[iamwiz82]

They are in my hands now! Thank you sir!

[torifile]

Ken, I emailed you. I hope you are able to respond now that you are unburied from the holidays.

[iamwiz82]

I finally got back into the country to play with my new toys. Being that it was 5F the other day I spent the evening unboxing and laying everything out so that I could better get a feel for the wiring. I mapped out the connections on paper to reference while I do the installation. Everything is fairly straight forward. I did have some issues following the wiring (wiring colors changed from the Cleansweep connector for power and IGN) so I pulled apart the sheathing to confirm. The Cleansweep wire coloring is not standard and MusicarNW soldered new wiring that does match what I had expected to see (blue for remote, for example).

From laying it out I see that the signal feed is pulled from the OEM underseat woofer connectors. This feeds back to the Cleansweep and then to the amp. The amp'd signals then feed back to the OEM connector as well as a separate line for the new underseat woofer.

Yesterday was a bit warmer and the garage was not so inhabitable so I began the disasembly. The door panels and sails came off in no time without a problem or a broken clip. The front seats were unbolted and leaned back, using the seat belts from the rear to hold them in place. The underseat woofers were probably the hardest part to do so far with there not being a lot of room and that carpet is a PITA to move around.

Once the cold got to me I went back in and did the initial reassembly of the door panels, underseat woofers, and tweeter sails. Again the only issue I had were the underseat woofers, removing the glued on bucket was time consuming, but nothing broke once again. The screws for the new woofers are really long but I went with them anyways. I have shorter ones but I was being lazy last night and didn't want to go get them. I would say they hang out 1/2" past the bottom of the lip of the basket.

I mounted the crossovers in the area where the foam resides. I cut up a pocket for the crossover and then secured them down. I also padded it with foam to limit any rattling.

So 2 hours later I feel I have made a lot of progress. I'm looking forward to working on it again tonight.

A few questions that have come up in my head:

1. Grounding, I have read that there is a bold on the driver wheel well for them, but I also see what looks to be a good one near the battery, the one that secures the mount over the battery. Thoughts?

2. Amp/Cleansweep layout. The amp came on a wooden board with foam tape. I am not sure where this mounts, then again I haven't actually taken it outside to do initial fitting. I suspect that it mounts under the trunk floor near the back where there is another module (bluetooth, maybe?). If so, the Cleansweep would go to empty space on the left of the trunk where that cubby is. MusicarNW supplied a panel that appears to fit over top of this.

3. Wiring seems straight forward enough but I am having a hard time seeing how to jam the harnesses under the carpet without pulling a lot of trim, though I have read that people do it all the time. Fishing it through will be easy with the rear seat pulled up.

[ctuna]

1) If you got the whole muiscarNW kit he supplys a really long ground and
power and the intention it to have it go right to the battery tightening bolt on
the battery clamps.
This is suppose to be the least noisy connection point in the car.
See my install procedure in the HI Fi section of
2) I thing you are going to have remove the side trim . I did for the Jehnerts
and you will have remove more for routing your harness.

http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=641323

I think things should look like what I did with the wiring running out to the sides from the TCU area and over the wheel wells and the amp in the same location.
I didn't have to route wire under the carpet so I can't help you there .
The rear seat bench comes of pretty easy it you just pull it up. Grab it on the
foward edge and pull up. (it takes a pretty good yank )

Take pictures of your wire routing if you can.

Also be aware that you can drain your battery pretty easily when installing because almost anything you do around the car keeps it awake.
Someone was mumbling something about a shop mode for the car that
stopped that but I don't know how it works.

I tried to do my work in stages and check it and test it but that is a little
easier to do with a hi fi. amp first test , door speakers test , floor speakers
test , if I had any problems it would at least be isolated to that section and
is less of an overwhelming task.

[iamwiz82]

Good point on the battery, I had just the front open and everytime I opened/closed the back doors all the lights came on, so I started leaving all of it open and eventually it slept (15 minutes maybe?). I know it is very sensitive to have excess draw while off. The car has complained to me in the past.

I'll just pull the sill. I'm almost 100% positive that I have spare clips from my MINI install. Thus far the door panel clips for BMW and MINI have been identical.

[ctuna]

Having a battery tender or trickle charger is almost mandatory with these
cars. Especially if you have to leave it setting for extended periods or
have only short drives. People have measure the awake draw at around .5 amps.

[PSEE]

I've read the posts above and am really confused about this issue of customer
service and Musicar NW.

Not responding to customer inquiries and taking a long time to fill orders does
not seem like "awesome customer service" to any reasonable person.

If parts or items are out of stock, then it is the responsibility of the "awesome"
business to let their customers know - A.S.A.P. That will proactively alleviate
repeated inquiries.

Anyone spending literally thousands of $ is entitled to know whether their order will be delayed. Failure to provide the information will lead to inquiries.
Failure to respond to the inquiries will lead to additional inquiries.


I agree that Musicar NW probably sells great equipment that sounds
"awesome".

The customer experience sounds much less than "awesome".


I looked into purchasing from them several months ago. After a very few
email exchanges, my last correspondence went unanswered. I ended up
not placing an order with Musicar NW.


It's not merely the equipment that sets one vendor apart form another - more
than that, it's the SERVICE.

[VP Electricity]

It's not the equipment at all. It's completely the service. I get plenty of inquiries from people who bought the same gear online and can't make it work.

We are a two-person operation, and while business goes up and down, it hasn't climed enough to hire a third person. It sucks when I foul up and miss an email or forget to reply to someone. I take slight solace in that our failings are never due to bad intent - we fulfill, and we fulfill with good deliverables - but our fulfillment is not like amazon.com.

As far as the original poster is concerned, we sent this information in an initial email with pictures of the gear in place. I will re-send that info in case it got deleted.

[iamwiz82]

That was my fault, I never bothered to reference the original email trail back in the day for the questions I have asked today. I'm ready to get back into it today, c'mon quittin' time!

[iamwiz82]

Day 2 was a bit less successful. Reinstalled the sails and the door panels tonight, managed to snap the plastic arm that the lock connects to . The cold weather made all the plastic quite brittle. Lost 6 door panel clips, will have to buy some.

I also ran the driver's side wiring, no problems there. fished it via the sill under the the rear seat. The passenger side is not going as well, however. My current path is up the carpeting to the center console then following it. I got the back back but could not just shove anything up there, too tight (twss) so I just pulled up instructions on the web about how to disassemble the rear of the center console. That seems easy enough. So the wiring will go under the carpet, but the console wall, around and down the driver's side and then following the sill to the rear.

Other than that, work pulled me off the job and onto not-fun stuff. Sigh.

[iamwiz82]

Success! Between last night and this morning I have completed the installation. I did have some hiss from the speakers but I lowered the Clean Sweep volume to about 40% and that stopped. Other than that I have about 10 minutes of listening time so far and I'm happy

[mslam02]

Congrats! I am currently saving for the same package!

...in for updates after you get some more ear time!

[iamwiz82]

I had about an hour of ear time so far this afternoon. First impressions are : wow. It really does sound as if there is a center channel. There is so much detail of the music that is coming out that normally get's left behind.

There are a few unfinished spots that I have to look into but so far so good. The Cleansweep did cause me some grief for a bit as I did not turn the radio up 45 clicks (this is very loud, btw) before calibrating. Recalibration fixed that. I do have a double thump coming out of the speaker(s) at startup and when the car goes do sleep. It's hard to say if it's all of just some as it's not an easy thing to cause. I think it's all speakers though. I also cannot seem to lock one of the rear seat clips back into place. I'll have to look into that one.

Oh yeah, Posse on Broadway came on during my drive