If you love your factory Bose system, love the current clarity and highs but just want to lay down a solid foundation of bass (which is completely lacking from the factory, IMO) without messing up your current acoustics, just follow my recipe. Even Maxine, your DVD navigation girl will sound just fine!

Obtain the following ingredients:
- Polk 12" Momo Subwoofer
- Any good mono or bridgable amp with 200+ watts and built-in frequency control. My MTX Pro thunder works great
- A high to low input convertor such as the Rockford Fosgate CPAULOC
- A high quality in-line fuse
- High quality RCA cables (Monster cable, GE Ultra Prograde or similar)
- Good speaker, power, and ground wire




The Polk Momo box is a perfect fit for the Max trunk. Most standard 12" boxes are too big, especially for my car with the full sized spare option. This box also leaves plenty of room for luggage. The sealed box produces bass that is sweetly low, but tight and never too boomy.

The input convertor gives cleaner signal to the amp. Just tap into the rear speaker wire or even up front for input and connect it to the amp with RCA cables.

The main trick is in the tuning. If you leave the amp frequency up too high, your system will sound dull and muddy and you'll wonder where your tweeters went. Filter out everything above 100 hz or so (just a guess by my ear) and you'll have clean, solid bass filling your cabin blending perfectly with your already clear, crisp highs and midrange. Once you have the frequency set right, boost gain to taste. Again, I think too much gain muddies the clarity, but that's personal preference. This is the best system I've ever had now and that's saying a lot considering I've always replaced factory speakers and head units. This car sounds perfect now and so can yours with this recipe! Bon appetit!

 

About how much did you spend on your whole setup? when you set up by tapping the rear speakers I would like to know if you think its better to tap in at the front or would that only be good if i was going to replac eall of the factory speakers.

 

I spent about $600 on the whole setup. I think the factory speakers are great! I think it would be a huge waste of money to replace them all if you already have the factory Bose upgrade. Just upgrade to the sub first, then see what you think. You can always strip speakers later. Also, you can tap into the speakers up front too, doesn't matter where as long as it's not filtered down by a crossover or something (like right at a tweeter location.)

 

Its nice to see someone with sum kick in the trunck. I have an old system just waiting to go in. Over the weekend i went to a shop in CT and they said they hadnt done a 04 yet and said they wouldnt do it because they werent sure what to do. Atleast they were honest, i suppose tho i would really like to put this in at one point.

 

So is it true that each speaker has its own amp? I'm about to take my car in to get a sub and amp installed, to replace the rear deck factory subs. Did you just basically unplug those factory subs and run the speaker line to your amp instead? If you could give me as many suggestions as you can within 2 hours from now (its almost 11am pacific time), before I drop my car off, that'd be great. You can email me at chris@chrisaustin.us I'd like to just be able to give the guys a few tips or what to look for since not many places have had the pleasure of working on an '04 yet. Thanks so much in advance!

 

Chris, sorry I missed your deadline. I'm not sure if there are amps at each speaker, but it looks like there might be. And hell no, I did not unhook my factory anything! When you say "factory subs" I assume you just mean the rear woofers. You still need those for mid-bass because that's best left inside the cabin. My recipe is great because it only adds onto the strengths of the system without taking anything away. If Nissan is calling the rear speakers "subwoofers" they need their friggin heads examined. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the strengths of this factory system, but these cars have no "sub" range at all from the factory.

 

Thanks Mystery Man, it's GREAT to have some kick in the trunk. When you say you have an old system to put in, what do you have? Have you sized it yet? Like I said, not a lot fits back there so you'd better measure it up. I was able to use my amp from my 300m but check out my old MTX triple 10" box. This was the only way it would fit! Thus, my Polk Momo purchase.

 

Lol, yeah my old box fits, its two jl 12w3 with a kenwood exceleron 500 watt mono amp. I made sure to see if it all fits.

 

Great to see some pics and details of your install. Can you tell us how you routed the power wire throught the firewall and under the sills? Even better if you could provide pics of where you went through the firewall.

CM.

