car stereo upgrade in a 1988 735i

[mrfatride]

i want to put a new cd player (and possibly subs) in my 88 bimmer and was wondering how i would go about doing that. i was told i would have to rewire the whole car due to the factory amp? is that true? is there any other ways around that? also i was wondering where all the speaker locations were on my car so i can go through and replace them. thanks alot!!!

[nm735]

It's a pain in the butt, but it can be done. You do not have to rewire the whole car, that's a myth. My car is also an 88, and I was told the same thing. Yet when I bought the car the first time, it had a mini disk player in it. I have never actually seen an E32 with the original radio. I'm afraid I can't tell you how to do that, because I really do not understand wiring. The factory harness will fit a CD43 unit, I do know that.

TL;DR It can be done, but I paid a guy to do it for me. Did not require re-wiring of the entire car.

[shogun]

examples
http://www.bmwe34.net/E34main/Upgrade/Stereo.htm
http://www.bmwe34.net/E34main/Upgrade/Stereo_radio.htm
there was a switch with the connectors somewhere 1990/1991 https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/s...o-early-E32-34
in that case you need a cheap adapater cable.
BMW E32 with CD-43 GROM-USB , Installed BMW CD-43 Head unit in to BMW E32, with original Hi-Fi wiring and acoustic. Also connected GROM USB Adapter, as CD-Changer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EQ9BtLJ2t0
CD43 might be the easiest, https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/s...-CD43-into-E32

[unity]

You car is probably different than mine. But as I stand right now, I am using all the original wires TO the speakers from the trunk. And for a while, I was using the signal wires from deck to the trunk. Recently I replaced the speakers themselves and wired it from scratch again. And I have after-market amps.

My setup has an adapter like this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/301510668348

Which is soldered wire per wire to the Alpine harness. As you can see, kit includes an antenna adapter also. That was all the easy part. Exception being my blues were wired a little different, I think BMW solid blue to Alpine blue w/white stripe. If you want to keep the factory amp, you can probably stop there. But IF your head unit has a pre-amp out, you will fry the factory amp most likely.

Now if you plan to swap amps and add an additional amp for subs, you will probably want to run RCAs instead. For the subs, you pretty much have to anyway. New RCAs, just installed last week versus factory signal wires, took care of my alternator whine issue too. But you can still use the factory wires from trunk to speakers. Its not actually too complicated on the whole, but in my case I had the 11-speaker "Infinity Reference System" so it was in fact complicated at first.

[NE32]

Could you stock wiring but imo rewiring is the way to go. Like that I have more freedom on what I can do by rewiring and it's not that time consuming to do. Wires can be hidden nicely too.