Installing BAVSound Speakers in 1995 BMW e36

[35nhma]

Hi everyone,

If you're on the hunt for speakers for an early model BMW e36 you might find there aren't great options. BAVSound makes a kit but it is designed for 1996 models.

View the e36 BAVSound Kit here.


I called the company and they didn't have or didn't want to share much information on the compatibility issues with pre-1996 models, but the guy working there did say it was possible to install, just wasn't able / willing to elaborate on the issues. He did say it will not work if you have the base model audio system, which I know nothing about, except that it is a tier lower than the "hi-fi" system. If you have a ten-speaker set up with an amp in the trunk though, he said the speakers will work. (Keep in mind the rear boxes have both woofers and tweeters = 4 speakers in the back, 6 speakers in the front.) This includes both the "hi-fi" system as well as the "premium harmon kardon" system. If this is confusing think of it this way: there are three tiers of e36 audio systems, as I understand the situation. If you have one of the upper two tiers, you are good to go. I forged ahead.

Long story short, the speakers are installed. I did this many months ago so I don't remember all the specifics and can't give you a DIY write up, but I will tell you it is possible if you are savvy / creative without too much work. Plug and Play it is not!

The first challenge is removal. You can pry out the by pushing them outside of the circumference of the threaded ring. Because of they way they are angled, they will remain stuck out until you pop them back in. I didn't break any. The plastic seemed really flexible still.

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The second challenge is the different size of the tweeter. You will need to remove the interior baffle with supports the much smaller OEM speaker. I used a carbide tipped dremel tip. This is where it gets a little tricky. If you don't have steady hands you might punch through the front of the grill and damage it. Below is a before / after shot.

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The third challenge has to do with the electrical connection. This is where my memory gets a little hazy, so please use your own judgement. The first thing I did was try to re-use the connector that was soldered onto the tweeter. See below

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I disassembled the circuit board, but found out the pins were too short to re-use. Also, I puzzled over the third pin for a while and finally determined it was not used for anything. In short, this was a waste of time. In the end I forget what I did, but probably just hardwired the speaker using a wire nut, tape, or a generic electrical connector.

The only trick with this is you have to sort out the positive and the negative properly, otherwise the speaker will be out of phase. The + and - are labeled on the OEM speaker so you can trace their pin locations, and then carefully work backward to determine which wire in the vehicle goes to which pole. Since the BAVSound wires are unlabeled, you will need to use a simple trick to determine the correct phasing of the speaker. There are dozens of youtube videos which explain this process, eg:



Lastly, the fourth thing I did was to dampen the sound a bit with fabric. When testing the speakers I found there to be a lot of hiss from the tweeters which was mitigated when I packed the assembly with fabric. This is totally a personal preference. I believe this has less to do with the BAVSound kit than the way the OEM amplifier filters are separating out and balancing the frequencies.

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If I recall correctly all the other speakers were easier! The only challenges were with either the smallest tweeters or with both the small and medium tweeters in the door card. Again, sorry for the lack of details here.

TLDR; Installing BAVSound speaker kit in 1995 BMW with OEM Hi-Fi (ten speaker) system is possible, but requires some work, motor skills, attention to detail.

g'luck!
Hank

[Cjc6547]

Question about the speaker “tiers”. I have a 95 convertible with 10 speakers (three in the front door cards and two in the back on each side) however I know I don’t have the HK option because I’ve looked at the amp and it’s definitely not the HK one (I’m sure of this because I tried to install an HK one from a junked car). I also don’t think I have the Hi-Fi system because didn’t those have a small switch on the panel above the shifter or was that the HK ones only?

[MParallel]

Hi-fi switch is HK only. But convertibles with HK also don't have that switch.

HK on convertibles have a skihatch subwoofer. And the front kids have a HK logo on them.

Only 2 speakers max per door, if you have three then it's not original.

[onesikM]

This is good to know because I wasn’t too sure if these bsw speakers would work with my 95m3 that came with a factory 10 speaker system. I’m not sure if this is considered the hifi system in my car? on bavsound they have two amp/speaker options available, hk or hifi. Im assuming it’s neither but it sounds like you got it to work !


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