when I listen to electronic or old school hip hop the bass is thumpy but not over the top and the front stage handles vocals much better than the factory HK optional stereo. You do not notice the rear speakers are gone at all, in fact it may help with the front staging/imaging of the whole system that they aren’t there.
Now for cost, when I asked a local shop to give me an estimate to do a full system overhaul with my requirements being better sound/volume with Bluetooth and iphone hook-up I got a proposal for over $3k for them to do all of this, I was able to achieve similar sound gains and all my system goals for less than a quarter of their cost…
-open box Alpine cde-103bt head unit and wiring harness, $139 shipped
-MB Quart onx216 6 ½” components, $89 shipped
-open box Alpine MRP-F300 amp, $185 picked up locally
-misc wiring and amp install kit, ~$50 picked up locally
-material for box build, $15-20
-JL 10WX-4 sub, $79 picked up locally on sale
-Alpine iphone harness for head unit, $30 picked up locally
Now, keeping in mind that I kept my budget tight and shopped locally and online for good deals I was able to keep my build at under $600, probably closer to $550 in reality as some of the material I had on hand such as nice speaker wiring. Since I profited about $400 from the sale of some of the factory equipment I’m only out of pocket about $150, or what it would have cost to add iphone capability to the factory stereo. I have already had one or two inquiries about the factory rear speakers and the sat radio gear and could possibly sell that to come up to no money out of pocket but I also could have easily spent twice as much on nicer components/amp/sub/head unit so it’s really kind of relative, but this build suited my needs.
I have the satisfaction of having done this myself as well as allot of knowledge on what to do and what NOT to do on the Mini, if you guys have questions please feel free to PM me for advice or tips, whatever.I did run into a problem on initial install but was able to figure it out with help from the online community and can steer others away from the same mistake. And if you see me at one of the Happy Hour functions we have in Dallas by all means ask to hear the system for yourself. If you’d like to have something like this but don’t want to do the work yourself my brother and I could probably recreate all this with similar equipment for about $1000-1200 which is not far from what a new HK amp and iphone hook-up will run you from the dealer ;)
A large reason for doing this was because I knew that the factory HK amp is a gamble at best, it’s possible I would never have an issue, but allot of people are having the amps go out and I'd rather sell mine now when its worth $250+ rather than wait until its fried and useful only as a small boat anchor. The other big factor was that I wanted an iphone hook-up so that I could charge my phone and play music or Pandora radio on trips. My only option if I left it the way it rolled out of the factory was to spend a minimum $150 for a proper iphone hook-up. Bluetooth was also something I wanted but was a very expensive and not so glamorous fix from the dealer to install and I didn’t want some unsightly big pod hanging around the rear view mirror.
In my mind the only option was to try and get as much for the equipment in the car while it worked well and go aftermarket. So I put up the full system for sale, all of it including the sat radio gear, but no takers. Once I listed parting out the amp and front components they went quick, within 48 hours of posting or less. In the end I was able to get a little over $250 for the amp and a little over $100 for the front components. So with almost $400 in the paypal account I went shopping.
I have bought several head units for fitting into my BMW's from Sonic Electronix so I went to their website and picked up a great Alpine head unit and set of MB Quart 6 1/2" components with small crossovers that will fit inside the door. The Alpine was an open box that they had sold and taken back on return before it was installed, it came complete in the original box and I would never had known it was not NIB from Alpine. They also sent a full install kit with utilizes the Mini mounting points for the head unit, the european antenna adaptor and wiring harness so no cutting of the factory wires is required. The Alpine is a model cde-103bt which has good iphone controls, is ready for sat or hd radio if I wanted it later, and has bluetooth built in!
Next was the decision of either ditching the rear speakers and going with a small sub or putting in nicer rear speakers. I have done many builds in my E36's over the years where we would put in nicer front components, a nice head unit, and a 10" sub to handle lower tones in the trunk and left the rear speakers out and it sounds fantastic, so thats what we did with the Mini. If you have quality components with plenty of power from an aftermarket amp you don't need the rear speakers for bass. If you have a small sub in the trunk it sounds so much better properly tuned in a system like this and it makes for a much more versatile and customizable system that can suit ANYONE. You set the crossover point to the fronts to kill the lower tones and have it all produced by the sub (bass is non-directional so having them in the trunk gives a more spatial feel to the sound) and this takes stress off the front speakers for better sound quality with longer lifespan.
