Alpine e30 progress/build thread
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159k
It been below freezing and snowed once already here so I guess it's time to fold the mirrors until spring.
I had a pretty much trouble free year with the only problems that popped up being the battery going dead fairly quickly and a fuel leak at the fuel pressure regulator a few weeks ago. The leak stopped by just tightening the fitting, but I'll probably take it apart to re-seal properly before next season. I also swapped out the primered front lip for a cheap black one from ebay (you're welcome @straight6pwr). I'll admit it looks a heck of a lot better, though someday if/when I paint the car I will color match the primed one.
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oh thank god! best holiday gift I could have gotten.
Dan
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159.5k
Finally got this car out for the summer last weekend and took a nice drive through the Holy Hill area. While enjoying my cruise I was reminded of how much I hate the current state of the audio system in this car. At some point prior to my ownership it had an Alpine head unit and some Sony rear speakers installed by a Best Buy. While the individual parts weren't necessarily bad, the install was clearly terrible because random speakers would come and go any time you hit a bump. Sometimes you'd have all 4, sometimes it would switch left and right, if you got really unlucky you'd have seemingly nothing till the next expansion gap. I had enough and ordered the Continental head unit to start rebuilding the stereo into something workable.
Getting the old Alpine head unit out without the special tools was a little frustrating but I eventually succeeded with a pair of feeler gauges down each side in just the right spot. With the head unit out I found this messy pile of crap behind it:
The picture doesn't really capture it well but there were quite a few cut/loose wires, some random spliced in connectors that served no purpose, what looked to be an old ipod connection that was only half-way cut out, and a lot of electrical tape and crimp connectors. Since the factory connectors were long gone I just cut back everything until I was left with as much of the factory wiring that I could save. My car has the base 4-channel system with no amp so I soldered in the new head unit connectors using this diagram:
New head unit installed and working! Looks so much better than the old one and having bluetooth audio (once I figured out how to get it working) is a great upgrade.
The annoying news was that I only had sound from 3 of the 4 speakers. The driver's rear wasn't doing anything, so I pulled out the speaker and found what was probably real source of my problems:
It pulled out just like this, the connector had fallen right off with zero resistance. In fact, all of the connectors on both rear speakers were loose like that. I tightened up the connectors with a pliers and reattached them and what do you know, I have all 4 speakers working now! I'm not sure why it took me so long to dig into this but I'm pumped that it's working properly again.
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159.6k
Well, that lasted long. New head unit is awesome but I did exactly what I always do and jumped head first down the rabbit hole. I've decided to go for a total rework of the stereo system to try and get some good sound volume/quality while remaining as stealth and original looking as possible. I'm not going for trim rattling bass or audiophile sound quality, just something enjoyable while cruising around.
First project is a temporary solution until I figure out the rear speakers. When I pulled the existing speakers out last time I noticed that the speaker surround was being crushed by the factory speaker grille and probably preventing it from moving freely (you can see the wrinkles in the picture in my last post). I designed and printed some 5mm spacers that go between the speaker and grille to give it the appropriate clearance. I printed them in ASA to get some good heat and UV resistance.
Reassembled and you'd never know its there, fits the grille profile perfectly.
With that done I moved on to an amplifier. The biggest issue with the Continental head unit is that it has no RCA output or signal wire ouput for an amp. Fortunately, there are amplifiers that can work off "high level inputs", which is a fancy way of saying the speaker outputs from the head unit. I came across this Sony XMS400D amp that is intended to integrate with factory stereo systems and can work with high level inputs. To get around not having an amp signal wire, it can sense incoming audio signals and turn on automatically.
The only things remaining from the ABS system is the wiring and the computer. Turns out, the amp is smaller than the ABS computer and can be made to fit perfectly into it's mount! I whipped up a piece of aluminum flat stock to adapt the amp mounting tabs to the ABS computer mounts. Worked perfectly!
Had to basically cut out 90% of the wiring I just did with the head unit to integrate the amp but in doing that I was also able to sort out a mistake I had made. I had the constant 12v and switched 12v sources swapped, the head unit worked fine but wouldn't save the time/some settings. The amp basically just splices into the speaker wiring and has a few extra inputs for power/ground and a switched ignition source. It comes with ~40" of wire on each harness which is more than enough, I only needed to lengthen the 12v power wire to get over to the passenger side and through the firewall to reach the positive battery terminal. I also did twisted pairs on each of the speaker channels to help combat any noise. This is how the factory speaker wiring is done so I figured it wouldn't hurt. The only problem I ran into is that I broke the locking tab on one of the connectors which was annoying, but a few zip ties later it shouldn't be able to work itself out. Mounted the amp, routed/wrapped the wire harnesses in tesa tape like factory, and it's ready to go! I'm stoked that it will be totally hidden. I still need to gut the ABS wiring, but for now it's zip tied out of the way with the unplugged airbag module wiring lol.
The continental head unit can put out about 25W RMS per channel, which is actually pretty decent for a head unit, but this amp can do 45W RMS on each channel (with 100W peak), so nearly double the output. Even with the old 5.25" coaxial speakers in the car the sound is very noticeably improved. Much clearer/louder at the same volume number, and definitely has a bit more bass. Really happy with the improvement so far... speakers are next.
