Grünhilde My '95 530it

[deutschman]

Well I fixed the wiring on one side of my hatch yesterday. The other side still needs to be dug into.
This is what was left of the wiring. When I opened the loom up, the wires just fell out.


BMW does sell replacement harnesses for the trunk, but they would amount to about $600-700 and still require soldering.
I just patched in some new lengths of wire with solder and shrink wrap, and wrapped them all back up again in a bundle. I know people say not to solder on cars, but in this case there was just no room for a big bundle of crimp connectors in the wiring sheathing. It has to fit in a very tight spot between the door and D pillar.

In other news, my squid chip was a no go. It popped an engine light, I had cruise control issues, and transmission issues with the auto trans. It wouldn't show me which gear it was in, or shift in sports mode, A mode, or M mode. Iv tried to contact Jesse at Sssquid, but there has been no reply yet. Some one ells has had some of the same problems with one of his chips lately.
I put the OEM chip back in and all the problems disappeared.

I am also confused about my DME, because I read that my car should have a 484 DME, but my car current has a 404 DME. I also know some one has oped the 404 up before because some of the folding tabs had been broken off.

[deutschman]

I have to rewire the hatch wiring. It has a bunch of shorts and exposed wires. Fun

[deutschman]

Sssquid chip installed today.


I also found all my Pick N Pull parts

[deutschman]

Dude! That sucks! I've installed the same Kenwood Headunit in 3 different cars with no problems. =P

Sent from my DeLorean

Good news!!!


.........



It works! And how it works! Sounds frickin amazing, and Im only running front speakers. Im going to order some rear speakers today. Ones I sell these style 37 wheels I can afford a Luke box and a sub with a small amp. PUMPED!

So it turned out some of the original BMW wires got mixed up in their loom. Some of the head unit out put wires got mixed into the speaker input wire loom and were the same colors. I had to go through with my multimeter and check each wire along with a wire color guide. Wasnt hard, just a pain in the ass. Well worth the trouble.

The little tiny brick sized Alpine amp is insane and fits in very sneaky places. Glove box, behind a head unit in the dash, behind a trunk panel under a seat, and so on. Its not going to brake windows, but it triples the power of any head unit it is compatible with which is most head units including stock units. I highly recommend them to anyone doing an e30 install sins they save so much rooms, and can run 4 speakers (two 2 way component systems). You will need a small amp to run a sub if you choose to do so. But ones of these Alpine KTP-455U head unit power packs and a 1 channel amp for a sub will still save money and room in your car.

The Kenwood functions really nicely with my iPhone (calls, Pandora, iTunes) and I am sure would work just as well with an Android phone. Plus it has almost exactly the same color setting as the stock BMW interior lights, so it matches well. Looks classy and trashy.


Im happy with all my wiring even though it took a long time. Everything is going to fit in the factory location. Ones I get the second set of cross overs for the rear speakers Im going to build a new rack for all the hardware. Should be cleaner.


No pictures of the speakers as they are all hiding behind factory grills as they should be. They sound soooooooo good. :nice:

[Luke Girard]

Well I am having a hard time with this wiring. The Kenwood head unit keeps going into "Protect" mode which means the speakers are wired incorrectly some where. Ill have to go through the wiring and disconnect each speaker and see if the Protect mode goes away, then fix that speaker. Its hard with all the different colored wires and keeping track of which is what, especially with my dyslexia. Drives me nuts.

Dude! That sucks! I've installed the same Kenwood Headunit in 3 different cars with no problems. =P

Sent from my DeLorean

[deutschman]

Well I am having a hard time with this wiring. The Kenwood head unit keeps going into "Protect" mode which means the speakers are wired incorrectly some where. Ill have to go through the wiring and disconnect each speaker and see if the Protect mode goes away, then fix that speaker. Its hard with all the different colored wires and keeping track of which is what, especially with my dyslexia. Drives me nuts.

[Luke Girard]

Yeah sounds like you had solid core ignition wires. My friends truck had that same problem. The radio that wading this 530 was wired really nicely in the conventional way and had no wine, so I'm not worried.

Cool cool. I bet it'll sound nice!

Sent from my DeLorean

[deutschman]

Yeah sounds like you had solid core ignition wires. My friends truck had that same problem. The radio that was in this 530 was wired really nicely in the conventional way and had no wine, so I'm not worried.

[Luke Girard]

I always thought speaker wine was caused by solid core ignition wire?

Not sure? I don't know all the specifics I just know that I had it wired that way in my old e34 and I had an awful wine that matched the rpms in pitch.... Hope it works out for you! And I bet it'll sound nice!

Sent from my DeLorean

[deutschman]

I always thought speaker wine was caused by solid core ignition wire?

[deutschman]

Oh nice. I hadn't thought of that. I'm going to try it the regular way. If it's messed up its easy enough to take out and change.
I'm so excited for the rest of the install tomorrow! lol

[Luke Girard]

Nice I see too many cars with the stock wiring harness hacked up and ruined because someone didn't want to buy a $5 adapter. How did you do the grounds? e34's get alternator wine a lot so I was told my Luke (G.A.S) to ground all of the speaker grounds and the headunit ground to the stock found like this.



This will ground all the speakers and the headunit to the stock ground. If you wired it normally the speakers will be ground to the headunit not the body of the car and will probably end up with alternator wine! You just leave the grounds for the speakers from the stereo not hooked up and tape them off. That's what I ended up doing and I don't have any alternator wine!

Sent from my DeLorean

[deutschman]

Finished my head unit -> BMW harness adapter


Im going to stick all my crossovers and the tiny little Alpine amp in the stock amp location and use the factory wiring.

[deutschman]

Yeah so after some reading this LCO is a piece of shit. Won't use it, don't need it.
How ever this little tiny Alpine amp is bad ass! It plugs right inline with the head unit wiring using ether RCA or regular wires and powers 4 speakers at ether the front or rear of the car. You can bridge two of them to power the front and back speakers. This will let me completely by pass the original amp and for way less then buying big bulky amps which will use up trunk space. They are also strong enough to power a basic sub. Sweet!
I still have some wiring and placement to sort out but it should be strait forward. I already partially mocked up the system on my floor.

[deutschman]

I dont think Ill use the LOC.