Once the decision was made on speaker layouts I went searching for an affordable amp, something with 3 or 4 channels (if you get a 4 channel make sure that is designed to have 2 channels bridged for a sub). The front speakers I bought are rated for 50w RMS so I found a nice Alpine that puts 50w x 4 and has 2 channels that can be bridged to produce 150w RMS for a sub. Once the amp was picked I just needed to decide on a sub so I went online to a mobile audio forum and asked for recommendations for an 8" or 10" that worked well in a sealed enclosure and only needed about 150w at 4 ohm, the JL 10wx-4 fit the profile and I was able to pick it up locally.
Now that I had all the components bought my brother and I spent one Sunday installing the gear. One thing that was key for me was that I wanted as much stealth as possible, I wanted to maintain the factory speaker grills and conceal the wiring in the passenger area of the car, this involved running the front component lines through the tiny harness between the door and the body with the factory wiring, it sucked but we finally got it done, this proved to be the most difficult part of the install. The main thing to remember is that you will need to remove the front door panels, the middle console, the rear seats and side panels, and probably the passenger seat to install all this gear on the down low. Now that I’ve done this once we could do it again in half the time but we were kind of flying blind on this install with a little help from the online community. And if you aren’t comfortable ripping panels apart than get someone that is. It feels like you are about to break the panels but they are designed to be removed and replaced leaving no trace they were ever jacked with.
After the head unit, front speakers, and amp were installed we then built a box. My brother has built many custom sub boxes over the years, did it for extra money in high school and college and was quite good at it. We used ¾” mdf and created an airtight sealed enclosure with .8 cubic foot of internal volume that conceals the sub on the underside for protection and has the amp mounted on top for air flow and temperature control. Anytime you buy a sub it will have the required airspace for a sealed or ported box if you decide to build customer as we did or you can just buy one at a local stereo shop for about $40-50. My sub box is made to fit in the rear hatch tightly with the rear seat backs up and it takes up leass than half the width of the rear storage area. Since the area is small and box is “less than small”, as my brother put it, having the speaker on the bottom firing down would enable me to stack stuff in the back without worrying about damaging the sub. We are currently looking at fabricating a new box with the same airspace but that fits the full hatch area as a false floor that would be level with the bottom of the opening for the hatch, would give me almost full storage again.
The sound of the system is excellent to my ears, gets louder than I’d ever want it, sound great regardless of the music type, and it has the iphone and Bluetooth gear I wanted. The Bluetooth function works great and was easy to install, simply plugs into the back of the head unit, a very thin wire runs under the dash and gets tucked behind the a-pillar, and a discrete little microphone hides at the top of the a-pillar. The iphone was easy to sync with the head unit and I can have several other phones sync up as well in case my wife is in the car. When I listen to rock/metal the music is powerful and clear, when I listen to Jazz the sound is warm and articulate, and when I listen to electronic or old school hip hop the bass is thumpy but not over the top and the front stage handles vocals much better than the factory HK optional stereo. You do not notice the rear speakers are gone at all, in fact it may help with the front staging/imaging of the whole system that they aren’t there.
Now for cost, when I asked a local shop to give me an estimate to do a full system overhaul with my requirements being better sound/volume with Bluetooth and iphone hook-up I got a proposal for over $3k for them to do all of this, I was able to achieve similar sound gains and all my system goals for less than a quarter of their cost…
-open box Alpine cde-103bt head unit and wiring harness, $139 shipped
-MB Quart onx216 6 ½” components, $89 shipped
-open box Alpine MRP-F300 amp, $185 picked up locally
-misc wiring and amp install kit, ~$50 picked up locally
-material for box build, $15-20
-JL 10WX-4 sub, $79 picked up locally on sale
-Alpine iphone harness for head unit, $30 picked up locally
Now, keeping in mind that I kept my budget tight and shopped locally and online for good deals I was able to keep my build at under $600, probably closer to $550 in reality as some of the material I had on hand such as nice speaker wiring. Since I profited about $400 from the sale of some of the factory equipment I’m only out of pocket about $150, or what it would have cost to add iphone capability to the factory stereo. I have already had one or two inquiries about the factory rear speakers and the sat radio gear and could possibly sell that to come up to no money out of pocket but I also could have easily spent twice as much on nicer components/amp/sub/head unit so it’s really kind of relative, but this build suited my needs.
I have the satisfaction of having done this myself as well as allot of knowledge on what to do and what NOT to do on the Mini, if you guys have questions please feel free to PM me for advice or tips, whatever.I did run into a problem on initial install but was able to figure it out with help from the online community and can steer others away from the same mistake. And if you see me at one of the Happy Hour functions we have in Dallas by all means ask to hear the system for yourself. If you’d like to have something like this but don’t want to do the work yourself my brother and I could probably recreate all this with similar equipment for about $1000-1200 which is not far from what a new HK amp and iphone hook-up will run you from the dealer ;)