How To: Install a Bose Tyre Sub

[Bowders1]

Hi folks thought i would post up to the techi section this mod.

 

The Bose Tyre Sub is a round enclosure that is generally fitted into Mazda 6 and other jap cars like even the Honda S2000 and Mazda RSX.  

 

 

It has a built in Amplifier and speaker. In some models there are 2 speakers. I purchased the single speaker one.  

 

 

This is not a major upgrade to a sound system as such and this subwoofer setup doesn't give shaking bass, but I never expected that. Just a nice complimentary low level Bass sound to my existing set up. i am impressed

 

This mod appeals to me for the following reasons:

 

- Very Cheap (around £30) for a Ebay purchase)

- Not to difficult to wire up

- completely hidden and out of sight

- No huge cutting trying to fit it.

- A tune up to the std head unit

 

So first thing is to make sure it fit's ok in spare tyre well. 

 

removed the foam section that holds the scissor jack to get to spare tyre

 

 

test for fitment

 

 

fits perfect.

 

I wanted to reuse the tyre spindle/bolt to hold sub in place but the threaded section was too short now. So I picked off the top plastic holding threaded bolt in place which allowed me to remove the bolt.

 

 

I then got a long threaded section from B&Q, measured it against sub with a bit extra thread to bite into boot section and cut it down.

 

new threaded section verses old one

 

 

again test fitment

 

 

perfect.

 

now to wiring up sub 

 

I decided to follow the wiring diagram up above in the thread and use a relay to ensure the Bose is being switch on only with Stereo.

 

You maybe able to wire it up without a relay and more simple but i have heard folks suffer from a clicking noise when sub is not powered up independent to HU. Adding a relay is no that hard and safer IMO.

 

Here is a wiring diagram i used from another site. I mainly used it for the relay connections

 

 

I just ignored the separate AMP as I don't have one and wired direct to HU and Battery 

 

So the wiring would be something like

 

Bose SUB/AMP

 

- 3 thin wires (purchase a single RCA female connector) wire to HU RCA output

(1 of those wires is a dummy wire as not fed from the actual sub due to the sub being mono) so ignore it. I only found this out when stripping back the wires all the way to first plug in sub.

You will only use the 2 wires(think they are a red/black and a brown)

- 1 thick wire(Blue/Red) to relay (pin 87)

- 1 thick wire(Black) to earth

 

Relay 

 

- Pin 87 to Blue/Red wire on Sub

- Pin 86 to Earth

- Pin 85 to HU remote / ariel wire

- Pin 30 to 12v live feed (Battery and fused)

 

 

Having discovered that i could not use the rear speakers to use as a output signal to the Bose sub due to a frequency imbalance(specific to Bose low input) I was very pleasantly surprised my std double dim SAT NAV head unit has a number of connections at the back to support ISO to RCA as well as other video AUX connections.

 

Here they are:

 

 

 

So after research  I discovered i could get a ready made ISO to RCA loom for VAG cars.

 

This

 

 

 

For folks that have a none std head unit most if not all HU's today have RCA output already and so do not need to mess as much as me. 

 

If not and folks don't have capability in their std HU then you will need a Low frequency converter found inmost audio shops or Halfords to take std speaker wires down to a frequency to be able to connect sub wires up.

 

I purchased a female RCA connector and soldered it to the 2 signal wires from the Bose Sub, then connected up to the head unit RCA loom i purchased and job done.  No interference at all.

 

So i then attacked wiring the thing up.

 

I decided to mount relay behind front passenger side kick panel.

 

Routed live feed wire(with 30amp fuse)  from battery through bulkhead out behind glovebox and down to relay.

 

 

 

Ran remote wire and mono RCA from HU wire behind glovebox and connected up remote to relay.

 

 

Added new wire from relay to Bose Sub (live pin 87)

 

Earthed the Bose Sub

 

I routed wires along the door opening plastic trunking and up behind rear seat side panel and out behind CD changer area.

 

I also cut out a section in the boot foam to hold the scissor jack

 

 

Installed Sub 

 

 

Happy with results so far....

[VeedubyaGTi]

Great guide, bookmarked for when I get one!

 

Thanx Bowders

[aikidoguy]

Hi Bowders, great guide; I traded in a Mazda 6 for an Octavia and I kept the Bose tyre sub

 

Question (please pardon me if I've missed the obvious), what connections did you use at the HU? you have two wires for each speaker (left and right), did you connect to both of the signal wires or just one pair of speaker wires (i.e. just the right speaker)?

 

Thanks.

[macmaclau]

It is really good installation guide.

