E30 Zone

Over the last few weeks I’ve been gathering bits of kit for my ICE install, I want to go for a quality sound rather than irritating the neighbours with boomy rattling bass. So far I’ve got the following:

- Nakamichi CD500 headunit (24bit DAC, MP3, WMA playback, 4V preout)
- Phoenix Gold Tantrum 600.4 Amp (4 channel)
- DLS 5.25”a Components (front install)
- JL Audio 12”a W3V2 Sub (In sealed enclosure)

I want to keep the install simple but hopefully when all rigged up should sound good, fingers crossed.

Anyway, so far what has been eating my time up was fabricating the front door speaker builds for my DLS components. I decided on taking the plunge on making these as I and probably a lot of you out there think that the original front speaker locations in the footwell aren’t the best. Anyway heres a pictorial of my attempt at making the builds.

Started out by marking out the back panel of the build with the door pocket:-



Then placed the arm rest on the MDF to workout the position for the outer layer of the build:-



Next I cut a piece of MDF for the speakers to be mounted to, and then mounted the outer panel and speaker baffle with pieces of wooden dowel rods:-



After the glue has dried I then cut up an old tee shirt and stretched it over the whole build and staple gunned the material at the back:-



The next thing to do was to apply Fibre Glass resin to the material, applied about 3 layers,( try not to get high of this stuff, wooooohoooooo):-



The hardest part was stretching the vinyl over the build, it took a good couple of hours per build to get the damn stuff smooth and wrinkle free, and a lot of heat and brute force and copious amounts of F-ing and blinding. Anyway heres the finished article, I may have to go over them again to get the dreaded wrinkles out though :-






I’m relatively happy with how they’ve turned out considering its been my first attempt, I’m sure I’ll do better next time. There is one thing that is bugging me though and that the orientation of the badge on the speaker grill, not sure whether to have it in line with the tweeter or to have it on the vertical axis.

Anyway thank god they're finished, was getting kinda sick of the smell of resin and glue.

nice job fella

loving the oxblood leather too

Top man, you make look so easy, i tried this last year some time, but only manged to get one done, dont have the patience for that kind of stuff.

But with my ones, i tried to keep the pocket space that the original bmw ones have, so i can put stuff in there, that proabably why i gave up.

If you ever do try doing them like that let me know, might be interested too..


but good job

how much to make another set??

they look awsome, good work

cheers for the comments chaps. I must admit it was worth the aggro, just eager to know what they sound like as I havent connected them up yet as I need to plum in the amp.

Shakeele30, I was toying with the idea accomodating a cubby hole like the original door pocket but thought against it as this would reduce the internal volume for the speaker therefore affecting the sound.

Cliffybabe, if in future I have the motivation to make a another pair I'll let you know

They look good mate!!! Nice work!!!!!!!

Should sound good too - nakamichi, dls, JL - my favourites!!!!!!!! That's what i'll be using when mine goes in next year!!!

Just wired them up last night and they sound spot on, punchy and good stereo imaging. Had them hooked up to my Phoenix gold amp, really chuffed at the results.

Awesome work, if you go on to make some more then let me know

ImysE30 wrote:Awesome work, if you go on to make some more then let me know

sure thing mate.

for a frist go that looks really good if the vinyl was the same as the bmw one then it will look like it was there when it rolled out.

i'd like some of these as well,so theres 3 sets,,,hope you can be bothered one day
to do the work again let us know if you will...