Turning Bose Sub Into Real Sub

I've been wanting to do this since last year when I first started looking into improving the bose crap since the quality just wasn't there for me. The entire system is in the process of being replaced, with only the door and dash speakers left to change. But anyway, this thread is about redoing the bose sub enclosure with real speakers. I found another person that had done it, but their thread was dead and all their pictures were gone. So I figured I'd make my own on here in case anyone else wants to do the same thing. The thread I got my spotty info from is here - Turning a Boxster BOSE enclosure into a real sub It says the guy used some Morel CAW538 woofers, so that's what I ordered for mine. I already had a brand new set of 5.25" skar components sitting here from an abandoned project, so I used the tweeters from that set to replace the bose 2" mid/tweeters or whatever they are. They're held in by some double sided T-Rex super strong tape. It seems super strong, and the speakers won't see direct sunlight, so I'm confident it'll hold for quite some time. If not, it's not hard to pull the box and stick them back in. The woofers I replaced with the aforementioned Morels, but I had to fab up some adapters to get them to fit in the bose box. Luckily they're a bit shorter than the bose woofers, so they're actually still a couple mm shorter even with the 1/4" of the adapter added, so there will be no problems putting the box back together. I lined both sides of the box (top and bottom) with highly reviewed amazon essentials sound deadening material. It was super time consuming (two 8-10 hour nights in the garage), but that's because I've never used it before, probably used it wrong, and spent a lot of time on my phone as well. Lol Lastly, I ran a thin bead of clear silicone around the whole sealing surface of the enclosure, as well as on the adapters I made in order to try to keep the box sealed with the better speakers and amp pushing more air. I guess tomorrow (later today I guess) I'll see whether all my hard work paid off or not when I put everything back together and put it back in the car. For reference, in case anyone wants to follow along, the morels are 8 ohm speakers, so if you don't mind running at 4 ohm (wired in parallel), they'll work perfect for you. Personally I'm kind of upset that I didn't see if they had 4 ohm ones, but I have more than enough power to push them anyway, so it's fine. Morel woofers - Home Amazon sound deadener - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XMF2V77/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_AWC5FS1PSPS4S56YD0XV?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 The box before opening it up The Morel woofers Skar tweeters Amazon sound deadener Factory Bose sh*t tweeters I used double sided tape to stick the wires to the outside of the tweeters to keep them hidden. New tweeters installed Morel vs Bose woofer comparison Super high quality professional grade speaker adapters Adapters installed Don't do what I did. Wait until after sound deadening to do the silicone. It takes 24 hours to cure, so I had my fingers in it I have no idea how many times while installing the deadener. It was a lot. Lol The finished product. It's a damn shame I have to keep something so pretty hidden away.

When I went to put everything back together, despite my measurements the morels made contact with the top half on both sides. The contact is limited to one back-plate screw on each woofer touching where the bottom half of the enclosure slopes upward, so I deemed it acceptable and put everything back together. The enclosure seemed to fight reassembly a little bit, but I'm pretty sure that's due to me being overzealous with the sound deadening on the sides. The box edges may have a bit more of an interference edge than I thought they did. Regardless, everything went together, and the box is now finally back in the car. It sounded good for a little bit, then my temporary sub amp started cutting in and out. Now I remember why I took it out of the last car I had it in. 🙄 The skar tweeters are crystal clear, as expected, even though I don't even have them crossed over yet. My next block of days off is going to be spent removing the door panels, installing new mids, installing the dash tweeters, and wiring the crossovers into the mess up front.

And just for the hell of it, since people actually seem to be more interested than I expected, here's my amplifier setup in the front trunk. My high amp is mounted to a slightly modified version of the rack/brace piece that the factory changer mounted to. I cut an oval into one side for the front channel RCAs and cut off one ear on the other side to keep it from contacting the power cable coming in. The sub amp and distribution block are mounted on a custom made (random board and some almost matching black automotive carpet) piece that bolts into some speed clips I mounted in convenient holes behind where the stock bose amp was. And to finish it off, I had to remove the tool kit from the panel it mounts to (I'll just keep it in the trunk separate), but all panels fit just like before and keep everything hidden.

Nice. I'm looking for a way to do this with the Cayman , but it's a much smaller box with a weirdly shaped driver. I don't know if I'll be able to get a driver that will fit.

No sh*t, I didn't even think that the Cayman would be different. Got any pics of it? These ones are already plenty small at 5"! Do you have room to put the enclosure from a boxster in there?

I don't have one convenient, but if you Google Cayman 987 bose subwoofer , you'll probably find pictures or eBay adds for it. It's a single 4x6 driver in a box in the passenger footwell. Kind of terrible. You can't even take it out because there's no carpet behind it. I'm not sure if the boxster one will fit, never seen anyone do it, but there's no room behind the seats, so I don't think it would be easy.