 

Question about 

- 3 thin wires (purchase a single RCA female connector) wire to HU RCA output

(1 of those wires is a dummy wire as not fed from the actual sub due to the sub being mono) so ignore it. I only found this out when stripping back the wires all the way to first plug in sub.

Which color should I connect as positive(+) and negative (-) ?

[Bowders1]

Hi Bowders, great guide; I traded in a Mazda 6 for an Octavia and I kept the Bose tyre sub

 

Question (please pardon me if I've missed the obvious), what connections did you use at the HU? you have two wires for each speaker (left and right), did you connect to both of the signal wires or just one pair of speaker wires (i.e. just the right speaker)?

 

Thanks.

 

Hi there , I have  std HU so i had to get a ISO to RCA connector to allow me to get the Bose sub to connect properly(you can't just connect to a std speaker as the Bose signal is very low). Not sure if you are using a relay like i did but you will end up with 3 wires to go to HU RCA. I thought that it would be 2 + wires to L and R RCA and 1 - wire that is common and shared to both L and R -.. However one of the + wires ended up being a blank so this left just 1+ and 1- so all i did was connect to one left channel RCA and this works fine.

 

Hope it helps the answer below is also linked to this.

 

 

It is really good installation guide.

 

Question about 

- 3 thin wires (purchase a single RCA female connector) wire to HU RCA output

(1 of those wires is a dummy wire as not fed from the actual sub due to the sub being mono) so ignore it. I only found this out when stripping back the wires all the way to first plug in sub.

Which color should I connect as positive(+) and negative (-) ?

 

 

Thanks buddy

 

You will only use the 2 wires which I think they are a red/black = + and the other is brown = -

[Paulbrown]

Would love to do this for mine but I know the head unit I have the nav one does have the little plug on back for rca cables :(

Nice little guild tho!!

[Samwise944]

So you're using the relay as there is no remote wire/trigger on the Sub itself?

 

Also, do you have any specs for the sub? I'm wondering what the lowest gauge cable I can get away with for power?

 

Thanks for the guide.

Edited 3 December, 2014 by Samwise944

[drew79]

Ive just bought one of these subs, and I have a query regarding the audio wiring... as am having a look at the bit of loom that came out of the car, and think it might be balanced audio.

 

Which is where it basically has two signal wires, one being out of phase of the other, and then a separate braided screen which is only connected at one end.

 

So the brown and yellow wires are the two signal wires, and the black/orange is the screen (which explains why it isn't connected at the sub end of the wiring)

 

For those that don't know about balanced audio is used on professional audio gear, studio stuff, and for long cable runs, as you don't tend to get any interference.  Which makes sense why they would use a balanced audio connection for these, as the same bit of loom carries power, and some parts of the audio wiring aren't even screened, and am sure you would get interference otherwise.

 

I cant deny that it probably works okay as shown in the wiring diagram, but think its wrong, and would work a lot better if wired using a balun, to convert the normal un-balanced 2-wire audio output from the head unit, to the balanced 3-wire system used by the sub.

[kentphil1]

For those that don't know about balanced audio is used on professional audio gear, studio stuff, and for long cable runs, as you don't tend to get any interference.  Which makes sense why they would use a balanced audio connection for these, as the same bit of loom carries power, and some parts of the audio wiring aren't even screened, and am sure you would get interference otherwise.

 

I cant deny that it probably works okay as shown in the wiring diagram, but think its wrong, and would work a lot better if wired using a balun, to convert the normal un-balanced 2-wire audio output from the head unit, to the balanced 3-wire system used by the sub.

For somebody like me who is a bit of a hifi luddite , Could you explain how to go about doing what you refer to in the final paragraph, or provide a link for information reference please?.

[Bowders1]

For somebody like me who is a bit of a hifi luddite , Could you explain how to go about doing what you refer to in the final paragraph, or provide a link for information reference please?.

 

+1

[Bowders1]

Ive just bought one of these subs, and I have a query regarding the audio wiring... as am having a look at the bit of loom that came out of the car, and think it might be balanced audio.

 

Which is where it basically has two signal wires, one being out of phase of the other, and then a separate braided screen which is only connected at one end.

 

So the brown and yellow wires are the two signal wires, and the black/orange is the screen (which explains why it isn't connected at the sub end of the wiring)

 

For those that don't know about balanced audio is used on professional audio gear, studio stuff, and for long cable runs, as you don't tend to get any interference.  Which makes sense why they would use a balanced audio connection for these, as the same bit of loom carries power, and some parts of the audio wiring aren't even screened, and am sure you would get interference otherwise.

