As I think I stated before it really only took me about 25 minutes per side to do the install of the under seat speakers, start to finish. Since I took some time out to do my measurements with the driver from the passenger seat I used up most of an afternoon on the project, but if you weren’t messing around like I was you could install both speakers in under and hour. As a side note, I would remember this especially if you are paying a shop to do it.
Once the OEM speaker was out, replacing it was a drop in affair.
After screwing the Quart speaker back into the enclosure I noticed that it didn’t have the same connector as the BMW speaker. (As a side, the Focal speaker like this comes with the same connector as BMW places on their drivers).
The connector on the oem speaker has four wires, one pair coming in from the headunit and another going out to the door speakers, so all the front speakers in our cars are wired in parallel.
The MB Quart only has two spade connectors, despite this MB Quart offered a solution. It’s hard to explain, but basically you stick the two ends of a space connector into the oem harness. Pretty rudimentary and to be honest not what I would have liked to see. So that is strike two for me with the Quarts… for now it will do, but I want to find a better solution and will look into this down the road.
For now I make the connections and tuck the wires up out of the way. I hate electrical tape, but being that this is a temporary install and I do not want either the connections to come loose, or their to be a short I tape the spade connectors into the oem harness and zip tie the whole bunch to the wire look running along the side of the car.
Once that is done I basically reverse all my steps that I did in the first post of this thread. I have my doubts about the MB Quart woofer, but will with-hold any further ideas until I get my amp installed and replaced. For the meantime I am expecting a little less output from it over the oem speaker, but am hoping for maybe a slightly lower playing speaker, if only a little.
For now that is it for my work on the car for this week. I will do some additional research, but I would be curious what other solutions or alternatives others have used over the MB Quart and before mentioned Earthquake and Focal drivers.
What other speakers can be had for a reasonable price and purchased individually. Feel free to offer me feedback, or if you see something I am overlooking please let me know. I plan on tackling the doors next, but it may be a while before I have the time to jump on that aspect of the project. So for now, I’ll leave it here and get back with it as soon as I can….