I'm not much of a person who documents every move with photos, so when I'm doing any projects, I hardly remember to take any photos before everything is done, and then it's mostly too late. This time i tried a bit harder to take some along the way, but this will not be a step-by-step guide as I think every person should add their own creativity to any project and not just copying.
I started with the
rear doors and reusing the bracket from the BOSE speaker made it very easy, just to pry out the old speaker element and put the new one in the bracket. Even the screw holes fit. The tweeter is located high on the door, and the old one was just to pop out, but needed to use a Dremel a bit to make the hole slightly larger, then it was just to slide the new tweeter in and secure it with a bit of hot glue. Attached the crossover just over the woofer and connected all the cables. Yes, it was as easy as it sound here.
Photo of the front and rear of the speaker in the bracket.
And the tweeter without the cover.
The
front doors and dash was a bit more time consuming, although not difficult. Also there I was reusing the bracket from the BOSE speaker, but they are very different from those in the rear, so some creativity was needed to make it fit. First off, the mounting flanges on the BOSE speaker are located almost at the bottom of the speaker and with a slightly larger diameter than the standard 6,5", meaning the hole is too big. For this I made a ring out of waterproof plywood to get the correct hole and position for the new speaker.
A couple of photos from the front door speaker front and rear.
As we can see, I needed to cut away the "back cover" to make room for the magnet. After the photo was taken I glued on a piece of plastic to act like an umbrella to prevent water to fall directly on the magnet (make sure its not too deep for the available room in the door). Also the pieces for the woofer crossover was glued on the inside of the black plastic with hot glue.
For the dash speaker grill, not sure the correct word, pops easily out after removing a couple of screws, and it's also easy to find the center of the tweeter position from the shape on the underside of the grill. Then its just to cut out the correct hole for the flush mounted tweeter and connect it all before assembling.
A photo of the flush mounted tweeter.
Everything worked at first try and during the test drive the sound was quite okey, but after some songs it was clear that the tweeter was a bit too loud. I tried to adjust the treble a few steps down in the head unit, but still didn't feel right. Back to the garage and pull out the crossover for the tweeters and flick the switch to -3dB and a new test drive. Now it felt so much better with nice balance between the woofer and tweeter. Me and my wife had a drive in the evening and she said the sound was much more 3-dimensional and she heard details in the music she hadn't heard in the car before, and I have to agree, the sound is so much stress-free and calm. It's like the speakers are ready for anything, you can throw complex music at them and they handle it as the most obvious thing.
It was a massive upgrade from the std. speakers to the BOSE speakers, but I dare say it's almost the same step up from the BOSE to the Focal speakers. In fact it's a bit better than I expected as I didn't believe the std amplifier would deliver at this level. But this only makes me think it can even be better with a better amp.
I have to mention the level of difficulty and it probably depend if you have std or BOSE sound system.
Although I have never tried, I think it would be slightly more difficult coming from std sound system, as you would need to fabricate or buy rings to get the speaker in the right position and also find a solution for the rubber sealing towards the door panel. From this I would say the difficulty level would be 5 out of 10.
Coming from BOSE speakers it's much easier, at least in the rear, and I would say the difficulty level to be 4 out of 10. In both cases you would need some tools and some materials, but it's more time consuming than difficult.
One thing to mention coming from original BOSE system, is that the tweeter doesn't have a crossover (mentioned earlier in the thread), and that makes me think it could be a crossover under the dash where the cables split to the door and up to the dash. Other possibility is that the woofer and the tweeter has separated channels from the amp and the crossover is done there, but that is less likely. I used a LCH-meter to measure all cables from the woofer and tweeter in my non-BOSE wire harness and couldn't read anything than just the cables. But this is something I would take into consideration upgrading from a original BOSE system.
In the next days I will dive into replacing the subwoofer and adding an amp for the sub.
A question in the end, how much did the BOSE option cost ordering a new car? And how much for the B&O option?