Bose Speaker upgrade on F50 and brake rotor replacement

[Crazi]

Hello everyone. I just searched for about 20 mins and can't seem to find much. I plan on upgrading the front and rear door speakers in my car. Will I have any problems with it integrating with the stock Bose head unit?

Also, I have a slight warpage in the front rotors and during my 60K service, my service advisor told me that they did detect the warpage but that it wasn't worth the money to fix it because it was so slight. I was also told the rear pads were low and should be replaced. I ordered front and rear Hawk pads but am now wondering if I should replace all four rotors as well. They said they would need to turn the rear rotors.

I was looking at a company called iRotor on ebay and was wondering if they were worth it. They are decently cheap as far as rotors go and I am hoping to do the work myself so hopefully if these don't work out, I can pick up a set of OEM rotors and swap them on in place of the ebay ones.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors...photo

[widebodyq]

As far as the rotors go, do yourself a favor and go OEM. Sure the deal looks great on ebay but those rotors will make you want to get rid of the car. You will notice annoying vibrations and you will go nuts trying to resolve the problem because you will refuse to belive its your brand new ebay drilled rotors. I had wheels rebalanced and changed tires but nothing got rid of the vibration until I went back to OEM rotors.

[Crazi]

Ended up keeping the stock rotors and putting on Hawk HPS pads. Love them so far! I have 200 miles on them and the feel of the brake pedal is so much better than with the stock pads. I always felt like I needed to press too hard on the pedal before.

Its much better now but I am going to get the brake system flushed to see it helps. The dealer recommended that I do it at the 60k service but I decided to hold off for a while.

Does anyone know the impedance of the sub in the f50's? I am curious about upgrading the bose sub with something aftermarket...

[maxnix]

...the feel of the brake pedal is so much better than with the stock pads.

Its much better now but I am going to get the brake system flushed to see it helps.

Probably because the OEM were worn out. Just like the new tire syndrome, even the crappiest new tires seem better than worn out old tires....at first.

Brake fluid is always flushed when pads replaced. There is nothing to be gained by delay.

The Clarion output is a high Z, so if you change your HU and speakers, you sill have to change the speakers wires too for oprtimal sound.

[Crazi]

Ok hopefully this saves someone else trouble in the future...

I had the front and rear door speakers replaced today. The bose speaker resistance or impedance is 2 ohms. I tested it myself with an ohm meter when I couldn't figure out why the rear speakers didn't seem as loud as the factory ones. I bought 4 ohm speakers for the rear doors and 2 ohm for the front.

Also, the factory radio does NOT send a full channel to the front door speakers. I installed two way speakers and I don't get any highs from the tweeters however, the overall sound is cleaner. At high volume, it sounds just as tight and crisp as it does at low to medium volume.

I decided to test the factory sub and found out that it was a 1 ohm resistance! In order to duplicate that load, I would need to find a dual 2 ohm voice coil sub and see how it sounds. The tech swears that I should install an amp and get a full sub instead of a shallow mount like whats in there now but I do NOT want to run power wires.

All together, it was an improvement, but not worth the price I paid for everything. He tried to talk me into more and more aftermarket stuff but I don't want an amp and all the associated wiring put in. I tapped into the Bose amp in my last car for the sub output and I know the same can be done with this one by looking at the schematics but I want to keep it simple.

[Crazi]

PS

Had the brake system flushed using Valvoline Synpower brake fluid and now my car feels like it should. Very confident stopping and more easily modulated. The old fluid was 4 years old so it was well overdue.

[xerexabante]

What would be the difference with new brake fuild? Rather than having new fluid should not give you better performance.

[Crazi]

I beg to differ. New fluid after 4 years should return the braking feel to like new. The front brakes had been changed once and the rears were stock. I don't know if the dealer bleeds the calipers when they change the pads but the entire system had never been flushed. So with brake fluid being hygropscopic and being in the system for 4 years, it was due.

Also, I had it flushed with Valvoline Synpower DOT4. It is known that the brakes on this car are undersized for the weight and therefore run hotter under heavy use and often warps the front rotors. Changing to HPS pads mean better braking but also higher temperatures in the braking system and yet another reason for better brake fluid.

I can't attest to what the old fluid looked like but from my car knowledge, brake fluid gets dark and cloudy as it absorbs water. The fluid reservoir is alot brighter/clearer than it was with the old fluid...

[xerexabante]

So what kind of better performance did you gain? As for your inquiry that dealers bleed you calipers, they don't. I have a shop, we don't bleed the system because we don't open lines so we don't bleed the system. The only time we bleed is when we open up brake lines. We service a lot of high milage cars, we do not flush, only per costumer request. we never have problems with their vehicles not having the brake system flushed.