[Gaffer]

OK so the main thing that stayed my hand on buying this was the lack of clarity on import costs, timings etc to get this to the UK.
Well I've now done it so thought it would be useful info to let others in Blighty know (might encourage you to get one).

Item = $50 Technic PnP harness for Top Hifi (HK spec in UK) to allow high level signals for a sub/amp
Delivery = $35

That should cost £67 at current exchange rates but Paypal have expensive exchange rates so they ended up charging me £70.99

There is no Duty to pay, but VAT came to £14.26 and then Parcelfarce decided to skim off the top by adding a bogus "handling charge" of £12 (USPS hand the shipment over to Royal Mail when arriving in the UK).

Total cost therefore is £97.25 if you live in the UK.

So I ordered the item (displayed as in immediate stock) 20th September,
they posted it 1 week later 27th September,
it arrived in the UK 5 days later 2nd October and given to ParcelFarce
PF eventually had it clear customs eight days later on 10th October.
At this point. I would advise signing up to USPS on their tracking page for email updates becasue PF inform you of nothing!
USPS then mentioned it was being "held prior to delivery" 11th October by PF - again, no comminuication by PF, I got this from a USPS update.

So I visited PF website who recognised the parcel and provide a new tracking number but no further details.
I then rang them (PF customer services) who recognised the USPS tracking number and gave me a completely different 17 digit code for payment.

The automated telephone system they put me through to wouldn't recognise that 17 digit number so I wouldn't bother with doing it that way.
Instead, go online, where I paid via the website (at least this way I could screenshot the payment received confirmation) and it's due to be delivered Monday 14th October.

So total delivery time = 1 week for them to ship "in stock" item, 5 Days to get to the UK, 8 days to clear customs, 1 day if YOU chase it up to pay the charges and a further 3 days to arrive = total time of 3.5 weeks to reach me

Interestingly when I asked over the phone they said it would normally take 3-4 days for them to post a card through my letterbox telling me to pay, so if I'd've simply let nature take it's course we could make that 4 weeks delivery time.

(lesson learnt - from now on I'll endeavour to see if the vendor uses UPS or DHL instead, who seem to handle customs on their own without delays and no excessive handling charges).

So there you go, if you're planning on adding a sub via this route it's roughly £100 (about ⅓ is item value and ⅔ is delivery/customs/PF's "cut") and will take 1 month to arrive so that should give you an idea of costs and timings involved -- > if it works it'll be worth it (will be adding a RockFos P300-12 and have bought the wavtech LinkD LoC that can handle the 40V peaks already - hoping to do it in a day - a day when it isn't bloody raining that is )

[bishbosh]

Isn't this like the Mosconi quadlock that can be bought for £85?

(I remember it used to cost £55 but that's going back 6 years)

[jedi-knight83]

this is why I didn't want to buy from America and I was enquiring on here about a UK supplier! Sounds a ball ache.

[Gaffer]

Just received mine today - and I must say it's beautifully built and very well made. In fact, it actually looks like an OEM part from BMW themselves so very happy there .

Rained again today so just patience on my part till the weather clears. Have also heard on here that the +ve and gnd wire flyouts from the harness aren't actually wired up on the BMW end for the HK system (the F30 harness doesn't include them) so I'll have to buy a few more leads (LOC only uses 200mA max to run, so doesn't need massively thick wiring - 27AWG should do it - one fused for the +ve running from the battery and the other grnd going to the Sub ground).

[t5pilot]

Reading this has me confused. If you want to grab a high level signal for the subs (to feed a dedicated amp for upgraded subs I presume), why not just take it straight from the sub output wires that are already there? That costs £zero...

[Gaffer]

Originally Posted by t5pilot

Reading this has me confused. If you want to grab a high level signal for the subs (to feed a dedicated amp for upgraded subs I presume), why not just take it straight from the sub output wires that are already there? That costs £zero...

