Door internals – Trim, Speakers, LED’s, Sound Deadening - The project that never was meant to be….
OK so I said no more projects, but sneaked one in for completeness.
Having installed the ///M Dream Red seats and got all that working I still felt it needed something to echo the red through to the doors.
Some great alternatives were proposed from door pads to centre rests:
Door pads
Centre Rest
.......but I decided OEM was the way to stay, but without the OEM door trim price tag.
The first challenge is that BMW have designed the door panel as a 1 piece unit that cannot be taken apart, is not serviceable and available as a complete replacement door inner. Yeah right – that just meant it took me longer using a chisel to break the miles of plastic weld than I planned on….
So this is what I ended up with. A pair of ‘beyond return’ bits of door panel.
Leather insert cut out
Close up of rear of leather insert panel (shaky photo as my hand was hurting from hitting it with the hammer
)
While the inserts were off to be recovered I spent a week driving around with no inner door handle and reaching out of windows to get out, once walking off from the car and realising my wife was still left in there…..oops.
This caused me to consider several sub projects:
Sound Deadening
(No not so I could not hear my locked in wife shouting) The 'bean tin' door sound was not for me, so 10sq feet of eDead was sourced from Ebay and applied to the inside face of the outer door skin. This is rather therapeutic cutting strips and sticking them neatly where they will never see daylight again and trying to be neat for no logical reason. The end result is doors that sound more like slamming Victorian oak doors and if tapped have a reassuringly expensive ‘dead’ sound to them.
Door Speakers
The next thing I noticed was there were no speakers in the door, just horrible blanking plates. Now I’m no sound expert, so off to the local audio shop who prodded and pushed a few things and suggested wiring some decent mid range speakers into the door mirror tweeters and mounting them behind the OEM speaker covers.
OK not perfect, but as they pointed out it’s a full signal to them, so will work just fine. I opted for speakers with bolt flanges and dremelled the door panel to accept them Vs the standard BMW 3 point mounting speaker.
Logic being that £55 a pair for decent Clarion's Vs £50 each for BMW was the way to go, despite a bit of work.
Inner membrane before cutting for speaker and peeling off from door panel
Having cut a circular hole in the foam membrane I had a few water leak worries, but it seems this is normal and all I did was fabricate a shield to steer water away from the speaker back on its merry way down the inside of the door.
Test fit of speakers (the white wires later became tidied up for the LED's)
Door LED lights
Well I’d never even considered them, but there was such a great write up by Doctor Wha on bimmerforums http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=746898 that I just had to have a go.
Seems all I had to do is tap into 2 wires, a grey/red and a second brown, from the door mirror control switch and that would be dimmable. BMW offered nice little LED’s on leads. Part number 633 169 02 239 and not too expensive at £10 each, but a 10 day wait from Germany. That made me decide to be cheap and quicker, so I found a couple of LED's in the parts bin and went with those. Silicone into the door handle and job done.
The only modifications I made to Doctor Wha’s design is that I had some spare connectors from a previous project, so dropped these into the inside of the handle. Logic being if I needed to remove the handle there would be no wire threading to do, 2 pins to unclip. I also spliced the wires properly, soldered and covered the join in heat shrink, as I don’t like mechanical joints.
Trouble is right now they don’t work – something to resolve when I get 10 minutes. Just goes to show not everything works smoothly!!! Since my circuit is good and there is nothing blown I can only assume that my Zed is not wired somewhere inside the car.
Back to the Doors
So while all this went on the doors were re-dyed and arrived back in less than a week from sending.
Interestingly I emailed 3 companies 2 never even replied. One small ‘one man’ company replied, asked for a sample, checked it and phoned to confirm he could match, do the job and get it done quickly. I love small businesses that work with their customers.
Finished inserts
Everything was set and all that was needed was to weld the inserts back onto the rest of the door panel. Care of the airbags and all the other fixings, but pretty much a straight slot in and bond job.
Threaded the wires for the LED’s in
LED Wires Ready
Great opportunity to give the rest of the door trims a real good clean and spruce up while off the car.
So there we have it.
Doors inserts that are close to OEM for (don’t tell anyone, but just £30 the pair).
Clarion ‘mid range’ speakers and a resulting quantum improvement in sound, without messing with a new amp and all that expensive stuff.
Solid sounding and ‘deadened’ doors.
Cute little LED’s that dim with the interior lights – well when I get them working…
Finished door
An OEM door to compare to kindly photographed by PVR
Finished result - a perfect match and blending well with the car interior
And I think that concludes the door part of the car.
