Smoking speaker!

[steve_naive]

Tweeter (i assume) just under the wing mirror just started glowing orange and smoking.

I've recently fitted a new android stereo, could there be some sort of impedance mismatch?
I'm guessing it's blown now, so does anybody have recommendations for speaker upgrades?

 

[RustyZ4]

Tweeters are pretty sensitive. They can blow quite easily unlike a mid or woofer driver,If the tweeter is being damaged, best to see if the crossover is ok. and check the connections, Also (and more likely), an amp with not enough power can do that as well. When an amp clips, it can produce sounds that fry the tweeter,

yes you can get replacements, Audison, Eton or Hertz for example, as they are plug and play, but the they are going to show up the other stock speakers you have, if you want to keep stock, see if anyone has any they do not want

 

[steve_naive]

Tweeters are pretty sensitive. They can blow quite easily unlike a mid or woofer driver,If the tweeter is being damaged, best to see if the crossover is ok. and check the connections, Also (and more likely), an amp with not enough power can do that as well. When an amp clips, it can produce sounds that fry the tweeter,

yes you can get replacements, Audison, Eton or Hertz for example, as they are plug and play, but the they are going to show up the other stock speakers you have, if you want to keep stock, see if anyone has any they do not want

Here's the thing, when you say amp, are we talking about the amp that's been in the car since new? Or the new head unit.

I've only owned the car this last month and fitted the stereo a week ago. I used a harness adaptor and had to remove some blue plastic blanks from the existing harness plug to get the harness adaptor to fit. Other than that I'm not sure what I could have broke to cause the speakers to blow!

 

[ph001]

The crossover on the door tweeter is no more than a small electrolytic capacitor on the tweeter itself, if the capacitor were to go short circuit then it could certainly blow the tweeter but that is fairly unlikely.

What were the circumstances when it blew, were you blasting out baby shark at full volume, or listening to agadoo at more sedate levels?

 

[steve_naive]

The crossover on the door tweeter is no more than a small electrolytic capacitor on the tweeter itself, if the capacitor were to go short circuit then it could certainly blow the tweeter but that is fairly unlikely.

What were the circumstances when it blew, were you blasting out baby shark at full volume, or listening to agadoo at more sedate levels?

(There is no level sedate enough for Agadoo).

Volume wasn't too loud.

I need to buy a new multimeter so I can check the cap wiring tomorrow. I don't want to invest in new speakers if they're gonna explode!

 

[RustyZ4]

I have never had a car speaker smoke, but I have seen a PA speaker do this, in that case it was the crossover that failed, but we are talking some serious power (5000w PA) crossing over that caused it to smoke, it could be a component failure, the amp as I said clipping, possibly a failure in the amp to send a DC power up the cable.
Did it make any funny noises before this happened, popping, clipping, distortion?

 

[steve_naive]

I have never had a car speaker smoke, but I have seen a PA speaker do this, in that case it was the crossover that failed, but we are talking some serious power (5000w PA) crossing over that caused it to smoke, it could be a component failure, the amp as I said clipping, possibly a failure in the amp to send a DC power up the cable.
Did it make any funny noises before this happened, popping, clipping, distortion?

Nothing. Sounded fine, all of a sudden the missus mentioned the smoking and I saw an orange glow.

I believe the car's amp is factory installed (Hi Fi package). So it's a bit of a coincidence that the speaker blows a week after installing a new stereo.

Is it possible that the new stereo is driving the amp harder than the Business CD unit had been doing?

Stereo:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07PPV37FR/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[ph001]

DC into a tweeter won’t do anything as it just charges up the capacitor in series with it. Once the cap is charged, no current flows. It’s a different story for the woofer...they are killed easily with DC. Clipping can damage everything though like you said, but its usually uncomfortably loud and unpleasant sounding at that point. My guess is the additional power of the head unit caused a shorted turn on the tweeter coil which then caused it to burn out. Upgraded tweeters should solve the problem.

When you take the tweeter out, make sure it has the high pass crossover cap with it. I’m almost certain the cap is there with the tweeter but if not, that could certainly explain your problem.

 

[steve_naive]

DC into a tweeter won’t do anything as it just charges up the capacitor in series with it. Once the cap is charged, no current flows. It’s a different story for the woofer...they are killed easily with DC. Clipping can damage everything though like you said, but its usually uncomfortably loud and unpleasant sounding at that point. My guess is the additional power of the head unit caused a shorted turn on the tweeter coil which then caused it to burn out. Upgraded tweeters should solve the problem.

When you take the tweeter out, make sure it has the high pass crossover cap with it. I’m almost certain the cap is there with the tweeter but if not, that could certainly explain your problem.

I'll try and take a look tomorrow.

Just realised that I have the new HU eq set to 'powerful'. Hmm.