2 reasons - months of looking on the 'net and asking Q's and the best I could get is the wiring colours for the E-series...which BMW changed for the F-series cars (looking at diagrams of installs on the older 3 has some wiring colour coded completely differently to my 3). I then managed to put together this diagram for my F30, but as yet have not been able to get it confirmed or not as to whether I've got the colour combo's correct:

so I don't know 100% if I'm splicing into the correct wires or not and secondly...
there isn't much space to work with from other people's install blogs and I didn't want to make a mistake and try and fix it in a very limited work space.

This harness, though a bit of hassle to get a hold of, solves all these - no cutting into the harness so no danger of damaging the OEM harness, simple plug and play with no guesswork involved, and really well made to boot.

(so in answer to your Q, yes I could've done it on my own and take a longer time and more care and hope I don't clutz it up, but this was an easy quick way of doing the same with less risk of me creating a problem/breaking something......the money I saved on the Focal's up front more than paid for it too )

[t5pilot]

Originally Posted by Gaffer

2 reasons - months of looking on the 'net and asking Q's and the best I could get is the wiring colours for the E-series...which BMW changed for the F-series cars (looking at diagrams of installs on the older 3 has some wiring colour coded completely differently to my 3). I then managed to put together this diagram for my F30, but as yet have not been able to get it confirmed or not as to whether I've got the colour combo's correct:

so I don't know 100% if I'm splicing into the correct wires or not and secondly...
there isn't much space to work with from other people's install blogs and I didn't want to make a mistake and try and fix it in a very limited work space.

This harness, though a bit of hassle to get a hold of, solves all these - no cutting into the harness so no danger of damaging the OEM harness, simple plug and play with no guesswork involved, and really well made to boot.

(so in answer to your Q, yes I could've done it on my own and take a longer time and more care and hope I don't clutz it up, but this was an easy quick way of doing the same with less risk of me creating a problem/breaking something......the money I saved on the Focal's up front more than paid for it too )

Ah, lol, you should have posted a question...

You're sub wires are correct.
There's also a thin red/white cable on its own somewhere within that little lot. That's your switching feed to provide an ignition on activation for your new amp.

I just tapped into the loom half way up the wheel arch. The cables there are quite easy to get at.
I cut the speaker wires & fitted bullit connectors. So if i sell & take the amp out, its a dead easy job to disconnect & reconnect.

[Gaffer]

All done and updated my other (hijacked ) thread here......post #14.

Long story short - integrates really well into OEM HK system but powerful to the point I have all gains set to zero and the 20-40Hz lowest octave envelopes you like it's in the cabin (not an overpowering boom from the boot) .

[johnung]

Originally Posted by Gaffer

OK so the main thing that stayed my hand on buying this was the lack of clarity on import costs, timings etc to get this to the UK.
Well I've now done it so thought it would be useful info to let others in Blighty know (might encourage you to get one).

Item = $50 Technic PnP harness for Top Hifi (HK spec in UK) to allow high level signals for a sub/amp
Delivery = $35

That should cost £67 at current exchange rates but Paypal have expensive exchange rates so they ended up charging me £70.99

There is no Duty to pay, but VAT came to £14.26 and then Parcelfarce decided to skim off the top by adding a bogus "handling charge" of £12 (USPS hand the shipment over to Royal Mail when arriving in the UK).

Total cost therefore is £97.25 if you live in the UK.

So I ordered the item (displayed as in immediate stock) 20th September,
they posted it 1 week later 27th September,
it arrived in the UK 5 days later 2nd October and given to ParcelFarce
PF eventually had it clear customs eight days later on 10th October.
At this point. I would advise signing up to USPS on their tracking page for email updates becasue PF inform you of nothing!
USPS then mentioned it was being "held prior to delivery" 11th October by PF - again, no comminuication by PF, I got this from a USPS update.

So I visited PF website who recognised the parcel and provide a new tracking number but no further details.
I then rang them (PF customer services) who recognised the USPS tracking number and gave me a completely different 17 digit code for payment.

The automated telephone system they put me through to wouldn't recognise that 17 digit number so I wouldn't bother with doing it that way.
Instead, go online, where I paid via the website (at least this way I could screenshot the payment received confirmation) and it's due to be delivered Monday 14th October.

