Three - Runs true throughout this build, no matter where you look there is something to whittle it back to the number three… three amps, three woofers, three way front end, M Three…. Trust us the list goes on so naturally it has fallen into it's own title.
More about this awesome project.
Dips first contacted us in October last year about doing some work on his E36 M3. Some ground work was laid down and ideas exchanged and almost 9 months to the day it was dropped off for the install. We weren't expecting to have to use the ramps we made for the Mk3 golf we had a while back, but they were indeed needed to get the BMW in the workshop. They’re proving quite handy!
Alpine's D800r heads up this system. A lovely piece of kit, being one of the best in their stable. It was mounted up front in the stock location to take care of all source duties, shortfalls in the loom from previous installations were all corrected and the new loom tidied and installed properly.
E36’s stock location for the mid bass is in the kick panels, not exactly ideal. So custom door pods were made to sit on top of the factory door card. These bespoke panels are now wrapped in Alcantara and house the Audison Voce 6.5 mid bass speakers.
The Voce 3.0 mid ranges sit in custom sail panels also trimmed in charcoal Alcantara. While the Voce 1.1 tweeters now reside in the A-pillar, also trimmed in, you guessed it, Alcantara (lovely stuff that does more for sonics than meets the eye) Both mounted on axis to cross just in front of the drivers face and as much on the same plane as possible.
Being a bit of a bass fiend, Dips first wanted two 12” woofers to fire though the ski hatch. We had a measure up and there was no way of getting the 12’s under the rear deck in an ideal fashion due to the housing for the convertible hood. We suggested an Audison AV 10” Sub instead. These were ordered up. A couple of days later we received a phone call asking if we could get 3 in. Always up for a challenge how could we say no!
We managed to squeeze the woofers in but the box the had to be so deep we were loosing all the equipment in the boot. We overcame this by over-sizing the box further and then arching the back of it, using the best piece of Perspex we have ever seen. We had this custom made for this install in 20mm and as you can imagine it was quite nerve racking hoping our math would tie up with how we had made the box, never the less it did!
Nestled away under the box is an amp rack with no less than 3 Audison AV Quattros. One powering the Tweeter stage, one powering the Mid and the third powering the Midbass. The back end of each amp is powering a sub to ensure a correct output.
With this many channels of amplification we of course wanted to put a processor into the mix. The Audison Bit One was chosen, so the system can now be tuned and tweaked infinitely. The DRC (Digital Remote Control) was fabricated into the centre console for ease of use.
So there we have another build done. On to the next one, Hope you enjoyed reading this little write up. Here are some more pictures, this isn't the end of this project and we’re already talking about stage two!
As always comments and questions are always welcome.
- 01489 578951
- info@studioincar.co.uk
Thanks to Nick Williams @ NWVT for the photographs.
