So my buddy and I decided to dig in to my girlfriend's r56 this weekend.

Hers came with the rather pathetic base system, and it was about time for an upgrade.

We installed a set of Infiniti Kappa Perfect 6.5" separates in the front doors, and powered them and an older 12" Cerwin Vega subwoofer off of an MTX amp my girlfriend had in her last two cars. The CV sub will be replaced with a nice false floor box somewhere down the line, and the MTX will be upgraded as well. I figured it'd be best that we start with what we had and upgrade as time and funds allow.

We started out by devirginizing the carpet under the passenger seat. There's a TON of space in there, after you remove the styrofoam piece. We were actually going to mount the crossovers down there as well, but we didn't want to run two sets of wires into the doors. Here's a pic with the amp shoved as far back against the frame rail as it will go. You can even run power wires on the outside of the car to the amp, as the factory wiring loom (you can see it coming out of the carpet on the bottom right corner) will keep the connectors from shorting on the body of the car. (I'd still recommend mounting it securely, regardless)



I ended up ripping out the bracket that's in here, and filling the holes from the spot weld with some 3M Strip Calk. That should keep any moisture out. That's what the black blob is there on the floor. If I get around to it one of these days (years), I'll just tack a weld in there and re-do the undercoating.



My buddy Justin suggested one of my favorite parts of the install - mounting the crossovers in the door handle. If you cut the board down a tad, it fits nice and snug in there without rattling.



We ran the new cabling through the factory connector. the top of the plug was unused (no wiring run through), so I dremeled out the space, with a slot on the side to slide the wires into. After reconnection, you can't even see anything was done to it. Here's a pic in the process (don't worry, I cleaned it up quite a bit):



Door speaks all mounted up. I forgot to pick up some ABS, so we cut some mounting "plates" for the tweeter out of cardboard, and spraypainted it textured flat black. With the pod back in place, it looks stock. 6.5" woofers fit with zero modification. I'm going to replace the cardboard with something more permanent as soon as I get a chance.

The bundle of wires right above the woofer is where we cut off the factory woofer connection to tap in for a signal line (more on THAT later - do *not* copy us).



The fronts are run off the front channel of the amp, and the rear channel is bridged for the sub. It sounds GREAT when fed directly off of RCA's from an outside source (iPod, etc), but the signal lines we tapped for the line-level input sounds like complete @55hole. There's a great deal of whine/hum/noise coming through the line, and apparently there's some sort of voltage coming through, as the amp will power itself on as soon as the line-level connector is plugged in (the amp has built in inputs for line-level).

So I'm stuck trying to find another source to feed the amp. I think I'm going to go ahead and remove the HU next to pull from the back of the head unit. Is the signal there clean enough to use, or do most people end up using cleansweep etc on the outputs?

Big thanks to Justin for the help, and kudos to my girlfriend (Ambrosia) for helping and not looking on in complete horror as we cut, hammered, poked, and prodded her poor little car.

 

yep, this is my car they are tearing apart....however it sounds great but it is not yet perfect due to the interference and whine.

I'll ask again so it is a bit more clear: is there a source for a clean signal that anyone has used with success?

 

woot! we fixed everything today by installing a $25 line level converter and it sounds great!