I've decided to go aftermarket in the stereo department. Will aftermarket speakers fit in the front BOSE enclosures, or do I have to custom mount them? What size speakers are you guys using? And what are some good mid-priced brands (dont want to spend more than $100 per pair).

 

I got 5 1/4" in the front....the installer said that was the biggest without custom fitting something. 6x9's fit in the rear deck. I went with Polk's...$160 for the rear and $90 for the front. They are a little more than you said, but they sound absolutely unbelievable! People have honestly thought that i have subs in the trunk and i keep my bass flatlined! If that's too high, check out Rockford Fosgate or I think Infinity offers a few speakers for around that. You might want to check crutchfield.com or carmedia1.com

 

thats weird because in my car I have 4x6 in the front and 6.5 in the rear. Are the speakers different between the SE and GXE. Either way when you decide to buy speakers look at some sites on the web and dont buy anything from circut city, or crutchfield. They are so overpriced. A couple of decent sites are http://www.thezeb.com, and http://www.discountdirect.com.
If you search the web for "wholesale car audio" you'll find several more. I hope this helps.



92GXE, touring wing, 18” racing wheels, Port&Polished intake, custom intake, custom yellow interior, racing seats, back seats taken out and replaced with subs and amps, NOS kit, Suspension tech. Lowering springs, custom grille, soon to be custom painted and have the whole engine rebuilt for big shot NOS and custom SC and tranny converted to 5-speed.

 

Based on what I found out on the net the front Bose enclosures take 4" speakers and 6x9" fit in the rear. I have a 91 GXE with the Bose that I will replace as soon as the box comes from UPS. I ordered an all Blaupunkt system (not very fancy, but us old guys get upset from loud noises), and Ill let you know how it sounds as soon as I get a chance to put it in.
BTW, the 4x6" front speakers are for the non-Bose systems.

 

That makes since now because my factory speakers were all infinity. Either way just make sure you get goods mids if you plan on getting subs. The bass out of your 6x9's wont make a difference even if you have a crappy sub in the car. Nice crisp high's are sweet.

92GXE, touring wing, 18” racing wheels, Port&Polished intake, custom intake, custom yellow interior, racing seats, back seats taken out and replaced with subs and amps, NOS kit, Suspension tech. Lowering springs, custom grille, soon to be custom painted and have the whole engine rebuilt for big shot NOS and custom SC and tranny converted to 5-speed.

 

I replaced all of my speakers b/c they sucked and the amps blew on two of them. I didn't want to spend more than $100/ pair, but as soon as I went out and heard the dif between some $60 speakers and some $110 (rear) and $150 (fronts) I was sold! I bought some 6.5' 2-way co-axel MB Quart's for the front and some 6x9 3-way Memphis's for the rear. To power these babies, I bought a $250 Kicker amp (I don't know the specs on it b/c I don't know jack about amps) and wired all of them into it and mounted it in the trunk on the back of the back seat. They sound AWESOME!! It cost me a lot of $, but I don't regret one dollar of it. I also put a pair of Rockford Fosgate punches in the rear to give me a little bass. I didn't want too much bass, but what I have is enough to fill in the gap. Good luck!

 

From my experience with door speakers they pretty much all sound the same when you get decent ones. I have had polks and pioneer in my car hooked up to an amp, and my friend has all MB- Quart's that he paid an arm and a leg for. If we crank them there really is no difference. I acctually think that mine sound better for highs. Either way as lond as you have decent speakers and an amp then they will sound a hell of a lot better than stock. I would recommend that you get at least 3-way speakers because then you wont need to buy any tweeters. You'll regret not getting them if you eventually put in some subs.




92GXE, touring wing, 18” racing wheels, Port&Polished intake, custom intake, custom yellow interior, racing seats, back seats taken out and replaced with subs and amps, NOS kit, Suspension tech. Lowering springs, custom grille, soon to be custom painted and have the whole engine rebuilt for big shot NOS and custom SC and tranny converted to 5-speed.

 

Yeah, definately go with three way speakers...they are worth it! About the amp though, i chose not to get an amp and like i said, my system loves to be cranked. I get great response from just my head-unit. I've got an alpine deck pushing 35x4,i'm pretty sure that's peak power, so its probably more like 20x4 RMS. My speakers are the EX line of Polk and I am really glad I chose them. In my opinion the sound you get for the price is a great deal!!

