Neal

Been looking into the subwoofer aspects of the build. F80 doesn’t have ski pass system of e46 or e90 but the back of the seats aren’t solid metal backed like the old car. Keen to reuse the old Boston Acoustics SPG555 and looked into a false boot floor build. Whilst the underfloor area has enough volume it’s not deep enough for the spg555. False floor would need to sit 15 cm above current level. Tried the old box from the e46 and it fits quite in the f80. Will modify the old box a bit as speaker face the rear seats. Deep is ok as I’d still be able to use under boot floor storage area if needed.

It’s the first version with showa. Engine spec is close to 748RS with quite a bit of corse internals. These also run titanium conrods amongst other goodies 😀

Project is a Mk1 classic mini that was a circuit car in the 70s -90s. The idea was to convert to road based Motorsport and my take on a 60s classic racer. Power wise it has a 1275cc a series engine with a turbo and race gearbox / lsd. I got caught with re-vin process before getting everything certed for road legal use. Bike is a 2001 Ducati 748r which previous owner built it for track racing. I brought it after 3 races / 200 km and put road bits back on. It was mainly used for leisure riding, but also speed trials and hill climb competitions. Has an amazing sound and quite a bit of power for a 750cc Ltwin.

Thanks for the post but I did trade the e46 m3. My choice was basically around the space and also around what vehicles I keep and also the m3 is used as a daily. I did start the list of things that you’d do to a e46 with 180,000 and had just had all the stone chips and bumpers done to bring paint back to a high standard. Car had been BMW serviced since I brought it at 48,000 km and did anything that came during that time. Ironically car had recent set of PS4S and I’d also done front rotors. Would have meant moving on a limited addition motorcycle and a project that’s on my bucket list to finish. I had a health scare earlier this year that’s made me determined to do certain things. Riding again is one of them and the bike brings a level of enjoyment that I don’t get driving.

Door trims arrived today. Been looking into more details for front door components. Looks like enough room to mount crossovers within door card which is promising. Also looking at active speaker options. Looks like F series only run one set of speaker connections to door, but it looks like there is a spare socket available on the front doors to put in two quad lock sockets and pins in. So if I run another set of speaker wires from boot location to doors I would have the option of running active front speakers. Ironically the quad lock connectors / sockets will only run .75 mm cable which at 4 meters gets a bit marginal at 60 watt RMS at 4 ohms. I’m debating this in my mind as there is also an area in the door connector that a speaker wire could run through. Front door speakers would will either be 3 or 4 ohm 100mm components rated at at least 60 rms. Compared with e46/ e39 / 38 BMWs which are wired for active 3 way speaker cables and have a decent mid bass speaker wire gauge the F80 wiring is quite underwhelming.

14 e46 M3s on trademe at the moment. Must be some kind of record

Yes , one of these need to be tapped into the top bus wire white with yellow from memory. Also needs 12 volt and ground. A person in bimmersport wrote a program to read the ibus and do some basic programming about 10 plus years back “search “jochen ibus” I think there are also some more recent programs also 0n gethub. https://shop.ibus-app.de/en/ Edit nav coder http://www.navcoder.com/

Have a read from page 18 on the I/K bus for a further understanding http://www.e38.org/bussystem.pdf

The cd changer power connector also has ibus wire. The audio system can keep the car from going to sleep , but it’s normally via telephone module thinking a phone call in in progress which in turn keeps the tuner module running. Tuner module controls the power on / off signal to both the amp and aerial amplifier. If your car has a telephone in the armrest type disconnecting the cables to it under the arm rest. However, if you’ve disconnected the tuner module and amp I doubt this will be causing the ibus bus to stay awake,

Wasn’t the 4.6 developed by Alpina for BMW ? Great looking x5 , looks good in that colour

Ordered a couple of parts to get the ball rolling. Front stage will be 3 way speakers to replace the current 160mm ish woofer and 100mm mid speakers. Will probably go two way rear component speakers or higher end coax style for Spotify DJ daughter that sites in the back. Front Tweeter mounts in A pillars ( F30 / F80 Harmon Kardon window trim ) to make mounting front tweeters easier and look factory post install. Part no 51337323509 51337323510 Iphone 6 Snap in adaptor / cradle ( new ones being sold cheap on ebay at the moment as at 9/2022 )) for Iphone / USB / Charging / Connected APPS. I think I'll need to mod the plastic for later Iphones to fit On the list for future purchase F30 / F80 Harmon Kardon black mid bass speaker covers for front and rear doors appear to be acoustically more open that Base or Hifi speaker covers ) F30 / F80 Harmon Kardon rear door Tweeter covers and mounts F30 / F80 under seat Logic 7 or HK woofer enclosures to drop new 200 mm bass units. This will replace the current base audio 160mm bass speakers.

