A couple of retrofits done

[AnubisZed]

OK, so following on from MaxShepard's post on retrofitting the passthrough hatch (https://z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=142828) and his retrofit of the 676 amplified system (https://z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=142056), I decided I liked the idea enough to give it a whirl.

I've been collecting the parts over the last few months and have been lucky enough to pick them all up at reasonable prices. Ripped as much as I could out during last week and fitted some of the hardware in the boot area and test fitted the loom I've made up. Then at the weekend i decided I'd strip out the bulkhead panels in the interior and cut holes in it for the speakers and hatch to fit. Cutting them out isn't too bad as they are marked, so nice and steady and a little at a time to make sure they fit properly. All fitted up nicely and was all put back together (except for the boot panels) Saturday. That just left the hooking up of the new loom into the old loom at the rear of the headunit which I managed to do Sunday.
A fairly complicated job to wire up and make sure it's all correct.
I now have the addition the two subwoofers behind the seats, the centre front midrange and tweeter on top of the dash, two additional tweeters in the rear 1/4 location (to the best of my knowledge this was never done from the factory, even though provision was virtually made for them, just without the holes being cut) and the option to piggyback an additional midrange and tweeter for the rear centre if/when I want (as I have a spare midrange I may test this before I commit to buying the grill)

I've coded in the 676 to the VO (CAS, NFRM & CIC), which did make a huge difference straight away (louder), but forgot to check if "AMP" had been added to the list of modules so I could code in a SG_CODERIEN for it to see it's an E89, as this may make a difference to the audio setup, so will have to plug the laptop in again to check.

And for the eagle-eyed amongst you, yes my Combox is upside-down :?

 

[B21]

Great job…I assume you had to lay some lines in to get the speakers such as the woofers to the rear bulkhead to connect to the new 676 amp there?

Being pedantic I see you didn’t use E89 676 speakers as those babies look much nicer than the 676 ones fitted to my E89? :tumbleweed: :rofl:

I’ve now got a 677 amp spare if you want to go the next stage ? :rofl:

 

[AnubisZed]

Great job…I assume you had to lay some lines in to get the speakers such as the woofers to the rear bulkhead to connect to the new 676 amp there?

Being pedantic I see you didn’t use E89 676 speakers as those babies look much nicer than the 676 ones fitted to my E89? :tumbleweed: :rofl:

I’ve now got a 677 amp spare if you want to go the next stage ? :rofl:

The front centre speaker is from a 677
All the other midrange and tweeters are Aliexpress BO speakers 8)
The subwoofers are 676

The wiring loom I had already had the original subwoofer lines and the plug, the rest was built from scratch with all the correct grade of wire and cloth tape wrapped, all good fun :rofl:

 

[B21]

Great job…I assume you had to lay some lines in to get the speakers such as the woofers to the rear bulkhead to connect to the new 676 amp there?

Being pedantic I see you didn’t use E89 676 speakers as those babies look much nicer than the 676 ones fitted to my E89? :tumbleweed: :rofl:

I’ve now got a 677 amp spare if you want to go the next stage ? :rofl:

The front centre speaker is from a 677
All the other midrange and tweeters are Aliexpress BO speakers 8)
The subwoofers are 676

The wiring loom I had already had the original subwoofer lines and the plug, the rest was built from scratch with all the correct grade of wire and cloth tape wrapped, all good fun :rofl:

Ah yes your speakers looked to be much chunkier than the normal 676 or even 677 100mm units..

Interesting on the woofer wiring ..must be a degree of overlap in the core wiring looms for the base and 676 versions..

 

[SwissTone]

Great work Dave and looks very tidy too … lots of blood sweat and tears but all worth it

 

[AnubisZed]

....

Interesting on the woofer wiring ..must be a degree of overlap in the core wiring looms for the base and 676 versions..

Sorry, my bad on my explanation...
What I should have said was that I'd got a used 42 pin plug and it had the subwoofer wiring already in it (I ended up with a fair amount of wiring from another job), so I just needed the subwoofer plugs for that end. There was also the trigger wire from the antenna diversity there and a very short power lead. But everything else was custom made.

 

[AnubisZed]

Great work Dave and looks very tidy too … lots of blood sweat and tears but all worth it

Thanks
TBH it's taken longer making sure I was happy with the amount of wire I ordered and finding the correct crimps. But I do like it to look right, even though once all of the panels are back in you won't see any of it :rofl:

 

[Deepseaskateboard]

Incredible work! Is there a video to follow?

 

[AnubisZed]

Incredible work! Is there a video to follow?

No video was taken of these installs, only photos, so I probably wont be making videos on them, but saying that I could with using B-Roll footage, the photos and wiring diagrams, I'm really not sure yet. :?

 

[AnubisZed]

UPDATE

So on the coding side I looked for AMP in the list (module list within NCSExpert) but it's not there, but it does show up in INPA. Also in INPA you can Activate and test various components, and one of those is Amplifier. So I went into this option and did all I could, one of which is to test all speakers individually, which I did. Really not sure it sounds any better following this though, so it "could" require a firmware update, so I may have to look into this further.
So I've proved all the additional speakers work and that I've wired everything correctly, so a plus there and I now have some additional storage for when we are away

 

[B21]

UPDATE

So on the coding side I looked for AMP in the list (module list within NCSExpert) but it's not there, but it does show up in INPA. Also in INPA you can Activate and test various components, and one of those is Amplifier. So I went into this option and did all I could, one of which is to test all speakers individually, which I did. Really not sure it sounds any better following this though, so it "could" require a firmware update, so I may have to look into this further.
So I've proved all the additional speakers work and that I've wired everything correctly, so a plus there and I now have some additional storage for when we are away

I guess there will be a table somewhere with the DSP / frequency values ..whether it’s accessible and what the effects of changing any variables who knows?

Same basic unit used many places..so maybe it’s a firmware based thing..

 

[AnubisZed]

I guess there will be a table somewhere with the DSP / frequency values ..whether it’s accessible and what the effects of changing any variables who knows?

If I could have downloaded the .trc file via NCSExpert I could have run it through NCSDummy to see if I could alter anything, but as I couldn't see it in the list that's not possible. I do have an expert I can call to see if it's possible to update the firmware via ISTA, but if that's not possible then I will probably have to get the specific E89 version, the one I have is from an E70 but is a E89 part number, hence why I wanted to update the firmware. No biggy, as I can at least sell this one as a proven working unit. :driving: