Car audio gurus need help once again

[derekhonda]

Ok, My dad has a little summer car a 1997 bmw z3. Its nothin special, just a fun little cruiser. Anyways, I started it up the other day after all winter in storage, started up, when to turn on the radio, heard a loud pop, then about a second of music, then another pop, then a second of music, then a pop...you get the picture. The damn things so old it had casset only up front anyways so I decided it was time for some new speakers and a cd changer head unit. Went out, bought it all, installed the speakers, just finally found an adapter harness (or whatever its called, connects HU into old wiring harness.

Wired it all up, all bright eyed an bushy tailed ready to "hear" my hard work pay off.....Same thing happened, pop....music....pop....music.....

So now I'm trouble shooting.....any ideas?

[derekhonda]

Ah **** forgot to mention some details.

This thing aparently was pretty cool in 1997, cause it did have a 3k bmw upgrade stereo. It does have a 6 disk changer in the back, along with an amp for the speakers (no subs)

I thought I bypassed all of it, there were two sets of wires (4 wires) running to each of the back speakers, but still only 1 set (2 wires) going to the door speakers. I cut off the extra 2 wires going to the speakers in the rear, and just hooked it up to what I thought was the speaker cables running out of the head unit.

But now that I think about it, with the old setup, surely the signal had to be running to the amp, and then from there, back out to the speakers. So is it possible the amp went bad? Why would there be 4 wires running to a speaker? (his and lows?)

This is fn complicated I'm about to go nuts and no I'm not paying bmw $125 an hour to do it for me ahhhh

[ricksmx865]

Sounds to me like bad set of RCA's goin to the amp, usually this happens when they are ran to close to a ground but since its and older car they may just be old or have a bad connections somewhere

hope ya get it figured out

[derekhonda]

Thats another thing, no rcas coming out of the original head unit, im sure there is an adapter back there somewhere. my new head unit has rcas out ima go run a second set real quick, thanks ill let you know.

[derekhonda]

Man this just keeps getting worse, I look its got two sets of rcas, wires look clean connected good. I finally just did something that I should have in the first place, I just ran a wire directly out of the new head unit to a lone speaker....it works! I guess I'm just gonna run new wires to the speakers directly from the head unit and say screw it with all the fancy stuff, it never even sounded that good with the current set up. Can I just leave the old wires ran and disconnect them or do I need to remove also? Also, no idea where or how the antenna hooks up, i guess thats easily replaceable aswell though. Who knows, ohwell. Thanks!

[ricksmx865]

Yea that will work fine also, usually only systems with a large sub stage will need to amplify their mid/front stage. The majority of cars door speakers are just ran off the stock head unit anyhow.

as for you antenna you probably need an adapter... its kinda a big round terminal kinda looks like a big microphone jack haha and they are usually bent into like an (L) shape