Removing stock head unit

[dsio]

I've got a nice Blaupunkt after market head unit with a 10 stack CD changer that is a perfect swap for the E30 unit. Its black, it fits, the shape compliments the interior, and best of all, it has green/amber changable light so it will match the rest of the dash.

Problem I have is the gorilla that owned this car before me has already given removing the stock head unit a go with a screwdriver or something by the looks, and the heads of the two bolts are a bit reamed.

I can almost get a grip with an allen key, but it isnt enough to take them out.

What exactly is required to remove these things?

Is it some special tool, or does it come out with an allen key and a lot of effort, or do I just drill it?

[Justin B]

Those little screws ACTUALLY are Torx-fittings. The size I believe is T-10. Not exactly an allen, actually 5 sided, but if they werent stripped a small allen may have been able to work. Mine were a little buggered on one side and i actually ended up using a jewlers-ish, or very tiny phillips head screwdriver and it dug in enough on the corners to turn it out. I wouldnt exactly recommend drilling them out as I dont know if that would help, unless you had a tiny reverse thread bit that could grab it and just unthread it that way. Basically the design is that those screws screw in and in turn push little tabs out far enough to hold the radio in place. When the screws are backed off (they dont come completely out) those tabs are retracted and the radio can be removed.

[dsio]

So they are torx? Ive got plenty of those bits, but I thought it was a 5 sided allen (the torx is different to the allen in that it is more pointed on the edges).

You sure its the T10, or should I just keep trying (I dont really want to try various wrong torx bits as their jagged edges destroy screw heads very easily)

Thanks for the reply mate.

[dsio]

OK, I got the bastard. It was too stripped for the T10, so I split the head on both screws to allow them to stretch and banged a T15 bit into it with a mallet.

force works :)

Size and shape wise, this new blaupunkt unit looks sweet as in there.

How do I go about the wiring given the fader in the dash? remove the front and rear speaker wires from the fader and terminate them on the new head unit?

[A_325i]

yea you dont need the stock speaker balance control thingy...so just cut the wires and put the splice the speaker wires directly into the wireing harness that came with your blaupunkt(sp?) and the extra wires coming from the stock speaker balance thingy just cut them and mask them off with electrical tape the that stock balancer is useless with an aftermarket headunit as i found out today it took me 3 hours to figure out why i had only 2 speakers wires and the wireing harness that came with my deck had 8 i was like hmmm this isnt gonna work then i realized DUH the new deck has its own built in speaker balance lol so yea i figured it out the hardway

[dsio]

Yea mate Ive learned the hard way too.

We have a pair of E34 525is as well as the 318i, and one of them went in to have the sound system professionally upgraded.

Alpine top of the range head unit, 10 stacker, ipod control, Alpine speakers, and sounded complete shit.

The front only speakers from the alpine unit were going into the fader, and then split 8 ways. No bass, no trebble, just slop. And to make things worse, the damn fader has dirty contacts in it, and crackles and drops some channels out unless you position it just right.

How do you go about getting to the fader in the E30 dash without pulling that whole panel off?

Does it pop out?

[Justin B]

Kind of a late response and you may have done it already, but if you havent.............
There was a stock wire for the dimmer/fader that ran to the back of the HU too actually. Its not one of the many wires in the giant plug, one of the others. I think its blue with something else, brown maybe? Entirely guessing right now. I'd have to look to find out but one hint would be there are 4 wires that are not part of the giant wiring harness which actually go themselves into a white plastic plug above the steering column. Obviously you'll need to be taking out the knee kickpanel and such, but you'd need to do that to rewire anyway.
Of those 4 wires one is the stock constant voltage, one is always ground, one is something else and another switches between ground and hot (I believe, its been a little while since I did it) when the lights are turned on. I THINK it turns hot when theyre on but it doesnt matter, its the only wire of those 4 that do it...and its obviously not the red one. Maybe it was that purple one. You can look around you'll probably see what im talking about. Dont bother wiring all the way over to the dimmer switch and splicing into wires there when its just the dimmer and there are wires for it already. Cut wires going nowhere that could have been used for something that another wire was run for usually doesnt cut it, imo. :) Unless of course you NEED to run a new wire for something. I ran a +12v straight from the battery to the HU instead of using the stock one but anyways..........

[dsio]

I seam to have no "big plug" at all.

Ive got a pair of these two pin connectors, one for left, one for right, I have a connector for earth and 12V constant, I see one for 12V switched and something else.

Due to the fact that stock speakers are using the common earth, I will have to lay new wires I think, so I need to redo it all.

There was no big plug. All these wires go into the harness, and go somewhere, then the fader also goes into this harness and comes out nowhere.

Any tips for the speaker wiring?

[Justin B]

You gotta have a pretty large white plug somewhere under the dash. It wasnt just for radio stuff, its got a lot of other things too. It has nothing to do with the audio portion, just powers and grounds. I'll see if I can dig up a picture, I know I took some.

