Quote Originally Posted by SKB
OK I found the amp and checked it out. It seems to be OK. I actually pulled the fuse and tried it and nothing. Then put the fuse back in and it played as normal. I'm thinking now this is just normal operation. I have the Alpine HU going into the PAC OEM-2. All speakers work fine. The max vol. on the HU is 35. It starts to distort at about 26-27 with CD or radio and Loudness off.

Again I have a '93 525I, But my '90 525I sounded very good and crunchy and I could just about max it out with no distortion. Does anyone know if the '90 525I used a different OEM amp than the '93 525I? Jon k. what year is your OEM amp from?
I had a couple of similar questions when installing my stereo and got great support. Have you tried not using the PAC OEM-2, I purchased for my installtion and did not use, and the stereo sounds nice! If you have a wire harness coming from your apline unit directly into the factory's wiring device, you should experience an increase in sound quality.

Information provided by Anthony regarding the PAC OEM-2 and my reciever, very helpful!


The adapter would take the high power output from the JVC to drive the low power input to the factory amp which is only 10W x 4. The factory HU has about 4W/ch out. The JVC amp you bought says it has 52W x 4, more than enough to blow the $hit out of your factory speakers. Just run 4 pairs of 18-16ga speaker wire from the HU to the trunk then follow the pix. If anything is unclear post back.

This will allow the exact use of the factory crossover without having to pull any of the wiring directly to speakers. Run the speaker wire across (behind) the driver's kneepad then down the kick, and along the driver's side rocker panel (you'll have to remove the rocker trims then pull the carpet away a bit). Push the wires way down into the padding next to the rocker panel. There's a nice big grommet in the rear seat panel which exits at trunk floor level behind the trunk liner panel. The factory amp is on the driver's rear behind the wheel.

You won't be able to drive the factory speakers very hard as they're only rated about 30W but they sound pretty good.

I'm using all of the factory speakers but using a 5 channel amp and only driving 80Hz and above to them. The system is supplemented by a small sub. You can see parts of my system on www.bmwe34.net under the stereo section.

HTH,
Anthony