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Wiring Subwoofer and Amplifier to BOSE System

No guarantees are made on the results, and anything you do yourself is at your own risk.

Wiring Subwoofer and Amplifier to BOSE System

By Wes Stinson

I don’t care what people say, there IS A WAY TO HOOK UP A SUBWOOFER TO BOSE. 

As far as tools required, there isn’t really much, just an array of screwdrivers, pliers and anything along those lines.

Special thanks to "Rex" of NICO for giving me this awesome setup!  One mans junk is another mans treasure!

You need to make sure that your amp has SPEAKER LEVEL INPUTS to make this ultra easy, if not a LINE LEVEL CONVERTER will be needed, and will be discussed later.

First, you must wire the power wire though the car.  This is the hardest part of the project, but still very easy…

I chose the drivers side, because if I went on the passenger side it would interfere with the ECU wires.  The drivers’ side is only the TCU.  While the TCU is important, it’s not as vital as the ECU. 

On the drivers side runs the hood release cord.  It’s a cord that moves within itself, so no possible way of chaffing the wire of something like that. 

Anyway, you take off the drivers’ side wheel and the cladding in the rear part of the wheel well, and you see this:

My screwdriver has the grommet pulled out. 

Now you have to go on the other side, take off the carpet kick panel to expose the TCU.  You will “see” this (its way back in there, I did it mostly by feel).

Same cord, but on the passenger compartment side

Simply run the wire though that hole and stuff the grommet around it, so that it will stay in place.

From there, you shove the power wire up the fender (other ECU wires run up there) and it will come out right here.  There’s a white thing where wires go into the engine compartment.

I tried describing this, but it’s hard to, so I will draw a diagram.  I’m sure you like looking at pictures more anyway…

The following pictures will show you how I wired it though, and I will go into detail after each picture.

Here is a picture of it routed through the engine bay:

Once you get in there, you will see how to wire it in there, but this will give you the idea. 

From there, just pull up the carpet (you need to take off the plastic doorsill things, held in by clips.  Pry up with a screwdriver), run it all the back.  Then you have to take out the back seat.  2 clips secure the seat bottom, there are black things you pull out on, and pull straight up.  The seat back is held on by 6 screws, 2 on each side, on the bottom, and 2 behind the center console.  Lift up and pull it out.  You will see many little holes on there, and you can shove the wire though there.  If you’re using bigger than 8ga, you may need to make the holes bigger.

Now that your power is ready to go, you have to tap a signal from the rear speakers.  I only have one speaker tapped right now, and will tap both sides when I relocate my amp (its shoved back by the gas tank).

I stripped the ends of the wires and wrapped them around the wires going from the amp to the speaker. 

IF YOUR AMP DOES NOT HAVE SPEAKER LEVEL INPUTS you will need to purchase a line level converter.  What you do is hook the converter just like I have it here (there will be 2 wires stripped to put on the speaker, like above), and this converts it from speaker (powered) signal to millivolt (non-powered) signal.  You will run RCA cable from the converter to the amplifier.

TURN ON

I have a very simple turn on.  I’ve found with this setup there is a LOT of bass involved, so I want to have full control if the amp is on or not.  So I have a small 18ga wire (speaker wire) jumped from the turn on lead on the amp, to the positive terminal on the amp.  Its important you don’t have the turn on too strong, so small wire is necessary.  Right now, I have the wire coming out and I twist it together to turn it on, but I am going to mount a switch in the dash, where the telephone microphone is.  Eventually I will wire it up with the turn on from the bose speakers so that I wont have to worry about turning the amp off every time I get out of the car, but a switch is definitely needed.

Supplemental information:

Here’s where my amp is right now: 

And here is my current setup, complete with golf clubs!

This web site is the copyrighted intellectual property of Jesda Gulati and Wes Stinson.