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Looking great! Sort of off topic, but what enclosure do you have for your 3d printer?
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Looking great! Sort of off topic, but what enclosure do you have for your 3d printer?
Thanks! My enclosure turned into quite the project haha. It is based off the Prusa Ikea Lack V2 design (https://blog.prusa3d.com/mmu2s-printer-enclosure_30215/) so that I could order precut plexiglass, but I redesigned basically the entire thing. I changed the frame parts so that the entire top box can be removed, the wire passthrough for the power supply are a two piece threaded part that is a lot cleaner, added some features so I could lock down the top (makes it a lot easier to lift off the enclosure), and made some filler strips that seal off the perimiters of the plexiglass and top/bottom of the doors. I also did a filament spool holder and feed inside the enclosure instead of on top to keep dust off the filament. Next improvements are an internal light and possibly a filtered exhaust fan.
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Awesome! I'm in the process of making an enclosure from ikea lack tables for my maker select V2. I need to be able to print with ABS and ASA pronto! Lol. Can I ask where you got your plexiglass from?
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Awesome! I'm in the process of making an enclosure from ikea lack tables for my maker select V2. I need to be able to print with ABS and ASA pronto! Lol. Can I ask where you got your plexiglass from?
Nice! Those Lack tables are pretty great for like $12 haha. I ordered it from here: https://www.printedsolid.com/products/v2-acrylic-sheets-for-prusa-lack-enclosure. They also have the V1 plexiglass that are a bit shorter.
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Slow progress is still progress!
After some extensive measuring I decided on some Polk DB+ 6.5" component speakers for the front and 5x7" coaxial speakers for the rear. While I had the front all pulled apart for the amp I decided to start there with the speaker upgrades. My car originally came with the basic 4 speaker sound system so I did not have the tweeter housings in the doors. The Polk tweeters have a nice basic black grill but are an odd rounded shape on the outside so they wouldn't necessarily be an easy fit in stock e30 tweeter pods. I didn't want to just surface mount the tweeters on the stock blanks so I decided to design and print some mounts of my own. I started with a basic model of a tweeter blank I found online and modified it to be mounted with a screw and perfectly fit the Polk tweeter at an angle that matched the stock ones. After a bit of trial and error I printed the final parts in ASA. To finish them up I sanded them down, sprayed with filler primer and sanded again to completely smooth them out, then a coat of texture paint followed by a final pass with SEM trim black. I mounted the tweeters from the back with hot glue so that they wouldn't be impossible to remove if needed, we'll see how that holds up in a hot car.
Good news for me is that cars with the base sound system still have the tweeter wiring going into the door, so these just plugged directly into that and fit perfectly! I'm super happy with how they turned out.
I also got the 6.5" woofers mounted in the kick panels. The speakers have the normal 4 mounting holes as well as an inner circle of holes that turn out to line up perfectly with the 5.25" speaker pattern (which I would assume is intentional). Because they'll be tight under the kick panels I printed a ~3mm spacer to keep the mounting screw heads off the speaker surround as well as keep the kick panel from interfering with speaker cone movement.
These Polk 6.5's are pretty shallow and also don't protrude too much beyond the mounting surface so zero modification to the chassis was required to fit them. I did however, have to modify the kick panel trim. I removed the sound insulation/speaker mesh and trimmed away the plastic ring around the speaker grill and the back side of the one screw hole. I also used a heat gun to flatten them out a bit as they had warped into a concave shape over time. The speaker sticks out maybe 5mm further than the original so these have to flex around them a little bit, but once installed they look completely stock and don't have any gaps. I may go back and replace the sound insulation at some point, but going to try without for now.
I don't have a pic of the kick panels installed but it looks completely stock. No need to space out the hood release on the driver's side and zero clearance issues with anything there. I am still working on the passenger side but so far it looks like the glovebox will clear without issues as well.
Next job is wiring in both crossovers and finding places to mount those!
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Just running off of the factory AMP and headunit? **Reading your previous posts now**. The stock Premium system in my car sounds decent, but wouldn't mind some additional punch on the low end. Really don't want to alter the look of the rear decklid speaker housings, so maybe these in the kick panel would be a good option. Maybe replacing the tweeters as well.
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Just running off of the factory AMP and headunit? **Reading your previous posts now**. The stock Premium system in my car sounds decent, but wouldn't mind some additional punch on the low end. Really don't want to alter the look of the rear decklid speaker housings, so maybe these in the kick panel would be a good option. Maybe replacing the tweeters as well.
I don't have a factory amp in my car so I used a small Sony amp that can work with the speaker level outputs from the continental head unit. I totally agree on not wanting to change the rear speaker look since most larger aftermarket speakers look like you landed a UFO on the decklid... so my plan for the rear 5x7's is to design and print something similar to the rear premium speaker housings (though maybe just a flat top instead of the angled outside edge). A main goal for this project is to have the end result be almost completely stock looking.
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Things I've done to the car since my last update... nothing!