 

ok the front doors...
the hole and the plastic enclosure is made to fit a 4x6. Bose custom enclosure speaker is only 4. if you have bose and want to run 4x6 or 5.25 then you need to get the non bose enclosure or custom make one.

the rear deck...
the hole in the sheet metal is in deed 6.5. bose systems run a 6X9 because there's a spacer and a 6X9 bracket that the bose speaker is mounted to. either way u can run 6X9 (unbolt speaker off spacer and bolt in new one)..or run 6.5 (unbolt entire assembly and drill holes for new mounting points into the rear metal deck).
Dan

 

I have some nice Kicker components installed in my '84 Celica which is sitting back home in NY. They are 4" mids and 1" tweeters with a crossover. I'll get them when I go back home for Xmas, and for now I'll just run the BOSE speakers off my head unit (I'm sure I can figure out the wiring).

Think 6x9's sound better than 6.5" 's? I do have a 12" MTX sub I can install, but one of my friends wnats to buy it.... I dunno, the 6x9's will have more bass I'm sure.

 

hmmm..i've read/heard that a round speaker produces better bass/sound quality than a oval speaker.
Dan

 

[I]Mixing Bose and non-Bose components isn't a good idea. The Bose speaker units expect to see a line level input (to the Bose amp). You would have to use preamp output from the head unit, assuming you have this. Do not rewire the speaker units to bypass the Bose amps, and drive it from the head speaker outputs, because the Bose speakers only have an impedance of 1.2 ohms and your amp will burn out.

 

I'm in the same delema....I bought some kick *** 4x6 infinty kappa's for my door speakers. I recently blew outthe bose speakers and they made crazy squelling noises for a few minutes after i started up my car. I was just gonna modify the bracket thats in there now but i first tried to testthe speaker out and no noise came out. So im guessing there is something wrong in the amp(?? guessing thats what that thing is not a big stereo guy). So l shopped around and can not find a bracket for the non-bose system which is recommended for me to get(haven't checked the dealers but i'll pay and arm and a leg for brackets). Then i figured i could make my own bracket out of wood easily but i noticed there is a thick cable that blugs into the current bracket and i wouldn't know what wires to use. I currently have a panasonic cd player. Should I run my own wires or get the bracket from the dealer?? Or is there a simple way to figure out what wires to use out of the cable. Thanks.

Don

 

In my opinion I would rerun all new wires to the back deck speakers. The amp in the maxima I think sucks compared to technology out today. Even at first when I just ran all of my speakers off of just the head unit it sounded much louder and clearer than the setup with the factory amp. I took my amp out and threw it in the trash. I have aftermarket amps for all my speakers now, but in my experience its better to just use the power from a new head unit then to worry about trying to still use your existing factory amp.



92GXE, touring wing, 18” racing wheels, Port&Polished intake, custom intake, custom yellow interior, racing seats, back seats taken out and replaced with subs and amps, NOS kit, Suspension tech. Lowering springs, custom grille, soon to be custom painted and have the whole engine rebuilt for big shot NOS and custom SC and tranny converted to 5-speed.

 

I just changed out the Bose system on my 91 yesterday, and this is what I can tell you:
Front Speakers:
Bose doesn't make it easy to do a straight swap of the speaker. The Bose speaker has a 3 screw pattern, and all other aftermarket ones have four. The speaker sits in a recess so using a 4x6 to 4 " adaptor plate (that Crutchfield sent) wouldn't seal the box without using something like bondo. Also, the Bose 4" was a little bigger than the Blaupunkt 4" speakers I used. I opened the enclosure, took out the amp and mounted the speaker from the inside of the box. The problem with this is that the back of the speaker hit the back of the enclosure. So I had to cut out a part of the back of the enclosure so I could close it back up. I just put some tape over the hole to reseal the enclosure. I wired the speaker to the original connector plug so I could keep using the original wiring harness. Two of the wires are signal for the speaker, and two are power for the amp. It's easy to tell which are the amp power, because both front speakers have two wires which are the same color, they are also thicker on the chassis harness and there are markings on the amp circuit board.

Rear Speakers:
The Bose brackets have stubs so the speaker can't sit flush against the bracket without using a spacer (which did come with the 6x9 Blaupunkts I got). I again wired the speakers to the former amp/speaker connector. I will probably go back in there, cut the stubs off and take out the spacers to get some more trunk room. (At some point I'll probably just mount the speakers to the rear deck to move them up more for more room: we do family vacations and need the trunk room.

Head unit:
The adaptor the Crutchfield sent just had to soldered to the harness that came with the head unit, and then everything plugged together. The also include the antenna adaptor (two pin diversity to Motorola).

The components I got were the:
Blaupunkt Colorado receiver (40w peak per channel)
PCxi402 in the front
PCxt693 in the rear
Altogether it was about $280. I think it sounds pretty good. It lacks a little in deep base (30-50Hz). It does however play loud enough for my 16 year old to think it's "cool". Only problem is that the radio front panel lights don't dim when I turn the headlights on.

