30 March 2009. Blog entry by Bimmerman.

After the car audio system was completed, the car felt more sluggish. I guess that was to be expected with the additional sound-proofing material and car audio gear. The sub-woofer, its custom enclosure and the MDF amplifier rack in the boot would have added quite a fair bit of extra weight.

Anyway, I had planned for some time to get work done on the engine to increase power. Simple bolt-on modifications like cold air intake and exhaust system would definitely not be enough. The 2-liter non-Vanos engine is nice at cruising speed on the highway but I always felt like it was struggling, particularly in stop/go traffic and when over-taking. Nevertheless, the engine was still smooth running after 295,000Km. I have put approximately 100,000Km since owning the car and the engine has never given any problems. It gets serviced regularly with Castrol Magnatec semi-synthetic oil; and oil filter change every 5,000Km. I am sure it can run for another 100,000Km.

If not for the lack of power, I would have left the engine as is. Anyway, I am more eager than ever to upgrade the engine for more power after the car audio work.

 

3 March 2009. Blog entry by Bimmerman.

Before the system was installed, I had the floor, boot and all four doors lined with Dynamat Extreme since the entire car interior had to come out anyways. Not sure whether it made any difference but since it's always done on the cars they do up on Overhauling (the Chip Foose show on Discovery channel), I figured it had to be good for my car. It took 3 boxes of Dynamat Extremet bulk pack.

Whilst the sound dampening was being done, I discussed with the owner of the shop the best way to mount the front speakers and the sub-woofers. The original speaker mount for the e34 could only take 5.25-inch mids and the Dynaudio mid-bass definitely could not fit. And there was the additional dome mid-range to consider. In the end, we decided to build custom kick-panels housing the mid-bass, mid-range and tweeter. The existing steel panel behind the stock speakers had to be cut to make space for the speakers. Once that was sorted, we had to figure out how I wanted the 12-inch sub-woofer installed. I wanted the boot to look neat and to keep as much space possible so that two golf sets would still fit. We decided to remove the spare tyre and build a custom sub-enclosure fit in the spare tyre compartment.