98 318i speaker sizes

dtcrx · 03-24-2005, 10:05 PM

Hi, i've looked around different forums and have gotten mixed sizes of speakers in my car. All I know for sure is the kick panel which is 5.25. I would like to know what the speaker sizes and what aftermarket speakers will fit in the doors. The door has two speakers tweeter & midrange not a HK system. I am looking to install mb quart speakers or focal. thanks for your help

blkongry · 03:16 PM

What can you do with the door speakers? Nothing... they have a proprietary curvature to them and their own mounting system that makes them nearly non-upgradable. You can try digging out the stock tweeter and remounting an upgrade dome tweeter in it, or you can just run some nice Quart or Focal coaxials down in the 5.25 kickpanel areas (which is actually recommended by most installers for imaging and balance) and drop both those door panel speakers (the 'mid-range' speakers is pretty much worthless). That's what I'm planning on doing with mine... I'm actually going to shave off the front facia of the grills and glue them in place, otherwise they'll just be dead weight. You can always carve those grill opening bigger and fill them with some other speakers, but that'll look about as attractive as a Yak with lipstick.

If you have a convertible, then you have 4" panel speakers in the rear sides, which are easily replaceable with Infinity units or others... if you have a coupe or sedan, then you should have larger panels in the rear deck lid, replaceable by 6x9's I think.

dtcrx · 03-29-2005, 06:36 AM

I was going to upgrade the kick panel to 5.25 mb quart components and use a glue gun to seat the tweeters in the door in the stock location, but I'm not sure if I should still get a pair of 3.5 mb quart and replace the stock ones also in the door. Not sure if they will fit properly or at all. I haven't taken the door panel off so, I do not know how the stock 3.5 is mounted. For now I am going to leave the rear deck speakers alone. Any other suggestions or experience anyone would like to comment on? thanks

blkongry · 03-29-2005, 08:06 AM

The only problem with the mounting of the door speakers is that they have a stud in the back of the magnet of the stock speakers... this stud is used to hold the mounting bracket on. If you change out the speaker, you don't have a way of mounting the grill/speaker combo into the door any more. You could probably epoxy a stud onto your aftermarket speaker magnet, but I don't know how well that will hold.

If you added in Quart 3.5's into the door with some tweets, balanced the whole system (meaning capping and crossing over), then it would sound quite good. The only thing in the front speakers is that 5.25 isn't really big enough to be a true mid-bass speaker (go to a 6.5, and you really notice the difference), so it functions more of a mid-range and mid-bass, so adding in the 3.5 wouldn't tap into any other range for the music, you'd just get more driver.

I have a friend to upgraded his head unit and is running the stock tweets with the 5.25s (dropped the 3.5s) and he said the sound is excellent. On an automotive application, 3-way speakers is kind of a misnomer. If you want to equate it to a 3-way speaker of a home stereo, then the components would be the mid and tweet, where your sub would the the large speakers in a home 3-way. Essentially, for cars, we get 'bookshelf' speakers... a mid and a tweet, and you can only get so much out of those.

Either way you go, I think you'll be happy with the results, especially since you are running nice equipment. Just for clarification, you aren't running the factory head unit and amplier with the Quarts, are you? You won't be happy with the results if you are.

dtcrx · 03-29-2005, 04:27 PM

blkongry

3.5 and tweeter, man that is going to be tricky to mount. If it has it's own mounting hardware and the curvature of the door panel I didn't account for that. I won't know until I get into the door panel if I'm going through with mounting the 3.5 speaker. thanks for the help and suggetions. What about the rear deck speakers 4 inch? can it be modded to take bigger speakers?