[hyperzulu]

I decided to switch out the stock speakers with aftermarket Jehnert Flatlines, These include two 8" subs, two 4" mids and two 1" tweeters in a 3way component set, with two sets of crossovers.

For the first part, I will go over the process for the subwoofer upgrade.

Tools you will need:
Socket wrench with a 10mm socket (may need this)
T10, T20 and T50 torx keys or bits
Trim removal tool
Pick and hook


Optionally:
Spade clips male and female
Solder

I didn't have all these tools on hand, but I made it work.

Now to begin we need to start by removing the bolts to the front seats. There are four total and they are removed using the T50 torx key. Here is where the key is preferable to a bit, unless you are using it with a drill, as turning these by hand on a screwdriver would require a lot of force. Even so, a key would fit more conveniently.


Tip: for the front bolts, push the seat all the way back and down if you have power seats; for the rears, go forward and up for better clearance.


I opted not to remove the seats from the car and just tilted them back against the rear seat. You will have the sub grill in sight. It is held in place by four torx screws. Use your t20 key to remove them.


Now the sub is exposed.


Before I go any further, note that whatever you do, do not remove the trim piece on the door sill. It is a royal pain in the ass to put back on and you can get by without it. Trust me... I spent 30 minutes reattaching this thing.

Pull the foam carpet trim from around the speaker and from under the door sill trim piece. You will see yet another set of 4 torx screws holding down the sub enclosure.


Remove these with your t10 torx key.

This is optional, as you could replace the sub from here, but I chose to remove the enclosure. If you do not remove the enclosure, go down to the section about removing the sub from the enclosure after removing the white connector from the stock sub. If I were to do it again, I would leave the sub enclosure in place.

Now grab your socket/ratchet and pull back the carpet toward the far end of the enclosure to reveal two bolts you will need to remove.


Before you pull the enclosure, there is a loom of wire running the length of the side of the enclosure and the connector that need to be removed. For the wire loom, use a trim removal tool to pop up the two tie down bits holding it to the enclosure. These are tough to remove as they want to come straight up or not at all.

The connector is toward you and you can use a flathead to push in the pin and pull it out.


Now the more carpet you push away, the easier it will be to remove the enclosure. I found starting from the side with the two large bolts worked best for me.

Once you have enclosure out, you can remove the sub. Use your pick tool and insert it into the outer edges of the sub, curl it underneath and pull up to lift the sub out. You can see the seams along the connector terminal piece, where there is a gray seal strip underneath. Do not pry up the metal part held down by clips, but the edge just outside of that. (You can see the stock sub is 2ohms)



Some pics of the new sub...





The Jehnerts came with a spacer made of acrylic or Lexan which goes into the enclosure first, with the recessed wedge facing down to allow wires to pass underneath which will connect to the speaker leads.


For this install I chose to use the stock connector mated to the new sub spade terminals. The subs use a large and small male spade connector for negative and positive, but the bmw connector has two mini spade female connectors requiring half sized spade male connectors.


I had to mess around with the wiring to get it right. If you look at the stock sub, you can see it has an inverted design, so the polarity is backwards from what I expected. I would recommend wiring up one sub and listening before doing the second. The stock sub will tell you how to wire the replacement. It was pretty obvious I had positive and negative reversed when bass response was weak. I flipped the connections and everything sounded louder.


Anyway, lastly if you removed the enclosure, you will want to pop the white, rubber cushion back onto the enclosure. Pull this off the floor of the car, and clip it to the bottom of the enclosure.


Screw the sub and spacer into place, and wedge the enclosure with the new sub on the floor space where it was pulled from. Clip the connections in and do a listening test before wrapping things up.

[hoppy6698]

Nice write up, thanks much!

[akuan99]

Great post!
I didn't know the stock subs were 2ohm ones.
I thought the Jehnert subs were 4 ohms ones so they must be really efficient as you would have noticed reduced output with the stock amp.

[hyperzulu]

Originally Posted by akuan99

Great post!
I didn't know the stock subs were 2ohm ones.
I thought the Jehnert subs were 4 ohms ones so they must be really efficient as you would have noticed reduced output with the stock amp.

Thanks. Yes, the Jehnert's are 4ohm speakers, and there is indeed a bit of an imbalance at the moment due to this decrease in power (the stock system is already severely underpowered). But since the 4" mids seem to have such a steep roll off at the midbass ranges to protect them, cranking the bass levels only really affects the underseat woofers' output. I just don't crank the volume up any higher than I need to, as there isn't enough power to drive any of the speakers very hard and I don't want them to clip or blow from over driving them.

Eventually I'll have more time to put in the rest of the kit and the sound should even out a bit more. And of course if you really wanted to fix all the sound issues, a separate amp and a proper 10" or larger sub low passed at around 50 hz would be ideal. The Jehnerts can reproduce all the way down to the sub range, but a sub should let you feel 30hz, not just "hear" it. Shallow subs just can't produce the kind of SPL a proper sub can. I can live without bone shattering bass. If you asked me like 5-6 years ago though, it would have been a different story...


