E36 Door Card Speaker Replacement - Part 1 - Getting stuff out, speaker mounting

97 E36 4-Door w/o Door Card Airbags

Before reading please note:

• If you don't want to grind/cut the stock tweeter and mid-range speaker holders don't read further.
• The tweeter supplied in this kit(TS-D1320C) is much larger than the stock unit. It will have to be ground down to accommodate the stock tweeter holder.

Stock Speaker OHM ratings:
tweeters: 4 ohm
mid-ranges: 8 ohm
kick panel "bass" speakers: 4 ohm

On our quest for a better sounding E36 stereo system, Jeremy and I finally made a decision on some speakers. Given my past experience with Pioneer we choose this component set:

   TS-D1320C

  We went with mid-ranges from a thread post.

Vifa Mid ranges.

E36 Door Card Removal

  Removal requires a little bit of patience and care but, nothing too extensive. We have a set of plastic panel "pullers" between us. There is a small crow bar in the set which made getting the panels off simple. Note: This pertains to a four door without door panel airbags.

First up are the two screws behind the door handle.

 There are plastic clips glued/clipped in.

 I used a very small flat head screw driver to pry them out.

   The two screws are torx. Sizing.

The one towards the latch side of the door is the shorter one.

The door handle surround also has to be removed. It slides towards the hinge side of the door for removal. Notice the "teeth" on the surround. 

 There are 10 clips on each front door card. There is no airbag on the door for this year. I'm not sure if there is an extra screw behind the airbag symbol on the 98/99s that have the door airbags.

The tweeter and mid-range are secured to the door with screw on sandwich style plates. Its a really cool way of doing it in my opinion. Here is a shot of all the stock speakers removed. 

E36 Kick panel mid/bass speaker replacement. - Easy Street

Removing the lower kick panels consists of a plastic twist lock on the front side. On the driver side the twist lock is behind the hood latch. Don't miss that and break it off like we did. Once they come off you will see the 5.25in stock bass speaker. It is surrounded by what I call rat carpeting. This serves as sound deadening.

Notice that spade terminals on these pioneers are designed just like the stock connectors. No wire splicing required here.

Four screws hold them in. Easy stuff.

Please note that these sound no different than the stock speakers when driven by the stock amplifier. You may notice a slight improvement if your speakers are blown.




E36 Midrange speaker replacement - Stock holder modification.

The vifas fit almost perfectly in the stock mid-range holder. There was a raised plastic guide on the inside of the holder. I needed to shave that down.

I also removed the stock bottom plastic. I don't need that impeding our mid-range sounds. These are a slightly larger diameter than the stock units. A "perfect" fit. Just a little hot glue to keep them tight and cozy.

E36 Tweeter install - Not exactly an easy job with these pioneer tweeters

The tweets that come with the Pioneer components are large. Much larger than the stock units. They are a soft dome design which is what I was looking for. BMW originally out soft dome tweets in the car for a reason. Having a larger tweeter makes for a broader range of capability as well. 

In terms of install I struggled because the tweeter will fit the stock door card opening just fine. It can be secured with the clamps that come with it. HOWEVER, the pioneer is not the same size as the stock tweeter housing. Leaving an ugly indentation from where the old one was originally. Not cool. 

 I also thought about hot gluing the face of the Pioneer tweeter to the back of the stock housing. There is room for this but, i was nervous about them falling off eventually. The only other option was to make these fit in the stock housing. This was an intense moment for me. Grinding/cutting in to a brand new tweeter meant i might ruin it. I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS METHOD for the faint of heart.

  Ground out the stock inserts. After shaving the stock tweeter housing they fit "perfectly." 

Much larger than the stock tweeter. You can just see the outline behind the grill. That was that. Next up was to mount the speakers in the door card and wire up everything.