Mauro's Touring 320d project / maintenance

[mauro23]

Now i can start to talk about my future project which are the power folding mirrors and the Harman Kardon installation.
I do have a question about the HK additional speakers compare to the normal 6 speakers installation. There should be 2 additional speakers on the front doors and 2 on the rear doors for which i, of course, don't have the hole in the door's panel. I wanted to know if you think that making this hole with appropriate tools won't make any trouble to my door panel ? Anyone already did that retrofit and could let me know ? Thanks in advance.

[az3579]

Now i can start to talk about my future project which are the power folding mirrors and the Harman Kardon installation.
I do have a question about the HK additional speakers compare to the normal 6 speakers installation. There should be 2 additional speakers on the front doors and 2 on the rear doors for which i, of course, don't have the hole in the door's panel. I wanted to know if you think that making this hole with appropriate tools won't make any trouble to my door panel ? Anyone already did that retrofit and could let me know ? Thanks in advance.

Honestly I think you're better off going with an aftermarket solution. You can get better sound than the HK if you choose the right components yourself.

Cutting holes in the door panel would make me nervous. See if you can source door panels from a car that had HK.

[mauro23]

Honestly I think you're better off going with an aftermarket solution. You can get better sound than the HK if you choose the right components yourself.

Cutting holes in the door panel would make me nervous. See if you can source door panels from a car that had HK.

thanks for your answer az3579. Well, i agree with you that an aftermarket solution is probably better, but :


as you can see, i already have the complete set with harness wire and so on ... I got it at a really good price, so i couldn't refuse it ...

[johnrando]

Might as well install it then, but you may likely want it upgrade later. As for cutting, I don't know... hopefully not a big problem.

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[mauro23]

Ok guys,

thanks for the advices, i started the first step today with the rear doors.
I think the result is quite good, and i must say that i am quite proud of the work i did :-D.

Tomorrow i will wire the rear doors and put back the door panels.

I was quite happy to see after dismounting the first door panel that the speaker location was marked, yeepee


Drill equipped


Drill's job done :


Cutting the leather, starting to sweat a lot I did it starting from the center, making a cut to 4 directions, and then i finished by making the complete circle :


Speaker cover in place :


Mounting the speaker on the cover :


Job done

[BMWCurves]

Looks clean to me

[az3579]

Looks good! I would be too worried about making it look OE, but I say you pulled it off really nicely.

[johnrando]

Nice work

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[mauro23]

Thank you guys

So yesterday i finished the wiring of the rear doors and put back the door panels. About the wire, as the one of the rear right door was missing, i decided to adapt the existing harness and add the 2 wires on each side for the speaker on the existing connector.

There is how look the door connector inside :


To remove the cover protection, you need to pull a small clip and slide the cover :


The 2 wires i need are on position 14 and 15. As you can see on the picture, it looks like an additional part of the main connector. this is because on the connector car side, you have 2 different connector that are tight together when you have the Harman Kardon harness wire installed. I think it is pretty clever, as adding it won't be a big problem inside the car. Just have to replace the existing harness and there are connectors everywhere, no need to solder anything.


To remove the pin, you just have to press gently the pin and pull it out of the connector :


Now wires and pins out of the connector


Passing the wires into the existing connector and putting them in position 14 and 15 :


New wires in place. I also took the opportunity to grease the lift window guides :


job done for the rear doors

[mauro23]

Hello guys,

i finished the whole installation of the Harman Kardon and power folding mirrors this sunday. It took me the whole day in order to do everything, but the wires, door speakers and so on are working perfectly.

First of all, the little surprise was that the mirrors came without being tapped ²²5 I had to do it by myself :



Little video of the power folding mirrors in action :
https://youtu.be/LNbaxvn1xok

Some pictures of the Harman Kardon installation in place :


My tool to cut the door panels was a bit small :



So i had to finish it by hand too ²²4



Front doors done :



Conclusion, you were right, it isn't so amazing as it seems to. Everything is definitely better than the "normal" stereo installation, but not that much too... I will have a look on some of your project guys to see what kind of after market installation you used and what are the feedback about them.
i don't regret the installation, at least i do have an amplifier with the complete wires for all the speakers at least one, which is definitely a good thing i believe.