So total delivery time = 1 week for them to ship "in stock" item, 5 Days to get to the UK, 8 days to clear customs, 1 day if YOU chase it up to pay the charges and a further 3 days to arrive = total time of 3.5 weeks to reach me

Interestingly when I asked over the phone they said it would normally take 3-4 days for them to post a card through my letterbox telling me to pay, so if I'd've simply let nature take it's course we could make that 4 weeks delivery time.

(lesson learnt - from now on I'll endeavour to see if the vendor uses UPS or DHL instead, who seem to handle customs on their own without delays and no excessive handling charges).

So there you go, if you're planning on adding a sub via this route it's roughly [SIZE="5"]£100[/SIZE] (about ⅓ is item value and ⅔ is delivery/customs/PF's "cut") and will take [SIZE="5"]1 month[/SIZE] to arrive so that should give you an idea of costs and timings involved -- > if it works it'll be worth it (will be adding a RockFos P300-12 and have bought the wavtech LinkD LoC that can handle the 40V peaks already - hoping to do it in a day - a day when it isn't bloody raining that is )

I shipped something from the US to a European country, not the UK, recently and had a similar experience. Actual travel time was only about 5-7 days but took a total of 3 weeks door to door with most delays in the receiving country with paying taxes/fees and actually delivering. There was no pay & pickup option even though the USPS Tracking application said that the box was sitting for about a week at the local country's postal facility just a few miles away.

FedEx and UPS were not shipping options because their prices were 3x those of the US Postal Service.

Within the US, FedEx ground seems to be the least expensive with both UPS and USPS charging about 10% more.

[parmar88]

Originally Posted by t5pilot

Ah, lol, you should have posted a question...

You're sub wires are correct.
There's also a thin red/white cable on its own somewhere within that little lot. That's your switching feed to provide an ignition on activation for your new amp.

I just tapped into the loom half way up the wheel arch. The cables there are quite easy to get at.
I cut the speaker wires & fitted bullit connectors. So if i sell & take the amp out, its a dead easy job to disconnect & reconnect.

Hi mate, I'm looking to do exactly this. Can you help me with some info please?

I plan on cutting into the Subs loom to feed a pre-amp I have bought and then intend on giving a clean boosted signal to an amp (which I haven't bought yet). Can you recommend what to use to tap into the cables please.

Also, I'm after a 4/5 channel DSP amp. Nothing that will break the bank too much. I intend on powering the subs and front mids and tweeters (I've bought some used HK tweeters and housing) using the amp and letting the HU deal with the rear mids.

Am I correct in thinking I still need to code the head unit to HiFI/ HK from base?

Cheers mate

[Kal101]

Had similar experience when shipping in my diffuser from Taiwan (I think). To help matters PF sent the card reminder for payment to the wrong address. Luckily the lady there knew me (pure coincidence) and delivered it to me or the diffuser would have been returned to sender

[t5pilot]

Originally Posted by parmar88

Hi mate, I'm looking to do exactly this. Can you help me with some info please?

I plan on cutting into the Subs loom to feed a pre-amp I have bought and then intend on giving a clean boosted signal to an amp (which I haven't bought yet). Can you recommend what to use to tap into the cables please.

Also, I'm after a 4/5 channel DSP amp. Nothing that will break the bank too much. I intend on powering the subs and front mids and tweeters (I've bought some used HK tweeters and housing) using the amp and letting the HU deal with the rear mids.

Am I correct in thinking I still need to code the head unit to HiFI/ HK from base?

Cheers mate

I have no idea for your setup I'm afraid. I already had the HK system.
If you have a factory fit amp in the boot, then the sub wires will probably be the same, but I'm certainly not sure of this.
If you have the base system without a separate amp, then I haven't a clue. Guess it would be easier to tap the wires directly under the seats?
Of course none of these will give you a pure source signal suitable for a pre-amp. All of these would already be amplified & therefore only suitable as a high-level input directly into another amp.
The only way round this would be if the head unit had any separate pre-outs. And, on that front again, I have no idea.