It’s a hard comparison at this stage as owned and drove the e46 m3 about 130,000 km / 11 years verse 2000 km so far on the f80. The e46 felt so connected to the driver and the road. Ergonomics are great and s54 is such a great sounding engine and a nice level of progressive power. However, the F80 is more modern and I do need a 4 door these days. Power wise my M3 was around the 180kw at the wheels mark verse somewhere between 310 -330. There is a massive difference and it’s easy to have the back brake traction off the throttle.The f80 is a very stiff car to the point where I do have trouble with wheelspin coming out of my driveway. Ive had time do a 3 point turn and reverse up a couple of times. What I do like is 3 settings for suspension, engine and steering weight and having two steering wheel buttons with saved settings, M1 commute, M2 … smile 😊 Still getting used to it and trying to stop those e46 things you do but looking forward to a track drivers day to explore my new limits. I didn’t keep the e46 as budget wise I’d made a refresh list that was similar to the cost difference of the F80 and I’m guilty of have a couple of other vehicles that just don’t get used ( or finished )

Home home systems aren’t exactly reference systems but aren’t bad either lounge Kenwood kd650 turntable, SME 3009 tone arm. NZ made Mclaren 603 /703 pre and power amp, Marantz sacd player , squeezebox with Sabre ESS 6018 dac. Wharfedale Mach 9s TV yamaha A2a , wharfedale crs9 x 4 Mach 5 centre. uhd bluray and android tv. garage kickarse old school 100w Yamaha receiver with Wharfedale Mach 7s. marantz 67se CD player. iPhone dac. The e46 was a good challenge and mine had the active 10 speaker hifi system. Good on paper but easily out done by any mid range aftermarket systems of the time in my humble opinion. Spent the best part of three years doing improvements, some where unnecessary such as getting 14 gauge speaker cable to the front doors, ( e46 mid bass wire is quite a good size already) Others such as digital audio source straight to a dsp had the largest gains in uplift , zero system noise at full volume and only one stage of digital to analogue conversion. Ended up transforming the sound from the e46. More toward true hifi but also with a significant amounts of volume on tap over basic system. I laughed when I put the stock system back in before trading it. The difference was so marked and underwhelming. But in hindsight there is a shorter path to uplifting e46s. Will take the learnings and apply to the f80 and not sweat the smaller stuff that I did before.

So with the base audio the car has a total of 6 speakers . Each door has one 100 mm driver so four in total. These run full range so do treble as well. No dedicated tweeters in this system ☹️ Under seat woofers on base audio have a smaller 6.5 inch woofer. Amp wise the NTB head unit connects to a box called Active Sound Design. This has a 4 channel amplifier and also has a synthetic car engine sound that is mixed with the audio. The sound curve is Bose esk so it has boosted treble and bass. Sound lacks clarity, highs are missing and bass is centred around kick drum. However, either the door position it does image quite well. The NTB Ida head unit seems quite versatile. It can be coded for various audio setups with a combination of both analogue two wire 4 channel output to most25 fibre optic based multi channel audio as used in the HK logic 7 systems. The key for me will be finding a coded version that produces a flat unequalised output but still does things like audio steering the sound for parking sensors and the other systems in the bmw that have an audio input. Audio input wish I’ll be using usb audio inputs so 256 gig thumb drive with 8000 ish lossless tracks and phone via snap in adapter which is also usb audio. It has other sources such as dvd / cd and enhanced Bluetooth. Although enhanced Bluetooth really means it’s just the basic audio streaming protocol and none of the later aptx or apple atmos / lossless enabled standards.

