Poor Man's Stock BOSE System Tweaks
 

I'm in the process of working on many small maintenance items and upgrading my stock BOSE system. For those of you that want to tweak the sound on the cheap or just have something to tinker with, there are a few simple and inexpensive tweaks you can do to the stock system to make it sound dramatically better.

Front woofers
When I removed my door panel to fix some window issues, I inspected the stock woofers and noticed some issues: the speakers are not completely sealed around the mounting locations, the plastic spacers have a baffle on the rear of the speaker magnet to protect them from the weather and/or to curve their response, and in a positive turn of events, the door is sealed well and won't need much or any sound deadening.

Here are the tweaks...

1: Remove the speaker and the spacer from the door. Set the speaker aside and be careful with your pointed screwdrivers since it is easy to slip and puncture the speaker.

2: Remove the spacer and notice the baffle/guard that shields the magnet of the speaker. This needs to be cut off. I used a Dremel to make quick work of the shroud. Just try to cut it cleanly. I probably left an inch of the shield because it was easier that way and wouldn't restrict any air movement.

3: To fix the seal, I used 1" wide foam gasket material that a friend has bulk quantities of. I don't know what it originally is used for, but it is similar to weatherstripping materials. Make sure the foam you use is soft but dense or use some sort of rubber, an old bike tube could work. Apply the foam seal all the way around the plastic spacer as you reinstall. This is to restrict any air from escaping the enclosure and to cancel vibrations.

4. Use the same material to seal around the speaker as you reinstall the woofer to the spacer. Don't forget to reconnect the speaker.

Subwoofer
I didn't want to mess with removing the parcel shelf and the under shelf liner in the trunk to completely seal the sub, but I imagine that sealing it with foam similar to the front door speakers will help.

1. Make sure to put some thin foam tape or something similar (blue tac, moleskin) around the plastic shelf where it contacts the metal rear frame because it will rattle. Access this through the trunk after removing the shelf deadener.

2. Take some polyfill, just a bit to begin with, and stuff it into the bottom of the sub cage that is found in the truck. WARNING: I think there is a very small amp located in the bottom of this cage, and if it gets hot enough, the poly fill could ignite. At this point, I have been checking and not noticing the amp getting warm at all, but it is possible. This is a short term, experimental fix for me since I'm planning on installing a real sub in the trunk later this year. If someone knows more about the sub amp + polyfill, please let us know. You could disassemble the sub cage and put something on top of the amp that doesn't transmit heat to further cool the polyfill stuffing.

Once you do these things, you'll need to tweak your tone controls on the head unit. You should immediately notice far more bass presence and impact. Additionally, you should not have to turn the volume up as high since the speakers are sealed better which allows you to enjoy a flatter response before the amp equalization kicks in to turn down the bass response.

I didn't think to take any pictures to add to these instructions, but I hope it is coherent enough to guide you if you want to try these tweaks out.

Yuck. I can't stand the bose system. The rear 6x9 in the back are just woofers. Pretty sure mine were blown. Upgraded everything to jl audio and got rid of the bose amp. Best money I have put into my car since I always listen to music. I know some people like the windows down and loud exhaust type of music. Best thing is the back of the bose headunit says made by Clarion