1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

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joerg
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by joerg »

I´ve been working on the Bimmer the last three days and got a lot done.

The amp rack has been fitted into the spare tire boot and now everybody might understand why i let the MS1000 Nickel go. Once the rack is lowered i can just put the original lid onto the boot and the amps are not visible anymore. Nice theft protection that is. I could not have done that with the MS1000 Nickel.

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The rack is fixed to a main support beam of the car with three hinges. I can lift it high enough to get the power supply board out of the boot in case i need to acess any of it.

I spent a whole afternoon wiring up all the power supply and the rest of the RCA´s. Another thanks to ttocs getting theses wires over to my place.

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Once all of the speaker cables were connected i turned the radio on for the first time only to discover that the RCA cables of the center amp turned hot and started to smoke. I was so pissed when i found out that i simply forgot to cut one of the replaced capacitors wires that shorted out to the sink and sent 12V DC thru the RCA shield being the cause of it. Repaired that but the whole thing took out a brandnew TX406. The circuit board of it is really funny smelling now. :? Luckily i had another one stashed away.

I then had a hard time adjusting the other TX406 because i missplaced the r-net modules. :doh: Took me another two hours to figure out whats going on.

Never the less today was the first day after almost 8 years that i listened to an install i carried out in my own car. It´s not all the way adjusted yet but i´m very happy 8)

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And to all the doubters regarding the cyclones. I´m only feeding each one them with 125 Watts and they sound awesome. No mechanical noises or any other thing that would let me replace them for a conventional woofer.
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stipud
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by stipud »

Nice amount of work for three days! How are you planning on cooling everything?
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joerg
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by joerg »

stipud wrote:Nice amount of work for three days! How are you planning on cooling everything?
I purchased 6 pieces of radial fans already that will be mounted on a board upfront the amps and drive air underneath them. The flow will be along the cooling fins and drive the hot air out on the backside of the amps and up into the trunk area thru some gaps cut into the cover resting on the spare tire boot.


The last few days i only adjusted the system to get the speakers moving a bit, but yesterday i drove to a friend and we fully adjusted it.

Setup is adjusted following way now.

Cyclones play up to 60Hz
Doors take over at 60Hz and play upt to 3350Hz
Tweeters take over at 3350Hz
Slew rate is 6db for the whole setup

Unfortunally i have an alternator whining noise in the system i need to get rid of. Other than that i´m very happy with my oldschool install. Another thing that amazed me was the radio as it only starts clipping at a volume setting of -6 out of an range of -86 to 0
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by dbjury »

I love the colour choice for the lighting in the amplifiers....3 amps would be my perfect choice of setup, 1 for sub/s, 1 for mids, 1 for highs...

The glow of colour reminds me of Tube amplifiers I think thats why it looks so good.....warm colour...

and the gold......mmmm
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by LowandLoud »

Gonna blow the windows out of that Bimmer! 8)

Awesome work Joerg

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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by CK1991 »

wow....thats an awesome install job! Am I was reading through, I was amazed at the door panels (would have covered them in vinyl personally, but they look great!), then I saw the setup in back. I'm speechless....thats alot of high quality equipment. Also, I wish we had BMW wagons here in the states. They look cool
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by iroller »

Joerg, Great job. Do the clones do the whole job and you don't need another sub to complement them ? I have one clone, will one do the job ?
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joerg
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by joerg »

The clones do the whole job! There´s no need to install other subs if your kicks can take over at 60Hz.
Took a few more pictures yesterday.

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Last edited by joerg on Sun Jul 21, 2013 10:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by zztunnell »

Nice! and 'Holy picture size,Batman!' lol
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joerg
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by joerg »

zztunnell wrote:Nice! and 'Holy picture size,Batman!' lol
Fixed that and added a few more pics. 8)
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by zeropoint0.5 »

how much input voltage are the amps receiving from the pld1's.....

are you just using the gain of the pld1's (and gains of the amps totally on min....)

curious how much input voltage the Original ms2250 can have to reach full power with the gains all the way down....
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joerg
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by joerg »

zeropoint0.5 wrote:how much input voltage are the amps receiving from the pld1's.....

are you just using the gain of the pld1's (and gains of the amps totally on min....)