Have recently changed my e46 m3 for an F80 so are inspired to do another audio build. My previous system evolved over a 5 year period was raspberry pi based and was controlled by the bmw Nav head unit. Had dsp and 2 x components speakers front and back and a ski pass vented subwoofer. Audio was digital to dsp and music was mainly from lossless Flac cd rips. Amps were 110 rms x 4 class AB and 600 rms class D on bass. System was tuned to run up to 80% of amplifier power to avoid clipping. For a car audio system it sounded quite good. Move forward 14 years in tech the F80 is far better in terms of taking most forms of usb / Bluetooth/ DVD audio sources. This one has NTB id4 which is the last of the text based menu system and the build is 6 months too early to get the newer gui interface and CarPlay/ Android auto software. The F80 I have has been imported so spec is interesting. Has connected bmw modules, can self park , lane control etc but has only the base audio system for some reason. But from my point of view it’s ideal for an audio upgrade as not too many speakers to replace. This thread will be about uplifting the audio system to above HK level. Pic courtesy of Pete

Grab another Bluetooth enabled device such as a laptop or tablet and see if it can see the Bluetooth broadcast from the bmw is happening first and see if you can pair with it. I’m not familiar with the combo box so not sure if it has a ccc menu item or a mechanical pairing button. Earlier bmw Bluetooth units had a pairing button and a limited window during ignition on to pair the phone.

Ironically I sit 3 meters away from @Ooonst during the day, small world this community 😀

So many people talk themselves out of owning M cars. E46 bearings / smg / subframes , e90 bearings , e60 bearings , f80 crank hub etc etc. Plenty of perceived reasons as to why not to. From personal experience you’ve got to do it. And your choice is such a stonking car . Do it before you regret and wonder what it might have been like.

Alto / nilfisk. Just rubbish. The plastic Pressure valve is the first thing to go. Brought an upper model end and it failed within 2 months. Second pressure valve failed a couple of years later with little use.3rd one was the final straw . $170 per unit to have them replaced if you can get the parts. Dealing with the distributor wasn’t great. They were in denial that there was a problem with them. They will come back and say they are for only a low duty cycle appliance. With Altos they will last longer is you don’t leave them stopped whilst under pressure and when used turn the unit off but flush them with cold cycle from the tap by holding the spray trigger open. Got a few years out of it that way but you can tell when they are about to go as they will vibrate more then usual when they are about to fail. Have gone karcher and haven’t looked back.

Wellington governed by same rules and proxy votes can be made by members. I must say that Pete has done a great job of resurrecting the Wellington club with plenty of events and club meets. Always enjoy meeting other members and bimmersporters and talking about BMWs. Personally need to make more time to enjoy these things as life allows. edit, also saved more than the membership fee through dealer parts discounts when having my old e46 m3 serviced and maintained. Almost $200 in discounts just only rotors and pads in the last year 😀

The build date is important with the systems from 2001. I think the x5 / e38 / e39 & E46 gained the aux function either late 2002 or 2003. I don’t think yours is late enough to have the aux function. Hoverever , if you not fused with running cd stacker there are plug in units that replace the cd stacker and give you a combo of Bluetooth and analog/ aux type functionality.

If anyone is interested I’d brought a set of the alarm modules , ( tilt sensor , cabin ultrasound , under bonnet siren , under bonnet switch ) which are second hand. Also have the headlining brackets and a brand new black Motorsport / m3 sensor cover which I managed to find and import. Was going to install these and add wiring when my health was up to it ( needs custom wiring loom unless car is pre-wire for alarm / DWA.) Have copy of the BMW E46 DWA install and system brief pdf. Have since traded my e46 m3. Will advertise them soon unless anyone is interested. .

This is my understanding so far so would pay to check. I have a similar dilemma where I have a Mk1 Mini RCIS that has a full MANZ complaint cage. I want to use that car for street based Motorsport and the odd Sunday drive. I need to get the car through all the Cert regs and club sport regs to do both. From what I can work out I need to take a gas axe to the current cage, import an fia compliant bolt in cage but weld in the rear set , and feet for the nz regs. But before I do so I’ll check in with MANZ and a certifier to see if this sounds possible.

Full cage means Motorsport authority card and car can only be used for Motorsport events. But you all the protection needed offered by a full cage such as door bars and frontal protection. Half cage means removing back set and certing car as front passenger only use. But you can use car regularly such as Sunday drives. Down side it less protection. Were it gets unclear is if you have a welded in rear section and bolt in front that attaches to welded in front anchor points. Some suggestion that this is a could be a good compromise between dedicated Motorsport car verse something that can also be used on the road. Bolt in front obviously not as strong as welded in

What brand of apple car play mmi did you use ? Edit radtop ? Thinking of doing the same thing. And base audio upgrade.