Ugh, headunit hell in a BMW

[NJTStang11 10+ year member]

Alright, buddy of mine asked for some help putting a system in his BMW. It's been nothing but a pain in the *** from the start, but now we ran into a pretty big problem. I was setting up his headunit, got everything twisted and plugged in, and went to turn it on. Power, I figured we had it. Put a CD in, no sound, at all, nothing. Tried radio, nothing, not even static. Do you guys think it's the factory amp that is causing this? Please tell me it's not, because thats going to be a huge pain in the *** if it is. Any other things it might be? I didnt use the orange wire, remote wire, or other blue, maybe thats it? Doesnt make sense, but maybe lol

Car: 1997 BMW 328i

CD Player: Panasonic 8100

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[theaznj 10+ year member]

Alright, buddy of mine asked for some help putting a system in his BMW. It's been nothing but a pain in the *** from the start, but now we ran into a pretty big problem. I was setting up his headunit, got everything twisted and plugged in, and went to turn it on. Power, I figured we had it. Put a CD in, no sound, at all, nothing. Tried radio, nothing, not even static. Do you guys think it's the factory amp that is causing this? Please tell me it's not, because thats going to be a huge pain in the *** if it is. Any other things it might be? I didnt use the orange wire, remote wire, or other blue, maybe thats it? Doesnt make sense, but maybe lol
Car: 1997 BMW 328i

CD Player: Panasonic 8100

You will have to hook up the remote wire(blue wire w/white stripe or if the harness that plugs into the factory plug only has a solid blue wire, then use that one to be able to turn on the factory amp), which is located in trunk on driver side behind trunk liner.

The only thing is that with doing this, the factory amps tend to go bad faster so you might have to do a full amplifier bypass later on(wiring directly from deck to speakers or amp to speakers) but, at that point might as well put new speakers in also. You'll be fine for a while though, but just keep that in mind that it could be possibility soon. Hope this helps