 

The thing is i've heard and also believe the amp acts as a crossover also so removing it would also take some performance away. Just a thought.....I don't think it would hurt the speaker.Later.

Don

 

Are you just planning on replacing the head unit, or are you going to change the speakers too? The reason is because the factory amp wont work as well as the head units amp with aftermarket speakers. Depends on what your plans are for your audio system.


92GXE, touring wing, 18” racing wheels, Port&Polished intake, custom intake, custom yellow interior, racing seats, back seats taken out and replaced with subs and amps, NOS kit, Suspension tech. Lowering springs, custom grille, soon to be custom painted and have the whole engine rebuilt for big shot NOS and custom SC and tranny converted to 5-speed.

 

yo if you check out my profile and get a crutchfield catalog, you can see what i got in my ride

 

Can you give me a part number for the 4x6 to 4 adaptor plate from Crutchfield? This part helped you insert your aftermarket front speaker in the 3 hole well where the Bose speaker went?

 

After visiting the other sites mentioned in this thread for car audio I noticed crutchfield is a big F'in rip off. Don't ever buy anything from them. I bought a pair of infinity kappa 4x6 2 ways from crutchfield for 130 bucks and carmedia1.com has em for 80 bucks......needless to say the package is on its way back to crutchfield and they don't price match. Later.

Don

 

The 4x6" to 4" adaptor plate is Crutchfield #142SA464. It is made by Scosche (www.scosche.com) PN SA464. Crutchfield charges $6 for a pair, if you don't buy a whole system (free if you do). I hacked one up trying to make an adaptor to the 3 hole Bose mount, but wound up not using it. Probably the best thing to do, to use a standard 4" speaker in the Bose enclosure, would be to just fill the recess in with bondo and mount the speaker to that. For a non Bose system just get 4x6" speakers.

IMO, Crutchfield's pprices are worth it if you buy a whole system, because all the little add-ins and adaptors are included for free and you don't have to spend time running around buying them.

 

Crutchfield is a total rip off if you are planning on getting a whole system. If you told me everything that you wanted I could find it somewhere else and save you at least a couple hundred dollars. All of the harnesses they throw in for free only cost you like $15 at walmart. Let me know if you want me to price you some equipment. I know that I can get everything that they sell for at least 20% less. It's your money so its up to you. Just trying to help you out.



92GXE, touring wing, 18” racing wheels, Port&Polished intake, custom intake, custom yellow interior, racing seats, back seats taken out and replaced with subs and amps, NOS kit, Suspension tech. Lowering springs, custom grille, soon to be custom painted and have the whole engine rebuilt for big shot NOS and custom SC and tranny converted to 5-speed.

 

I have a 92 SE with bose, and I recently replaced all speakers and headunit. I started with the headunit and quickly discovered that the rest of the bose system was not cooperating. Now I have Infinity Kappa 5 1/4" component system up front and Kappa 3 way 6x9s. They sound great. The 5 1/4s fit into the bose enclosure without much trouble.... just remove old speakers, place new speakers in hole, and screw right into bose enclosure. the only problem I ran into was that I needed to cut out back of the bose enclosure. the speakers moved too much air to get through the existing port, so I cut myself a much bigger port in the back. problem solved, sounds great.

 

I can't believe nobody here has put 6 1/2" speakers in the doors. In my '91SE I took out all the Bose JUNK from the doors, and got some plexi-glass, cut it to fit the shape of the Bose speaker box, then cut a 6" speaker opening in the plexi-glass. Now you can mount some decent 6 1/2" speakers in those doors. I am using JBLs. I have the same series 6 X 9 JBLs in the rear deck. The new Kenwood head unit powers all that, with an amp hooked up to the pre-amp output powering a 6 1/2" Kicker tube in the trunk. The system sounds better than the Bose ever did.

 

6.5s is the only way to fly. Screw the adaptor make your own. Cut some 1/4 plywood to cover the front hole, and make a donut out of 3/4 mdf to get some spacing for the driver, and your down. I got trick and set the donut at a precise agle to get clearance in the back and spacing in the front, and filled the gap with fiberglass and bondo. Made some custom tweet pads for mounting up at the mirror.

Bi-wired crossovers with 120 per driver and 40 per tweeter. Front image and bass blending is the key to quality sound. Finish with 6.5 componant crosses in the rear deck. all a/d/s speakers and power.

Nak 45z with 6 4volt preouts.

Two Boston Accoustic pro 12.5 2 ohm series wit MRV bridged at greater than 600 watts.

Cranks! But clean and smooth, sound comp quality with super tight SPL.