Speaker upgrade

[Kamiler]

Well I am not sure what to do with my sound system. All speakers are new aside from the tweeters. Not sure what I should replace those with. The distortion is annoying. I guess I can just unplug them and just leave it at that?

[dragon850]

No, replace the stock head unit with something higher end and set it up properly.
Use a separate mono amp to drive a 10" sub.
My system sounds amazing with this set up.

[Kamiler]

No, replace the stock head unit with something higher end and set it up properly.
Use a separate mono amp to drive a 10" sub.
My system sounds amazing with this set up.

Judging from my condition on what the original speakers looked (the cones were dust and ripped apart completely) like im not sure how much i trust the tweeters. My car also had a fire, electrical issues etc I am not 100% sure if the amp is all good. I do want to upgrade the head unit to a VDO one for that OEM look.

[buildit]

Very nice work!

No, replace the stock head unit with something higher end and set it up properly.

What head unit are you using?

[JBoggs8]

If anyone is still looking for an 8 ohm solution to rear tweets....

Visaton SC5-8 Shielded 1/2" Polycarbonate Tweeter 8 Ohm

Dremel a bit off the tweeter and a few mm from the hole and they drop right in.

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

[rogbmw]

I am getting ready to use these recommendations to upgrade all the speakers. Great info here on Bimmerforums!

[Auraraptor]

Very cool thread. I need to reference back to this when I ultimately do my speaker upgrade.

[LappingLuke]

Explains why my stereo sounds so good! Dragon & Alex did you guys do the exact same mods? I hadn't seen this level of detail on the work until now but was somewhat familair with what had been done from Alex's old for sale posting.

Since then I changed my headunit to the Blaupunkt SQR46 and added a Bose spare tire well subwoofer (not really worth the effort in the end but it cost me $25 from a Nissan in the junkyard). Love it overall.

[rogbmw]

Getting around to replace the MIDs in the doors. Here are some pictures. The speakers are Dayton Audio RD74-4 Reference Series 3" Aluminum cone Full Range 4 Ohms speakers. You can see from the bottom picture the condition of the 30 year old foam.

MID-1.jpg

Mid-2.jpg

Mid-3.jpg

[rogbmw]

Last night I pried the tweeters out of the housings in the door. They are held in place with plastic clips and they come out pretty easily. Also, the terminal is slid (or pressed) into the housing. The diameter of the original tweeter is 36.5mm. The diameter of the Dayton Audio tweeter is exactly the same, so it should simply fit into the original housing and with a little adhesive be fine. I am going to use windshield urethane to cement in the mids and tweeters. Here are pictures of the OEM tweeter removed. You can see the wiring prongs. They simply pull straight up out of the housing on the door panel. This thread has really been helpful - thanks to everyone who has posted to it!

Tweeter2OEM.jpg

Tweeter1OEM.jpg

[rogbmw]

The enclosure in the drivers footwell has 2 sets of leads coming in. Which set did everyone use when replacing the speaker??

[revtor]

rogbmw: If the car is equipped with the handsfree mobile phone, the front "woofers" have dual voice coils: One is for the radio/hifi system and the other for the phone.

• Yellow/green (+) and Yellow/brown (-): Front left radio/hifi
• Blue/red (+) and blue/brown (-): Front right radio/hifi
• Green (+) and yellow (-): Front left and right phone (mono)

[rogbmw]

rogbmw: If the car is equipped with the handsfree mobile phone, the front "woofers" have dual voice coils: One is for the radio/hifi system and the other for the phone.

• Yellow/green (+) and Yellow/brown (-): Front left radio/hifi
• Blue/red (+) and blue/brown (-): Front right radio/hifi
• Green (+) and yellow (-): Front left and right phone (mono)

Thanks Revtor. That is exactly what I needed!

[rogbmw]

I installed the front speakers this weekend. I decided to use windshield urethane to fix the mids and tweeters in place, as I did not want a "hard" joint. I used windshield urethane, and it worked out great. You just have to wait for a full set for 24 hours. Plus, it will never come apart as the urethane is very sticky but does not set hard. I also use a vacuum suction to remove the foam from the inside of the wire mesh grills on the doors, as it was broken down.

The sound great with the Traffic Pro radio.

Here are the tweeters mounted into the old tweeter housings on the backside of the door cards:

front speaker 2.jpg

Mids (before mounting):

front speaker 3.jpg

Woofer enclosures. Note - these are a direct drop-in replacement, and all you had to do was redrill the holes:

front speaker 1.jpg

[jinbal]

It's a really good upgrade that I did years ago and documented on the UK site.

I went one step further with the lower woofers and fitted a larger 2 ohm speaker as I wanted to take advantage of the output from the E36 Harmann Kardon amp I have.

Adding a sensibly sized active sub woofer is really worthwhile as well and I think is the missing part of the sound puzzle for these cars

[JDP530]

UPDATE: The Pioneer tweeters did not fit. I couldn't find any drawings and I assumed they were small enough since speaker is 3/4" (20mm) but magnets are too big. So I bought two Visaton tweeters and cut off two ears and with a small amount of additional grinding with a dremel and small sanding drum I was able to fit them into rear enclosures. The holes in new tweeters did line up with the existing holes in enclosures. I just didn't have them screwed down in the photo.

I am working on my stereo system today and I have replaced the speakers in the back enclosures using the DaytonAudio CF midwoofers and the FaitalPro 3" speakers. I had already purchased some 4 ohm Kicker tweeters for the doors not realizing that the tweets in the rear are 8 ohm on my '91. So I ordered two Pioneer TS-S20 20mm 8 ohm speakers that should be here tomorrow. I will just have to come up with a way to mount them since they don't have a flange. I still have one door panel to complete and the kick panel speakers to replace.
PXL_20240322_195022111.MP.jpg

PXL_20240322_200624698.MP.jpg

PXL_20240329_201508020.jpg
PXL_20240329_201046211.MP.jpg
PXL_20240330_230244750.jpg

[tepescovir]

In the stock amp. It has 4ch input and 10ch output:
front woofers
front mids
front tweeters
rear woofers
rear mids+tweeters


No. They are different.
Attachment 642889

I have a Pioneer r-Avh-X7700bt. Head unit, Using stock wiring,
At some stage in it's life, the harman kardon amp was removed.
Actually, my local audio shop binned it .

So I will need to add crossover boxes where the amp used to be to suitably drive new speakers when I install them as that Is where the wiring splits from 4 in to 10 out.
The pioneer head unit should be able to drove them.

However, I assume the best option would be to source a suitable amp that will do 4.1 /4,2 input and have built in crossovers to split the signal to each speakers using the original wiring?
Any suggestions on an amp? Looking for quality over volume.

Cheers.