 

I cant deny that it probably works okay as shown in the wiring diagram, but think its wrong, and would work a lot better if wired using a balun, to convert the normal un-balanced 2-wire audio output from the head unit, to the balanced 3-wire system used by the sub.

 

Thanks drew79. That kinda makes sense to me and i wondered what that spare wire did as not connected at the end. It had lot's of sealant around it  but please describe better. I don't get interference from what i can hear with how i wired it up but I am no professional and the upgrade was purely a cheap upgrade and not a professional system upgrade. Having said that, I am only too willing to change the wiring if you can explain better and i can test it and see.  , 

[kentphil1]

+1

Glad it's not just me then

[kentphil1]

This was about all I could find that was in a form that was understandable, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_line, but all the sources seem to mention taking 2 rca inputs to a cat5 outlet, presumably for our purposes the unit would have to be custom construction or am I missing something really obvious here?.

[Bowders1]

I am now even more confused after reading that lol

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[kentphil1]

To be honest, most of the other threads I read on this were starting to give me a bad headache.

[leehands]

Just fitted one using this guide. Had a teething problem but soon cured it. Such a stealth mod. :clap:

[yesiamtom]

Another fantastic guide Bowders  :sun: I'll probably do this when I upgrade my whole sound system. Already got an amplifier wired up in the boot so can hopefully hijack those lines and use the amp to power decent rear speakers + send some power to this.

[9@zA]

I have one of these wired up in my car, and damn it sounds good. The bass is not to too high and not to low, just right.  a perfect complement to rest of your sound system.

 

 

[9@zA]

Hi folks thought i would post up to the techi section this mod.

 

The Bose Tyre Sub is a round enclosure that is generally fitted into Mazda 6 and other jap cars like even the Honda S2000 and Mazda RSX.  

 

 

It has a built in Amplifier and speaker. In some models there are 2 speakers. I purchased the single speaker one.  

 

 

This is not a major upgrade to a sound system as such and this subwoofer setup doesn't give shaking bass, but I never expected that. Just a nice complimentary low level Bass sound to my existing set up. i am impressed

 

This mod appeals to me for the following reasons:

 

- Very Cheap (around £30) for a Ebay purchase)

- Not to difficult to wire up

- completely hidden and out of sight

- No huge cutting trying to fit it.

- A tune up to the std head unit

 

So first thing is to make sure it fit's ok in spare tyre well. 

 

removed the foam section that holds the scissor jack to get to spare tyre

 

 

test for fitment

 

 

fits perfect.

 

I wanted to reuse the tyre spindle/bolt to hold sub in place but the threaded section was too short now. So I picked off the top plastic holding threaded bolt in place which allowed me to remove the bolt.

 

 

I then got a long threaded section from B&Q, measured it against sub with a bit extra thread to bite into boot section and cut it down.

 

new threaded section verses old one

 

 

again test fitment

 

 

perfect.

 

now to wiring up sub 

 

I decided to follow the wiring diagram up above in the thread and use a relay to ensure the Bose is being switch on only with Stereo.

 

You maybe able to wire it up without a relay and more simple but i have heard folks suffer from a clicking noise when sub is not powered up independent to HU. Adding a relay is no that hard and safer IMO.

 

Here is a wiring diagram i used from another site. I mainly used it for the relay connections

 

 

I just ignored the separate AMP as I don't have one and wired direct to HU and Battery 

 

So the wiring would be something like

 

Bose SUB/AMP

 

- 3 thin wires (purchase a single RCA female connector) wire to HU RCA output

(1 of those wires is a dummy wire as not fed from the actual sub due to the sub being mono) so ignore it. I only found this out when stripping back the wires all the way to first plug in sub.

You will only use the 2 wires(think they are a red/black and a brown)

- 1 thick wire(Blue/Red) to relay (pin 87)

- 1 thick wire(Black) to earth

 

Relay 

 

- Pin 87 to Blue/Red wire on Sub

- Pin 86 to Earth

- Pin 85 to HU remote / ariel wire

- Pin 30 to 12v live feed (Battery and fused)

 

 

Having discovered that i could not use the rear speakers to use as a output signal to the Bose sub due to a frequency imbalance(specific to Bose low input) I was very pleasantly surprised my std double dim SAT NAV head unit has a number of connections at the back to support ISO to RCA as well as other video AUX connections.

 

Here they are:

 

 

 

So after research  I discovered i could get a ready made ISO to RCA loom for VAG cars.

 

This

 

 

 

For folks that have a none std head unit most if not all HU's today have RCA output already and so do not need to mess as much as me. 