While I've enjoyed having a running car that I can drive any time I want, there's been some issues needing addressing and I've started to plan to improve a number of things. One thing I've noticed is that the pressures in the intake manifold were constantly negative and I don't have time for all that negativity. In a random late night marketplace search I came across this lovely chunk of positivity for a pretty good deal...
It'll be a while until I dig in and start fitting this as I want to finish my garage improvements first but it should make for a pretty fun project later this year(s).
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Things I've done to the car since my last update... nothing!
While I've enjoyed having a running car that I can drive any time I want, there's been some issues needing addressing and I've started to plan to improve a number of things. One thing I've noticed is that the pressures in the intake manifold were constantly negative and I don't have time for all that negativity. In a random late night marketplace search I came across this lovely chunk of positivity for a pretty good deal...
It'll be a while until I dig in and start fitting this as I want to finish my garage improvements first but it should make for a pretty fun project later this year(s).
That is awesome. I figured this post would be about the headers and I was pleasantly surprised! We’re down on FI e30s right now so this should reset the balance quite nicely
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I have to you snagged that one after it had been floating around for a bit on FB. I'm glad someone I know snapped it up as I was contemplating it myself, twin screws satisfy most of my desires when it comes to power additions.
I'm looking forward to seeing more about it!
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That is awesome. I figured this post would be about the headers and I was pleasantly surprised! We’re down on FI e30s right now so this should reset the balance quite nicely
A very convenient coincidence! They should play quite nicely together. Picnic 2045 or bust!
Nice score!
Thanks!
I have to you snagged that one after it had been floating around for a bit on FB. I'm glad someone I know snapped it up as I was contemplating it myself, twin screws satisfy most of my desires when it comes to power additions.
I'm looking forward to seeing more about it!
I've always thought one of these ESS TS2 kits would be my ideal setup if I could ever find one. After staring at the ad and contemplating for like a week I figured how often would one actually pop up locally in good shape for a good price. I'm excited to dig into it!
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10/10 find
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160k
After much thinking and hunting around I finally came up with a solution to put 5x7 speakers in the rear parcel shelf without cutting big holes or looking like someone landed a UFO back there.
Before I did anything with the speakers themselves I figured now's the time to refresh the parcel shelf itself. I had a spare standard speaker parcel shelf so I used the markings on the back and opened up the speaker cutouts and moved the mounting clips to the premium speaker layout. Since every parcel shelf is now faded to a lovely shade of light blurple I gave it a couple coats of black duplicolor vinyl/fabric dye and cleaned up all the plastic parts.
Once that was done (and after letting it dry for about 3-4 months), I got into swapping things out. With the old parcel shelf out, I added some sound deadening over any holes in the sheet metal and a few spots that made a lot of noise when tapping on it. My thinking on doing this was it should help the speakers perform better/keep more sound in the cabin/maybe reduce some road noise bleeding through from the trunk.
Side note: I've always hated the tan rear seat in my car ever since I put it in. Its in really good shape and the original plan was to dye it eventually, but I realized I have a perfectly good black sedan back seat sitting in my basement. My car is a coupe so the seat isn't a perfect fit, but I also happen to have the rear carpet section from that sedan so I swapped that in as well to get everything looking as factory as possible. While it still isn't blue, it looks so much better.
Back to the speakers. After much hunting around and thinking, I came across these speaker grills from a 90's ford van/ranger/etc. that had an identical grille pattern to the kick panel speakers in the front. I found someone selling NOS ones and ordered a pair. With the new decklid in place, and the grill/speaker (Polk audio DB+ 5x7 coaxial) in hand, I designed and 3d printed the adapter to make it all work.
The adapter has slotted holes to screw into the factory e30 parcel shelf premium speaker clips so you can shift them around and maximize speaker clearance, matches the profile of the ford speaker grilles, and spaces the speaker up high enough to require no hammering/cutting of the sheet metal underneath. It is printed in ASA which is UV stable and should have zero issues dealing with the heat inside a car parked in the sun. To finalize the fit and finish, I screwed the speaker grille to the adapter and sanded the outer profile as a unit to get rid of layer lines and align everything perfectly.
I obviously didn't want a gray speaker cover, so that got scuffed up and sprayed black with adhesion promoter and SEM trim paint. The adapter was then sprayed with adhesion promoter and filler primer, sanded smooth, then another coat of adhesion promoter to re-coat any exposed plastic, textured black paint, and a final top coat of SEM trim black. I did this same process on the tweeter pods and it's held up perfectly so far.
With everything painted it was time to mount it all up! Here is the adapter mounted to the parcel shelf:
Then the speaker gets mounted to the underside of the ford speaker grille. To fit the speaker I did have to remove a trim ring/spacer from the top side of the speaker and use a tin snips to remove the outer mounting tabs/trim a bit of excess material on the other mounting tabs. Also, because of the placement of the wire connections, I bent the connectors outwards 90 degrees so that they would clear the parcel shelf without having to cut a notch in it.
I then mounted the speaker assembly to the adapter in the car and went back and did the whole thing a second time!
Couldn't be more stoked on the end result! It looks very factory and the sound improvement over the previous 5 1/4" coaxial speakers is huge.
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