Elemental Design Audio 13av.2 - had this in a ported box, tuned to 22hz and running off a 1200w RMS amplifier in a hatch.

Stole the picture though, I would never own those bed sheets.

[akuan99]

Stock subs are underpowered by OEM amp.
Are you planning on replacing OEM amp?
I will be replacing this weekend.
I have my amp from 128i install and I've verified that the Technic's harness adapter fit on this car.
The install should take about 15-30 minutes but the adjustment/tuning could take several hours.
This is 6-channel amp I will be installing.

[hyperzulu]

Yeah, more and more I am leaning toward replacing the oem amp, even though I wasn't sure at first if I would or not. The reality is that the oem amp with its low power and sound tweaks really limit the system. It could be possible to have a decent sounding system with just an aftermarket amp and a small sub in the trunk and a pair of tweeters. I think the biggest issues are lack of sub bass and proper separation of sound in the upper ranges, beside the amp's deficiencies.

I'm not saying the Jehnert subs aren't great. They sound absolutely lovely and play like an SQ sub, but any system in this car will sound like crap with low quality sound coming from the source. It's like playing that game where one person whispers something to another and that person to another and so on. Eventually you have nonsense. Same thing here just in a much shorter chain. You can have perfect source material, brilliant speakers, but a shitty amp will ruin the chain.

I'm leaning towards the Match PP 82DSP.

[akuan99]

Amp with DSP will make tuning/setup really easy.
The only reason I'm staying away from amp with DSP is that it adds delay to the output and likely produce echo sound when using speaker phone.
I spent hours before trying to match midranges and woofers on my 128i setup and this is why I was considering getting one with DSP.
Post Match amp result if you end up installing it.
There is no much audio upgrade on F22 forum posted so I occassionally visit F30 for audio upgrade information since it shares many components.

[hyperzulu]

Will post up with whatever I do. Taking my time to get ideas and figure out what I want. More power and cleaner sound is something I can achieve with almost any aftermarket amp, but not every amp will do whatever I want it to. Like do I want to keep a center channel, how loud do I want to play music, do I need a proper sub? It would be premature for me to do anything without getting all the speakers in and letting them break-in. The Jehnert subs will likely start to play deeper on their own once they've had time to loosen up. Same with the components and then I can evaluate what's next.

[radioflyer]

Did you have the Harman Kardon to begin with? Not sure if you get subs with the base option.

[hyperzulu]

Originally Posted by radioflyer

Did you have the Harman Kardon to begin with? Not sure if you get subs with the base option.

Just the base. It brings a center speaker, two door speakers, two underseat subs, and two rear shelf speakers for a total of seven speakers. The hk upgrade adds tweeters to each speaker beside the subs.

[mikeyymonster]

I decided to take a peek under my passenger seat the other day and noticed there was rusting on my sub grill. Is that normal??

[hyperzulu]

Originally Posted by Lazee 1

I decided to take a peek under my passenger seat the other day and noticed there was rusting on my sub grill. Is that normal??

No. Is it on the outer part or the inner part where the holes are? Outer part is plastic, so no chance of it rusting. I believe inner part is metal, but it's painted, so not sure how it would rust either, since it would require scraping the grill to remove paint and then getting liquid on there.

[hoppy6698]

OP - got a hyperlink to where one could purchase this kit? I cannot seem to locate it.

[hyperzulu]

Don Amann
mypearltpi@aol.com
2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 Top 100 Installers list
Unexpected Creations
2010, 2011, 2012 Top 50 Retailers list
eXquisite Marketing
Phone: 732-572-1969
Fax: 732-572-5508
Mobile: 732-921-9046

He's an authorized distributor.

[aweedman]

Did the Lexan spacer come with the subs? Are they these:

http://www.jehnert.de/en/shop/speake...t-housing-bmw/

Just checking to see if I order the XE 200R that they'll fit my M2?

Originally Posted by hyperzulu

The Jehnerts came with a spacer made of acrylic or Lexan which goes into the enclosure first, with the recessed wedge facing down to allow wires to pass underneath which will connect to the speaker leads.

[hyperzulu]

Originally Posted by aweedman

Did the Lexan spacer come with the subs? Are they these:

http://www.jehnert.de/en/shop/speake...t-housing-bmw/

Just checking to see if I order the XE 200R that they'll fit my M2?

Those are the ones.

[Curamrda]

did you remove the oem enclosure of sub and used only the acryl adapter ??

thx

[hyperzulu]

Originally Posted by Curamrda

did you remove the oem enclosure of sub and used only the acryl adapter ??

thx

I used both. The lexan piece is a spacer.