Installing BMW Alpine Stereo upgrade (BMW 3 series E90)

Install replacement front door speakers

The new Alpine front door speakers are direct replacement for the old ones.

Front door panel with original mid-range speaker.

BMW front door panel removed

 

Undo 3 small nuts and install a new speaker. Attach a crossover (diplexer) to two of the bolts. One of the blue wires from the crossover connects to the new mid-range speaker. Remaining blue and yellow wires have exactly the same connector. One connects to the original mid range speaker cable coming from the amplifier, other – to a new tweeter. In my case, yellow wire had a label “Radio/Head Unit“, but this was incorrect! The yellow wire, labelled as “Head Unit” had to be connected to a tweeter and the blue wire with no label – to the original speaker wire coming from HU/Amplifier. This actually matches colours or the cables (tweeter wire is yellow and HU wire is blue). If you connect these wires wrong way around (as I initially did), there will be almost no sound coming from the mid range speaker and way too much sound coming from the tweeter. Make sure you test before putting everything back together.

New mid-range speaker with the crossover. This photo was taken before I figured out that yellow cable was labelled incorrectly by manufacturer. It makes more sense to install the crossover with yellow (tweeter) cable facing upwards.

BMW Alpine mid-range speaker installed

 

 Push a tweeter into your new door surround trim. It should go in with a little click and stay there securely.

BMW door surround trim with new tweeter

 

 Don’t forget to put a foam insulator cover taken from the old door surround trip.

BMW tweeter with foam insulator cover

 

Now all is left is to put everything back and enjoy much improved sound!


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