 

If not and folks don't have capability in their std HU then you will need a Low frequency converter found inmost audio shops or Halfords to take std speaker wires down to a frequency to be able to connect sub wires up.

 

I purchased a female RCA connector and soldered it to the 2 signal wires from the Bose Sub, then connected up to the head unit RCA loom i purchased and job done.  No interference at all.

 

So i then attacked wiring the thing up.

 

I decided to mount relay behind front passenger side kick panel.

 

Routed live feed wire(with 30amp fuse)  from battery through bulkhead out behind glovebox and down to relay.

 

 

 

Ran remote wire and mono RCA from HU wire behind glovebox and connected up remote to relay.

 

 

Added new wire from relay to Bose Sub (live pin 87)

 

Earthed the Bose Sub

 

I routed wires along the door opening plastic trunking and up behind rear seat side panel and out behind CD changer area.

 

I also cut out a section in the boot foam to hold the scissor jack

 

 

Installed Sub 

 

 

Happy with results so far....

Hey bowders

I feel all standard original factory HU , speakers, and wiring used is just not of good quality.....would you say the HU you using currently has made any difference to the out put to the quality of sound compared to the factory fitted in your car......I Fancy after market Double Din Android, thingy system. have you done any research on these and what is your find, if you would care to share. 

[Bowders1]

Hi buddy,

The HU I have is a marked improvement to the single Din units as it does have a better power output. However like my original post explained I did this mod as a cheap tune up. The std speakers are rubbish compared to say Audi and even VW. So I have replaced my front speakers to components that were just wide enough to fit in doors with a little cutting and a bit of modding to the tweeter housing. I also fitted better rear speakers that again would fit to std holes . The best free mod is unplug the std rear tweeters as they make sound in rears pants. A aftermarket double Din HU is going to make a big improvement as will defo have more power. You may find you will need to replace speakers then though .

Hope it helps..

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[9@zA]

Hi buddy,

The HU I have is a marked improvement to the single Din units as it does have a better power output. However like my original post explained I did this mod as a cheap tune up. The std speakers are rubbish compared to say Audi and even VW. So I have replaced my front speakers to components that were just wide enough to fit in doors with a little cutting and a bit of modding to the tweeter housing. I also fitted better rear speakers that again would fit to std holes . The best free mod is unplug the std rear tweeters as they make sound in rears pants. A aftermarket double Din HU is going to make a big improvement as will defo have more power. You may find you will need to replace speakers then though .

Hope it helps..

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi bowders

thanks for the reply. will do some more research and will share my MOD with you guys.   adidaso

[9@zA]

Can we also please ad  .... This subwoofer is a 2ohm dual coil , and a lot of people have 4ohms amplifiers. To run this sub properly you need to

 

Take 1 negative from 1 terminal and 1 positive from 2nd terminal and jumper them or connect them together

 

Now you are left with 1 negative from 1 terminal, and 1 positive from the other ...connect these to the amp and Bang Bang.

 

I took the sub out  of the housing and filled it with some pillow fillings .... not too much, even better Bang Bang but civilised.

 

Hope I made sense here, and not given you guys a headache

[Bowders1]

Please can you give more details buddy. Do you mean the HU amplifier or a external amplifier to the HU and the Sub as a amp too. I just wired mine up as listed above on main thread is that how you did it. Mine sounds good but if I can improve it further with more appropriate wiring that would be cool.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[9@zA]

Please can you give more details buddy. Do you mean the HU amplifier or a external amplifier to the HU and the Sub as a amp too. I just wired mine up as listed above on main thread is that how you did it. Mine sounds good but if I can improve it further with more appropriate wiring that would be cool.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hey Bowders

 

The AMP which is mounted on the SUB housing has to go as its not powerful enough.....Then I bought a separate amplifier 4 ohms 100watts max MONO channel( only using quarter of power on AMP setting) .

 

An RCA high to low Convertor which I tapped in to one of the front speaker signal wire( ideally just behind the HU plug)  

 

a REMOTE wire which is tapped to ignition power at the HU plug which runs up to the AMP to switch it on and off  via ignition.

 

Decent RCA PHONO leads that connects from RCA H2L Converter and to the amp.    

 

And most importantly to jumper the subwoofer it self to run on 4ohms rather then 2ohms.

 

And last but not least to unscrew the SUB from its housing and fill the housing with some pillow filling( that's what i did and not too much , just to cover the walls inside the housing...................and it ROCKS

 

Have a look at the attached diagrams . hope it HELPS

[Sjabba]

With an afthermarket HU is it possible to use the remote-power cabel (with addition of a fuse) te power the woofer?