I'd heard about the foot well sub, but didn't know it was a Cayman thing. I thought they were in 986s for some reason. I haven't seen the inside of a Cayman behind the seats, so I'm not sure how different it is from a boxster . The enclosure in a boxster (987 anyway) sits on the rear shelf and fits pretty tight between the shelf and the roll bar. You most likely don't have the roll bar OR the little locking things that would hold it in place, but that can be overcome. You also wouldn't have the harness for the box, so you'd need to run all new wires. Honestly, if I were in your position, I'd buy a little monster 6.5" sub like the one I have and have a box custom built that would go in the factory position.

That's kind of what I was thinking. I've seen a couple of guys modify the factory box to put a small driver in, but its plastic so that's not ideal. A fiberglass replacement could be put together to fit the spot pretty easily.

If you do it, post it up. I want to see what you come up with!

PerferctlyNormal Person, I must have missed it in the post, but how do you like the sound? I'm about to start working on a similar installation in my 996. Thanks,

I liked it when my car was parked with the engine off, but when I'm driving the bass is either non-existent or the little woofers start distorting if I turn it up a little bit. I'm going to have a fully custom box built for it instead.

I appreciate and understand you guys wanting great sound in your cars. Really. I have killer sound in my 640 HP modified BMW F10 four door sedan. I get it. Cruising the interstate at constant high speed in near silence may (in some circumstances) be improved with tunes. But the Boxster is a convertible. It’s a sports car. It’s a PORSCHE . If you need a great sound system to enjoy the car, you simply bought the wrong car. Invest your money in an exhaust system and drive like you mean it.

Lol, that's your opinion, and it's basically worthless. That might work if you're one of those people who drive your car one day a week, but I'm not taking a week long road trip with no music. And since it's MY car, and I already have a full fabspeed setup, I prefer music AND exhaust. Now go find a different thread to troll.

Verify interesting. I've been itching to replace my CDR24 Bose system but was stuck at what to do for the subwoofer, and this gives me some good options I hadn't seen before. What is the power of your subwoofer amp btw? Do you think a 6" sub would fit? Are the front/door speakers still run by the head unit or separate amp? I already have a nice Kenwood double din head unit and Alpine amp for the front/door speakers (several actually, lol) so I'd probably go with full replacement and not deal with the fiber optic interface.

My amp is a 5 channel, so I've got two channels driving the doors and dash, two driving the rear tweeters, and the sub channel I think is either 300 or 500 watts rms. I'd have to look it up again to be sure. I'm running a retrosound technophobic. I don't think any 6" sub would fit without rebuilding the entire enclosure anew. My next plan is to get a custom box built for either a slim sundown 8 or 10, depending on what I can fit.

So what's the verdict on the stock 987 Boxster subwoofer box? Is it possible to get anything good out of it? I started my sound system upgrade process, inspired in no small part by this thread. My install includes 5 channel amp, with the goal to power upgraded sub box with 5th channel. I've got same Morel woofers, but my first attempt was just replacing the speakers, I did not add sound deadener. My results I guess are similar to what original poster described: when parked in garage sound is decent (at least better than similar car with just 2-way speakers in doors with no sub). But I had to reduce gain on sub channel, and use band-pass filter of about 60-120 Hz instead of just low-pass. If I make it louder or move filter lower - I get some distortion. Not sure if this is the woofers or some flex of the box itself. I've got some of same blue dynamat thing from Amazon , but now I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble. Will lining box with sound deadener make it any better? PerfectlyNormalPerson - what did you end up with?

i'm currently having another box custom built that will house two sundown 6.5s and use the factory face to keep the stock look. we narrowed it down to the rattling/crappy sound i was hearing coming from the box itself, the way it was constructed just wasn't up to higher power/output/sound levels. your other option would be to follow what i did but pay an enclosure expert to modify yours to get rid of the rattle i ended up with.

forgot to update again after the last one. the box with the sundowns fell through as well. they're just too big to work with the limited amount of space available. the guy i was having try to make the boxes for me ended up just going through this enclosure and sealing/padding a bunch of stuff to get rid of the horrible rattles i was having. they're MOSTLY gone, but not completely. i'm still not really happy with it, so i'll probably end up paying the premium and going to a professional shop to see about getting a passenger footwell enclosure made for one of my 6.5s.

I was looking at this thread and scratching my head wondering where that box came from, because it was NOTHING like the Bose in my car... then I saw the Boxster vs Cayman . I was so lost at first. Ha ha. But yeah, the Cayman as that weird footwell box thingy. Man, I hate Bose ...

lol, same here, i had no idea the cayman box existed at first. and yeah, i don't care for them either, but this has been one shitty rabbit hole to go down.