Bmw E39 Amplifier Install
Bmw E39 540i
Bmw E39 Amplifier Installation
Bmw E39 For Sale

This will be a long post, but I hope it is useful to those who are contemplating upgrading their e39s as I have. As many of you will know, the sound is woeful in the normal 5 and pretty well everyone who has noticed has taken steps to improve the sound. Most replace the speakers, many replace the head unit and some go completely to town and rebuild the interior of the car, building subs, speaker pods and so on.

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I've taken the middle ground. I've changed the the head unit and upgraded the speakers (and will detail this in a separate blog) but I've now added an amplifier and a sub with absolutely minimal change to the car yet the change to the sound is simply stunning.
How have I done it? That's easier than I thought it would be. Speakers and head unit are an easy first step, although I never got the steering wheel controls to work. Doors came apart without fuss, the seats come out simply and the whole speaker upgrade took no more than an afternoon to complete. Well worth it. Head unit was again simple, although it was a royal PITA to get the 40-pin adapter cable back into the cavity behind the head unit!!
Recently I decided (after listening to my son's Crystals and W7) that maybe an amplifier and sub would help my sound - giving it new depth and weight. However, nice though the W7 sounds, it is a bit big in my son's Clio and would even swamp the 5's boot:
What to get and where to put it?
Having decided I wanted a sub though the next question is: where to put it? Here opinion varies, but the options are:

Up under the parcel shelf (as per the M5 sub box that is available) - sounds good, but takes up too much depth.
Up against the seat, firing towards the trunk opening - ok, but takes up boot space and I have folding seats too
In the corner over the battery is good - the whole boot space helps the sub breathe
In the cabin under the seat(s) - not good as the sub(s) will not move enough air and it is harder to run the cables in

I also wanted something that would live in the car and would NOT take up boot space, as we use the car for holidays etc. and need the boot space (you would not believe what SWMBO needs when she goes on holiday! :roll: ) Therefore the sub had to:

Fit in the battery cover cubby
Be removeable completely (I've still got to be able to get to the bulbs, for example)
Be wired into the head unit
Not interfere with the boot space
Be protected against damage from luggage moving about in the boot

Not too tall an order, but the size of the battery cover meant that only an eight inch or a ten inch would fit. I thought about a Basslink and I know that they do fit, but the passive radiator at the back would lose out to the side of the car and would be kinda wasted where I wanted to site the unit so that ruled that out. An infinite baffle sub would suit the area just fine however, and if I can integrate an amp too that would be just great. I did think about building an enclosure as others have done and may still do so in the future, but for speed and to see if it was worth it, I opted for the simple option of buying a powered sub instead.
So I looked at what was available in the line of powered subs, compiled a spreadsheet and bought me a Vibe SQ8 EVO8 Active from Car Audio Security in West London having measured up the space above the battery. It's an 8' amplified enclosure measuring 265mm x 315mm x 180mm

Fitting the sub
OK, so on to fitting. Taking the battery cover off shows that there is a fair amount of room there and that the area above the battery has a flat panel that would help stabilise any platform I needed. Also, I ordered a spare battery cover from a breakers so I could cut it to fit round the sub. That cost me £15 plus delivery from one of the BMW dismantlers.
One little note. Get one of these - or a plastic equivalent. It beats the socks off using a screwdriver and gouge marks/bloody fingers when removing the panels inside the car...
So one starts with a piece of MDF and cut it to fit with a jigsaw and sanding tools. It's easier to do this than to measure-and-cut (and I am from the measure-twice-and-cut-one school too!)
Then I fashioned two metal brackets that mount on the battery clamp bolts to secure the platform (these came from the rack mounting bracket of an old D-LINK switch, drilled out, filed and bent to fit)
Wiring next. I'll discuss the power wiring here as that is the simplest to do. Running the audio cables I'll discuss below. Earth wire was added here:
Obviously 12Volts was taken from here (but don't forget to take the fuse out of the wiring kit inline holder before you do ANY connections to the battery!!
These can be attached to the rear of the sub as shown here
Running the cables
It's on to the audio wiring next and for this we need to start in the cabin of the car. Remember that the power wiring runs down the right side of the car so we will be running the audio wiring down the left (passenger) side of the car. To prepare for this you'll need to think through the cables you need to get the signals from the front of the car to the back. I worked out that I needed two 5m lengths of coaxial interconnect (left and right front to the amplifier, left and right rear to the sub, remote to both amp and sub, and of course the two runs of speaker wire back to the head unit for the front speakers. Also, look hard at what you need to get from your head unit. My Becker came with the four RCA outputs. All I had to do was present them ready for the RCA interconnects.
First we need the rear seat and seat side cushions out (this pulls up from the front and two small bolts undone by the doors frees the cushions):
Then remove the kick plates (the quarter-round carpet-coloured plastic pieces along each door sill) from both doors (pull upwards, but you can split them, so be careful).

Then remove the B-pillar by pulling/levering carefully out at the bottom, freeing the three poppers. Then slide the pillar down to release the tab at the top

Also, the kick plate in the passenger footwell under the glove compartment needs to come out (it sort of comes down from the dash and slides towards you to release it).
You should now be in a position to run in the cables you need from the head unit to the rear of the car. Start by marking one of the speaker cables at both ends. Make this the RIGHT speaker pair. (I used a small length of tubing, but insulation tape or even a small elastic band would do just as well.) With patience, I got all the cables fitted by starting in the passenger footwell. Feed up the head unit end of each connection and bring them out through the opening ready to connect to the head unit.
Now, bring the cables across the footwell routing them so that they will not foul the footwell kick-plate when that is refitted, then tuck the cables under the carpet on the left of the footwell down to the door floor.
There is a channel into which cables can be slotted with tabs across to hold them in place. It's a pain to fit as the carpet is a tight fit and the tabs are not finger friendly, but persevere and all will be well.
This channel runs to the back seat and is *just* big enough to hold the cables. At the back seat, bring the cables up and across where the back seat fits.
Now the nice feature about the 5er - there's a hole through the bulkhead through which you can run the cables. (the sub cable was just too short - more about that in a moment)

Installing the Amp
So now we're in the boot. The amp I fitted is an Alpine V-Power 90W 2-channel amp that my son had in his car. A good, basic amp which with the addition of two simple brackets fitted easily and simply behind the CD-Changer on the left of the boot. Perfect!
This needed powering from the battery too, and for this I took the rear skin off the inside of the boot and ran the +12V and a remote cable in as you can see here (aga

2021.09