(excuse the long post...lots to say)

I thought i'd share with everyone my tale of upgrading the audio situation in my '09 MCS. My original intent was to rip out the stock stereo and replace it with a kit and a new flashy LCD model HU. After researching for a while and realizing that while possible, it was going to be a huge PITA I decided to scrap that idea. I then began looking for the best components, sub, amp, etc. to fit in this size car. It's been about 6 years since I had built the system in my truck so I had some research to do. After many hours of reading the posts here I was ready to get started. Here's what I ended up with:

Head Unit: Stock (no hi-fi, no HK)
Amp: Kenwood XR-5s
Line Out converter/signal processor: Apline PXE H660
Front: Focal 165 VRS 6.5" two-way comps
Rear: Focal 690 6x9 Coax
Sub: JL Audio 13TW5-3

Went ahead and placed my order, of course nothing was going to arrive before the weekend so I started in phases. The sub was the first item to arrive so I started with the box. I took a page from tcowden's post here: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...tallation.html and went a similar route for my box. I went with a slightly bigger box since I wasn’t going to need the space for the amps. All in all I ended up with 0.84 cubic feet for the sub.

A couple days later the rest of the shipment came in and even though it was the middle of the week I chose ripping apart the MINI over spending time with my wife or getting work done. First came the door panels. I was dreading this part, but found it pretty easy. I wasn't going to go crazy and take the entire panel off, i was happy just replacing the speakers. After the panel came off and some investigation of my work area I recycled some masonite peg board (that’s right, peg board) I had laying around to create a tweeter housing to fit in the 3.5" speaker hole. The 6.5" woofer fit almost perfectly, nothing the dremel couldn't make quick work of. As for the speaker wire (sigh)...after examining the connector on the body for about 10 minutes I found that I could pull 18 awg speaker wire (two pairs) through the rubber tube and have them feed through the bottom of the hard plastic connector where there was a small amount of space. Front speakers in and wired into the cabin it was on to the rest of the car.

I removed the front passenger seat and as suggested in many posts I decided to pull the entire rear interior out. I found this post extremely helpful: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...48-post41.html. For the inputs to the Alpine PXE-H660 I tapped into the front speaker outs from the x9331 connector and pulled speaker wire to the front passenger seat, going behind the front seats. Under the passenger seat is where i decided to place the h660 (after removing the Styrofoam). From the h660 five RCA cables run back along the right side of the interior to the amp.

Next was pulling power from the battery to the back right c-pillar, final resting place of the amp. For ground I used a grounding block i found by the passenger side 6x9, 4 awg wire was used for both pos and neg. Remote-on for the amp was provided by tapping into the aux power in the left c-pillar. Power and remote-on for the H660 was piggy-backed from the amp; the h660 power wire has a 3 amp fuse in-line.

After everything was said and done it was time to tune the system. I went through the setup instructions that came with the H660 and was able to get decent sound out of the unit. Following the steps found in this posting: http://community.crutchfield.com/for...50/227748.aspx really helped. My biggest issue throughout the tuning process was the lack of bass due to the H660. I was to the point of ripping my hair out trying to figure out why the sub was so low. I picked up a cheap line converter from best buy ($15), tapped into the line inputs on the h660, and connected the sub RCA into that. The result: massive bass! After following the link above, and spending about 6 hours tuning the thing I was able to take the cheap line converter out of the mix and get some good bass.

If I had to do this all over again...

• I would read the numerous posts stating "DO NOT REMOVE EITHER FRONT SEAT AND POWER ON THE CAR" over and over again...
• Do a little more homework on the H660
  • The link posted above (crutchfield forums) helped out a great deal
  • Watch some YouTube vids on tuning the H660 (before heading down that journey)...I have to say that I probably spent 2 hours trying to figure out why the sound sucked...turns out the H660 lowers the volume quite substantially when tuning is complete. If you don't turn the volume on the h660 to max it will sound like your speakers are out of phase and extremely distorted.
• Not drink so much while trying to tune the h660...probably a major contributor to my last point...

Other than that the system has worked out quite well. Here are a few pics, nothing too spectacular.

-alex

ps/ On that airbag light staying on due to my not reading the "DO NOT REMOVE FRONT SEATS..." I found a shop that services MINI (along with many other European cars) about a mile from my house in Redwood City, CA. Frank, the owner, grabbed is diag machine and cleared my error code for no charge. So shout out to Cerrone's European in Redwood City.

ps2/ Lastely, not sure if it was the result of me messing with things, but given the ridiculous amounts of rain in the bay area this week I noticed that the passenger side window was not auto-rolling up when the door was closed. Turns out to be a known issue which I resolved here - Window dipper problem fix: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...647-post4.html

 

...a few pics

 

...and some more of the speaker wire in the doors

 

Merci! Merci! Merci! for the last pics !

 

thanks for the links. it will help me alot with my H660.

i think you should post some pics of that finished product

 

I like the part about wishing you hadn't drank so much tuning the H660. Drinking to excess only helps in casinos. Nice job, I would never try anything like that.