You will need to rewire all those speakers, heck, what I did was take out that entire harness that plugs into the back of the stock HU. Its not that many wires from the back, but it goes to the amp, then all those wires come back again and spread out to the speakers so its a pretty thick harness for the room it has. With all those wires still there it'll be really difficult to run new wires along the same path. There will be just too many. It was difficult to if not impossible to pass the plug from the radio through the dash to keep the harness in one piece, so I cut it right where it began to go into the dash area at the top of the kickpanel and pulled the radio end through the DIN hole.

Besides having to take out all the stock wiring anyway what I was talking about is that there are some wires in the back of the stock radio that basically goes straight back to the amp, and then a few others that actually do not. Looking at the pictures I have some of the 4 wires I have been talking about may not be the exact color when they get to the radio, as far as I can see but that wouldnt make any sense. They should be anyway.

Somewhere, 4 wires that plug into the back of the radio (I know, there arent many options to where wires go, there arent many there anyway) go to that plug. Here's the best pics I have.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v207/norcal02/r3v/4wires.jpg

You may need to take down the abs brain to see the plug...

[Justin B]

As far as actually wiring the speakers, umm get more wire than you think you might need lol..that was my case anyway. Fortunately I did but I just barely had enough. Other than that are you going to use an amp or power speakers off the head unit? If you use an amp keep the signal wires away from the power wires. Unfortunately I have a cabrio and the battery is in the front. I had to run a giant wire down the right side of the car. All the stock wiring is down the left side anyway. From the HU I took the rca cables and ran all of them down the middle of the carpet on the left about a foot or so away from the rockers and all the other wires for tail lights and things. They probably wouldnt hurt so much but there just isnt any room for all the speaker wire PLUS RCA's where the original wire was, even with it gone. When they got to the rear seat I ran them directly to the grommet where the stock amp wires were and through to the amp. For the speaker wire itself it ran pretty much the stock wiring location along the side, then halfway down (under the front seats roughly) split across the transmission tunnel for the left side front components. I am using the crossover in my amp so I have 4 sets of speaker wire coming into the cabin =/ instead of two then mounting the xovers inside somewhere. I guess if I couldnt though and put them in the trunk anyway I'd still end up with that much wire coming in. If you do need to cross big power wires like for the amp do so at 90 degree angles and as little as possible to keep interference as low as possible.

Kind of rambled but maybe it'll help some.
Here is what it looks like under my rear seat.

Grommet on the left (drilled a 1/2" hole)
Fat red wire - Amp +
Blue wire - Amp remote turn on
Greyish wire - CD changer wire

Grommet on the right
Blue/Silver wires - RCA cables
Unbraided clear insulation wires - Speaker cable, duh ;p

[dsio]

That is a very, different car.

I'm in Australia, so I have right hand drive. I still cant quite find exactly where this white plug is, and I have no amp in the trunk, and no ABS.

I have predrilled holes on either side of the trunk that goes through to the cabin, slightly more to the center than the holes you have. I thought those were normal, since the two E34 525is we have both have those holes there already too.

Is it too difficult to do this without removing the front seats?

[Justin B]

Yeah, I was realizing that as I was typing the last post. I decided to post it anyway because I thought maybe just MAYBE there would be something similar or similar functioning wires in the vicinity of the back of the radio.

No amp in the trunk, oh ok. For some reason i thought you had premium sound. I dont know exactly how the speakers are wired (routed that is, I know how they'd be wired) without that, and only pointed out the ABS brain because just in case it was there it would be in the way :).

Anyways, um I dont know about those holes you have in the back of your seat. The one on the left in my picture i made myself, whereas the one on the right, at least in US model non-cabbies that hole is actually closer up on the side of the seat. I wouldnt know what to say about that. If you are going to re wire your rear speakers though you should run the new wire where all the old speaker wire is/or was if you remove it.

I would suggest taking all the seats out. Its impossible. You need to be able to roll the carpet back and thats difficult to do with the foam, wires probably run under the front seats for you too and it would just make life so much easier. You probably wouldnt have to remove the rear seats as long as you werent going to rewire the rear speakers, but if you are you'd need to take them out as well to run wires to your rears on the shelf. Taking seats in and out are very simple, and it would make the job much much simpler. Quick answer : yes.

[dsio]

If I took the front seats out, they would never go in due to the rust surrounding the rails and bolts. I can get the carpet up on the sides and I'm doing that to lay the cable quite easily.

I took a look at the factory speakers in the back :shock:

There was no surround left on them. The cone was floating in the middle with nothing supporting it at all on both rear speakers. The foam stuff around the cone looks to have been eaten by some sort of bugs :\

Took the front speakers off, and they are almost as bad, though they have about 1 inch of surround left each.

Was wondering why they sounded bad :\

I guess I'll be buying some speakers too.