Thought I'd post a status of my project. The head unit, an Alpine CDA-7832 CD player, is in. Thankfully it has no problem activating either the OE antenna or the integrated cell phone (displays "INTRRUPT" when placing/rec'g a call). I chose Alpine for its reliability (the same unit's in my 300TE) and this particular unit's 4V pre-out and 3 sets of RCA jacks (with the sub being variable from the head unit...really nice feature). Well, the wiring is in, which required major surgery to the interior; had to remove door sills, rear seats, pass. front seat, all trunk lining, etc.

At the battery I started with Monster Cable battery clamps, to include upgrading the OE starter cable (2 ga.) with a gold-plated terminator. Ran 4 ga. Monster Power cable to a Monster Distribution block,which split the power into 4 X 8ga. 2 of these go to the 300W sub amp, as it draws 50 amps alone. A single wire goes to each of the other amps (2 X 100W for the front and 50W X 2 for rear), and like-sized ground wires go back thru to another distribution block, with a 4 ga. ground going to where the trunk-mounted battery grounds to.

Installed MBQuart 5 1/4" coaxials (.75" titanium tweeters)in place of the OE 5" woofers on the rear parcel shelf. I actually glued them into the OE trim ring that held the OE woofer, then glued the whole thing into place for extra strength.

Next to do are the front speakers; the question is: if the cell phone is currently hooked up to the left dash speaker, can I simply attach those leads to the left front mid-driver? Both are 4 ohm so no problem there. However, the outgoing speaker was a dual-cone-appearing design (the pass. side was a straightforward single cone deal) that had two sets of distinct inputs...on opposite sides of the speaker frame, each pair of leads had normal-looking wires going inward to the voice coil. I've never seen such a thing.

Any advice would be appreciated. So far, the results seem great, well worth the considerable effort !

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Best regards, Michael
'92 500E
'88 300TE

[This message has been edited by Michael (edited 01-25-2000).]