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      05-27-2012, 01:15 AM   #2
Bushellj
X1 Owner
United Kingdom
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Drives: BMW X1 sDrive 18d SE
Join Date: May 2012
Location: South Devon

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Decided to go for the BMW Alpine Upgrade kit based on the comments in the main X1 thread

I have no idea how BMW would install this kit in two hours given you have to take out all the seats (front and back) and remove all the trim down each side of the car. You also of course need to remove the two front door panels and gain access to the tweeter locations. Maybe if you had done this several times you might get it down to two hours but it has taken me all day and I have yet to connect the power !!

At least now I can tell people how to remove the trim !! I searched everywhere for details of how to remove the various trim items on the various forums but found very little information on the X1.

The first issue I came up against was that the supplied loom is very short where it goes to the subs under the seats. It has to be routed by the shortest route rather follow the rest of the cables which makes it a bit exposed to damage under the back seat !! The power cables are also not really the right length. The negative is fine but the positive is too short the follow the main loom behind the side panel so you have to bring it under the floor and then it is a bit long. The fuse has obviously been added as an afterthought as the positive supply has a join just before the in-line fuse holder !!

Certainly just upgrading the front speakers was a major step in the right direction. They work quite well just driven from the original Professional Head Unit.

Once the Amplifier was installed and connected to the Earth and Positive supply I tested the system before putting all the trim back just to be sure. The Bass and Treble are far too high even when the equaliser on the Head Unit has turned both down to minimum (-10). Looks like it will be a trip back down to the BMW dealer to get the Head Unit coded correctly for the Alpine Speakers and Amp. The sound certainly has great potential and is vastly better than the standard speakers

UPDATE: I had the wires on the Diplexor the wrong way round - Thanks to Alpine's confusing lables !!

With regard to having to have the car re-coded after this kit has been fitted - The latest instructions dated 2011 state that this is not required (the previous instructions dated 2010 said you needed the car to be re-coded to complete the fitting). My local dealer told me that re-coding is not required, but then he just read the latest instructions which could well be wrong !! Lets hope they will do it for Good Will given they told me it would not be necessary !!??

Last edited by Bushellj; 03-19-2016 at 09:27 AM.. Reason: Updated with more of the fitting details
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