curious how much input voltage the Original ms2250 can have to reach full power with the gains all the way down....
The gain setting is only done with the AX406 and the PLD´s. The amps gains are turned all the way down.
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by Stryker »

aRgh! Alt. whine...
I feel ya, let us know how you remedy that.
You have done a super job of making all your very valuable equipment come together. I've really enjoyed watching this come together.
I kinda like how the cables hang down from the Cyclones too. My only wish would be to hear it with some of my fav. tunes.
Great job!!!
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joerg
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by joerg »

Stryker wrote:aRgh! Alt. whine...
I feel ya, let us know how you remedy that.
You have done a super job of making all your very valuable equipment come together. I've really enjoyed watching this come together.
I kinda like how the cables hang down from the Cyclones too. My only wish would be to hear it with some of my fav. tunes.
Great job!!!
Thanks!

I got rid of the alternator whine installing a Helix Cap33 right after the output of the alternator.

http://www.ebay.de/itm/Helix-CAP33-Ents ... 3f247cf06d
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by brenzbmr@sb »

holy hell! that's really a nice collection of gear you got there. I wish I could actually hear this.

good job!
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by joerg »

We had temperatures close to 40°C the last few days and that took it´s total on my sytem last friday. Didn´t take the amp apart yet but i think there is a lot of damage underneath the burned up parts. At least i know that i´ll replace all output caps from my 2250´s as well now.

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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by zeropoint0.5 »

are you saying here that railcaps is leaking ?? please can you post a pic of it when you desolder that cap ?

that would be the first railcap i saw leaking then.........

damn i'm shocked :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by ttocs »

I thought you swapped them all out? Aw man sorry dude... :(
what else can I say I am a grumpy asshole most of the time.
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joerg
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by joerg »

Indeed, one of the output caps was leaking and destroyed some more parts within the amp. I don´t mind the repairs i have to do to the board an don´t know yet if i can fix it but the fact that the perfect plexi is toast now really pisses me off. :(

And yes, i redid the whole amp but wanted to keep the OEM look from the blue/white caps in it and since nobody ever heard of a leaking output cap i did not replace them with black ones. But that project is on my list now. I already pulled all the amps back out of the car. NO MUSIC, again :evil:
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by ttocs »

I would have been crying for sure. Now the plexi might be able to be fixed if it didn't burn the ink that badly. Some cleaner and maybe a light polish on the clear sections will take that out.
what else can I say I am a grumpy asshole most of the time.
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by marko »

that's unusual for a rail cap to fail like that, maybe it had something short it out? a sliver of stray cable perhaps?

I don't think the PS caps would make that fail, they would simply burn up in their own area..
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by zeropoint0.5 »

marko wrote:that's unusual for a rail cap to fail like that, maybe it had something short it out? a sliver of stray cable perhaps?

I don't think the PS caps would make that fail, they would simply burn up in their own area..
I agree. To be totally sure the railcap did indeed leak, i hope joerg will desolder it and post pics of the underside of the cap as

well of the board under it. Maybe it didn't leak and shortened inside ?? it just is a strange, unexpected and scary situation.

I hope Joerg posts some pics of it all, so we all can learn out of this situation......

But another reason could be a little copper wire hiding under the railcap and causing the damage ?

Or maybe a bad solderconnection caused this ???

Just waiting for the update of everything on this......
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by joerg »

Í´ll have time to dig into this next week, but what i can tell for sure is that the elektrolyte spread out all over the board and the whole thing didn´t happen all of a sudden but appeard slowly starting with a strange noise coming from the door speakers on the driver side. That rules out a dead short from a wire. A dead short from a wire would have resulted in kind of a knocking noise or peak excursion of the speakers . Besides that i also stumbled across the fact that the amp wouldn´t turn off anymore even tough the radio was turned of and no remote signal was present. The internal 60amp fuse on one side of the amp failed. As a cautionary measure i took out the fuses from the fused distro for now.
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by stipud »

That really blows! :(
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Re: 1997 BMW 525tds Touring Oldschool Install

Post by marko »

I hope they didn't use a bad batch of rail caps too, I have 3 ms2250's to worry about now! but like mentioned above, if the rail caps were changed for any reason or removed then soldering them back in is a critical job to ensure done right..
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