I just spent the weekend upgrading my speaker setup, and I wanted to provide info to others on the forum. I installed the following:
- Fix 86 DSP
- Alpine R-A60F Amplifier
- Focal ES 165KX2 Speakers
The pieces that I thought might be relevant for some folks are a) the speakers are 3" deep, b) speaker wiring for 2020 MBUX.
Regarding the speaker depth, I did several things:
- Shaved down the factory speaker ring (used a pocket knife, but a dremel would've been better)
- CNCed a speaker ring which mounts to the surface of the door rather than the existing ring
- Mounted CNCed ring using Sikaflex
- Heat formed speaker grill to get more space for cone (in retrospect, not sure this was necessary)
Regarding the 2020 MBUX wiring:
- To remove the MBUX Screen, you must first pop out the vents. Could use a coat hanger, or a tool like this:
Mercedes Trim Tool. Just grab onto the crossbars inside the vent (preferably in two places at once) and pull.
- There are two large Aptiv/Delphi connectors on the back of the MBUX unit (note, this is the piece _behind_ the screen). The one with the speaker connections is the larger of the two (26 pin). Pins 2,3, 11, and 12 are FR+, FR-, FL-, FR+, respectively. Note that I do have a little bit of uncertainty about the FR+/- pins - I haven't done a phase test yet, but I'm 80% confident that's the right phase (backed up by the color of the wire). I do not have the rear connections, but I believe (and will be testing soon) that the pinouts for the rear speakers are 15,16, 24, and 25 for RR+, RR-, RL-, and RL+, respectively. If you do not have those connections already, you'll need to purchase terminals to fit in the connector. I currently have several connectors on order from mouser.com and will report back when I determine one that fits.
I've attached some photos to aid my descriptions. Happy to help folks so that they don't have to go through the struggles that I did figuring this all out.