Hope you found it of interest and I’ll add some decent photos when I can get better light to show them.
OK so I said no more projects, but sneaked one in for completeness.
Having installed the ///M Dream Red seats and got all that working I still felt it needed something to echo the red through to the doors.
Some great alternatives were proposed from door pads to centre rests:
Door pads
Centre Rest
.......but I decided OEM was the way to stay, but without the OEM door trim price tag.
The first challenge is that BMW have designed the door panel as a 1 piece unit that cannot be taken apart, is not serviceable and available as a complete replacement door inner. Yeah right – that just meant it took me longer using a chisel to break the miles of plastic weld than I planned on….
So this is what I ended up with. A pair of ‘beyond return’ bits of door panel.
Leather insert cut out
Close up of rear of leather insert panel (shaky photo as my hand was hurting from hitting it with the hammer
)
While the inserts were off to be recovered I spent a week driving around with no inner door handle and reaching out of windows to get out, once walking off from the car and realising my wife was still left in there…..oops.
This caused me to consider several sub projects:
Sound Deadening
(No not so I could not hear my locked in wife shouting) The 'bean tin' door sound was not for me, so 10sq feet of eDead was sourced from Ebay and applied to the inside face of the outer door skin. This is rather therapeutic cutting strips and sticking them neatly where they will never see daylight again and trying to be neat for no logical reason. The end result is doors that sound more like slamming Victorian oak doors and if tapped have a reassuringly expensive ‘dead’ sound to them.
Door Speakers
The next thing I noticed was there were no speakers in the door, just horrible blanking plates. Now I’m no sound expert, so off to the local audio shop who prodded and pushed a few things and suggested wiring some decent mid range speakers into the door mirror tweeters and mounting them behind the OEM speaker covers.
OK not perfect, but as they pointed out it’s a full signal to them, so will work just fine. I opted for speakers with bolt flanges and dremelled the door panel to accept them Vs the standard BMW 3 point mounting speaker.
Logic being that £55 a pair for decent Clarion's Vs £50 each for BMW was the way to go, despite a bit of work.
Inner membrane before cutting for speaker and peeling off from door panel
Having cut a circular hole in the foam membrane I had a few water leak worries, but it seems this is normal and all I did was fabricate a shield to steer water away from the speaker back on its merry way down the inside of the door.
Test fit of speakers (the white wires later became tidied up for the LED's)
Door LED lights
Well I’d never even considered them, but there was such a great write up by Doctor Wha on bimmerforums http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=746898 that I just had to have a go.
Seems all I had to do is tap into 2 wires, a grey/red and a second brown, from the door mirror control switch and that would be dimmable. BMW offered nice little LED’s on leads. Part number 633 169 02 239 and not too expensive at £10 each, but a 10 day wait from Germany. That made me decide to be cheap and quicker, so I found a couple of LED's in the parts bin and went with those. Silicone into the door handle and job done.
The only modifications I made to Doctor Wha’s design is that I had some spare connectors from a previous project, so dropped these into the inside of the handle. Logic being if I needed to remove the handle there would be no wire threading to do, 2 pins to unclip. I also spliced the wires properly, soldered and covered the join in heat shrink, as I don’t like mechanical joints.
Trouble is right now they don’t work – something to resolve when I get 10 minutes. Just goes to show not everything works smoothly!!! Since my circuit is good and there is nothing blown I can only assume that my Zed is not wired somewhere inside the car.
Back to the Doors
So while all this went on the doors were re-dyed and arrived back in less than a week from sending.
Interestingly I emailed 3 companies 2 never even replied. One small ‘one man’ company replied, asked for a sample, checked it and phoned to confirm he could match, do the job and get it done quickly. I love small businesses that work with their customers.
Finished inserts
Everything was set and all that was needed was to weld the inserts back onto the rest of the door panel. Care of the airbags and all the other fixings, but pretty much a straight slot in and bond job.
Threaded the wires for the LED’s in
LED Wires Ready
Great opportunity to give the rest of the door trims a real good clean and spruce up while off the car.
So there we have it.
Doors inserts that are close to OEM for (don’t tell anyone, but just £30 the pair).
Clarion ‘mid range’ speakers and a resulting quantum improvement in sound, without messing with a new amp and all that expensive stuff.
Solid sounding and ‘deadened’ doors.
Cute little LED’s that dim with the interior lights – well when I get them working…
Finished door
An OEM door to compare to kindly photographed by PVR
Finished result - a perfect match and blending well with the car interior
And I think that concludes the door part of the car.
Hope you found it of interest and I’ll add some decent photos when I can get better light to show them.