 

Looks great but can you expand further on the "The input convertor gives cleaner signal to the amp. Just tap into the rear speaker wire or even up front for input and connect it to the amp with RCA cables." part of how did you get to the rear speaker wires and how did you go about tapping into them w/o splicing or if you spliced the wires exactly how is it wire? Maybe antoher pic?

Thanks
KW

 

Great post! space saving and clean looks... aah yes! and photos.
Nice work...! RC

 

Ok, the power goes through the firewall in an existing grommet on the drivers side so no drilling! I can't really get my camera in there, but look at my pic above of the inline fuse and you'll see the general area it goes in. After it comes out of the firewall, just tuck it in under the carpet and along the drivers side door sills to the back seat and under. Very standard car wiring....'bout the same as any other car I've done.

As for the input convertor, that is actually spliced into the speaker wires. It draws so little power that that the signal is virtually unaffected to the existing speakers. It also eliminates any line noise you might pick up otherwise. No, I don't have pics of this either as my friend did this part while I worked on other stuff. I hope this helps, good luck!

 

Jack, I did the same thing, although I had a pro shop install the amp and sub... but luckily my amp already had the high/low convertor so I didnt need an external one.... sounds and looks great! http://www.chrisaustin.us/char.html

 

Hello, I want to do this myself but I'm a little scared of messing things up, so if you'd explain this to me I'd appreciate it.

How did you "tap" into that back wire w/o shorting anything out if you don't mind me asking? Also, what is the omn that the factory system uses, 2? 4? 8?

Thanks for your help

-Keith Winter

 

I am still having trouble finding that groummet on the vehicles left side near the break diaphram. Is it the one that all the cables com thru and channel into the engine compartment?

 

There are little electrical attachments that you can buy at Radio Shack and other places that are called (surprise surprise) wire taps. They clamp on the top of a wire holding your new wire in place and a metal guilletine type thing goes down through both wires to make the contact. This way, the wires never need to be cut and if you make a mistake you can just take it off with almost no damage.

Also, last I knew all Bose systems are still using the 2 ohm thing with the amps at each speaker. I didn't put a tester on this one, but I assume it's the same. If anyone can correct me, please jump in.

 

Yes, that's the one, right near the brakes.

 

woops, wrong link..... www.chrisaustin.us/car.html that should work, sorry!

 

So how did you get the floor boards by the door up so you could run cable under them or where did you run your cable through on the car?

Thanks!

 

Did the same thing a few weeks back. Put in a line-out converter tapped off the back stock subs. I put in two JL 12W2s in a Competition Bandpass box powered by an older Rockford Fosgate Punch 100 amp (1992, back when they were good) and an Audio Control 3Xs Crossover. The sound is amazing, but sometimes a little too bass heavy. My rear decklid really vibrates now, so I have to take it to the dealer and have them tighten it down and put some soundproofing in by the stock subs as well. From what I have read on other threads, that works very well.

Here are some pictures of the line out converter and the subs:

http://www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip.../9200/max.html

 

Yeah, just installed my sub thanks to you all, but I'm having really bad vibration sounds from my rear deck too; I also think part of the noise comes from the rear deck 3rd brake light....

How did you all go about fixing the noise problem?

 

it's a TSB...call up the dealer and tell them that your rear deck rattles when you are driving and when you play the radio...they will schedule you for an appointment no problem...

i had the same problem on both 04 maxs (one was a lemon) and the dealer didn't even blink...they were able to fix without any hesitation

 

So they will fix that under warranty even though I added the sub to the system?

Thanks,
Keith Winter

 

Same here, I'm having trouble finding the "existing" grommit your talking about. If you could elaborate, it'd help alot. Is it the really tight one where the bundle of cables come through on the very far left? I tried to pry it open with a screwdriver but I couldn't even that in there so I'm stumped

 

I had a similar setup in a jeep I have which has since grown way out of control. I'm going to do my Maxima soon.

One thing I recomend is a punch amp with a punch base ****. You can adjust the amps output + or - 18 db from the cabin of the car and its very small and easy to hide. I'll put mine in the console.

I run and 8 inch kicker solobaric with a punch power 360 and I can rattle teeth with hip hop or listen to the most delicate chopin.

The next thing is to be sure the rear deck speakers are baffled to preven the air moved by the sub from distorting them and damaging them.