Z3 stereo & amp replacement
 

Just bought '98 Z3 roadster. Verified that the radio is indead weak as noted in other forums. Bought new Alpine head unit with built in amp and a separate 4 channel amp. Figure that gives me 8 channels of reasonable power to drive most of the speakers in the roadster. Turns out it has ten speakers if you count the two in the subwoofer. Maybe I will just ignore the two little ones behind the seats for now. Other option is to replace the kickpanel "woofers" with full range speakers and eliminate the separate door midranges. I guess I would keep the door-mounted tweeters. Will now spend some time pondering how to get it in and wired up. Any body else done this or have suggestions?

If your gonna put in aftermarket speakers id recomend going with 6.5"s. They offer better sound quality then 6x9's will (well any round speaker will over the oval shaped ones). Your biggest problem may be having to remove the door panel cover, after that if u have wiring experience it shouldnt be to hard. As for the amp i cant really help u much, mostly i have no idea were its located or how its wired.


EDIT: Welcome to the Forums!!!!1 :rock :wave

I don't believe I'm qualified to advise on your speaker issue, however I can say welcome to United. :wave

haha, sorry.

THATS A TON OF SPEAKERS for a car with only two seats

OK, Here's what I did.. and I'm no expert, but I think it worked out great.

New stuff I put in -
Alpine 9853 head unit
Alpine 345 4channel amp
Boston acoustic SL60 component speakers in the front kick panels and tweeter in the doors (I removed the old mids and highs)
All new speaker wiring

What I left in-
The two tiny rear speakers
The stock sub box with HK drivers

I am driving the two kickpanel/door speaker sets from two front channels of the amp which is in turn driven from the front preamp outs of the headunit. The subwoofer preouts from the headunit go to the other two channels of the amp that in turn drives the two little drivers in the stock subwoofer box. I drive the two tiny speakers behind the seats with the two rear amplified outputs directly from the headunit. This is why I bought a headunit with a built-in amp.

This sounds pretty simple, but in fact it was a huge PITA. The hard parts were... pretty much all of it. Took me a couple weeks of intermittant progress.

I will post more details later, but some challenges were:
Getting the wiring for the new door tweeters through the small rubber snorkel from the body to the doors.
Mounting the three-holed BA speakers on the irregular surface behind the kickpanels. Figuring out how to get the plastic structure behind the seats apart so as to run wires under/thru it. Fishing the wires thru the rubber grommet between the trunk and the interier with the top up in the hot sun.. (Had to work outside because the doors needed to be wide open and my garage is not that big).

Anyway the thing sounds awsome. I am going to go deaf from actually being able to hear the full range while crusing at 80 beside 18-wheelers on I-495 with the top down.

The BAs with the separate tweaters and crossovers are increadable. Be sure to set the jumpered tweater attenuation (-2db) so that your ears don't bleed ;-) The little subwoofer actually does pretty good if you drive both drivers with 75 watts (reverse the polarity of the rear driver). Remember to put the snorkel back in as the little drivers need damping to keep them from destroying themselves The snorkel seems to restrict them just enough to sound deep and stop slapping around. The little speakers behind the seats do a good job of filling in mid highs and I can in fact hear them destinctly now.

The head unit takes a while to figure out, but once you get the hang of setting up the equalizer and time delay you can tone down the highs a bit and boost the bass to compensate for the open car syndrome.

I am pleased...

Glad you got it worked out. :rock

And on that note, do you have any pictures of your beauty?

LANSHRK and YELODWG
 

My rides. The new Z3 Alpine-Boston Acoustics stereo sounds great, but the Landrover has a weather band tho.

(hope the pic posts... can't get preview to show it.)

Thread necromancy!

So, I'm not particularly good at doing work on my car myself. But there are a few things I'm comfortable doing, such as replacing sparkplugs, replacing blown out speakers, etc.

On that topic, the sub between my seats either has a loose wire or is completely blown. Only problem is, I can't figure out how to get the dang housing off. I can get the top piece up a little bit, but there's this double connection point on the back that I can't identify how to remove.

Any advice, or images that show a little better how to access the speakers in a 2001 Z3 would be greatly appreciated. Thanks much!