 

[steve_naive]

Just discovered that the boot is leaking. Battery and amp wet. :x

 

[steve_naive]

I don't see a capacitor anywhere.
Do I need to take it apart further?

 

[Anonymous]

If you have the 676 mid range amp which you replaced with the head unit that has 4 by 50 watts, depending how your wiring harness works it could have pumped 50 watts into the tweeter as the original system drives the tweeter of its own channel without any capacitors as frequency determination has been done by DSP in the oem amp...so no wonder it glows..

 

[steve_naive]

If you have the 676 mid range amp which you replaced with the head unit that has 4 by 50 watts, depending how your wiring harness works it could have pumped 50 watts into the tweeter as the original system drives the tweeter of its own channel without any capacitors as frequency determination has been done by DSP in the oem amp...so no wonder it glows..

Not sure about any of that.

I think my car came with the standard amp, hi fi system. I thought the Carver system was the one with DSP?

My harness is the standard harness that came with the car, I used an adapter to connect the new stereo.

 

[Anonymous]

If you have the 676 mid range amp which you replaced with the head unit that has 4 by 50 watts, depending how your wiring harness works it could have pumped 50 watts into the tweeter as the original system drives the tweeter of its own channel without any capacitors as frequency determination has been done by DSP in the oem amp...so no wonder it glows..

Not sure about any of that.

I think my car came with the standard amp, hi fi system. I thought the Carver system was the one with DSP?

My harness is the standard harness that came with the car, I used an adapter to connect the new stereo.

Well clearly it worked for 10+ years before you twiddled with it..you twiddled..speaker blew up, implies something wrong with what you did or a duff wiring harness adapter ..these things do happen on Zs as they often are similar but not quite the same as the 3 series equivalents..

Point is the next tweeter you buy is likely to follow in the footsteps of the first one...

 

[steve_naive]

If you have the 676 mid range amp which you replaced with the head unit that has 4 by 50 watts, depending how your wiring harness works it could have pumped 50 watts into the tweeter as the original system drives the tweeter of its own channel without any capacitors as frequency determination has been done by DSP in the oem amp...so no wonder it glows..

Not sure about any of that.

I think my car came with the standard amp, hi fi system. I thought the Carver system was the one with DSP?

My harness is the standard harness that came with the car, I used an adapter to connect the new stereo.

Well clearly it worked for 10+ years before you twiddled with it..you twiddled..speaker blew up, implies something wrong with what you did or a duff wiring harness adapter ..these things do happen on Zs as they often are similar but not quite the same as the 3 series equivalents..

Point is the next tweeter you buy is likely to follow in the footsteps of the first one...

Yes this is my concern!

 

[TomK]

If you have the 676 mid range amp which you replaced with the head unit that has 4 by 50 watts, depending how your wiring harness works it could have pumped 50 watts into the tweeter as the original system drives the tweeter of its own channel without any capacitors as frequency determination has been done by DSP in the oem amp...so no wonder it glows..

Not sure about any of that.

I think my car came with the standard amp, hi fi system. I thought the Carver system was the one with DSP?

My harness is the standard harness that came with the car, I used an adapter to connect the new stereo.

If It's any help I have the standard 10 speaker hi fi system inc tweeters all removed from my car with known good amp. Not the carver dsp one but regular 10speaker.

 

[ph001]

Hmmm, well if there is no capacitor on the tweeter then the crossover must be done on the amp / old head unit and if you have bypassed that then there is full frequency range going to tweeter, hence the smoke.

You could of course buy your own crossover but personally I would just add a 10uF 63V capacitor in series. This will crossover around 4KHz which is about right. You can play around with values from the table below:

http://www.carstereo.com/help/Articles.cfm?id=1

If you pm me your address I’ll post you out a couple for free.

 

[steve_naive]

I've just read that the amp does have built in crossovers, so maybe the harness adaptor wasn't enough to address the issue.

 

[steve_naive]

Done a bit more digging and indeed, you cannot just wire in a new head unit if you have the 10 speaker system with amp (dsp or otherwise).

Really wish I'd known this before spewing 500 quid on a stereo.

Can I really just add a couple of caps to the two tweeters? Maybe even temporarily disable the tweeters?

 

[Anonymous]

Done a bit more digging and indeed, you cannot just wire in a new head unit if you have the 10 speaker system with amp (dsp or otherwise).

Really wish I'd known this before spewing 500 quid on a stereo.

Can I really just add a couple of caps to the two tweeters? Maybe even temporarily disable the tweeters?

I did try to tell you...you need to sit down with the respective wiring diagrams of the car and the head unit and work out properly what to do..

From what you said you did, the car and the amp it wasnt going to work properly IMHO...

BMW as well as others don’t make it simple to simply unbolt one unit and replace it with a non oem part..