when i bought my iroc a few days ago, i noticed unlike my last two camaros, this one has the two speakers in the dash, two 6x9's in the sail panels, two speakers at the feet and 2 little sub wannabe's in the very rear installed into the hatch cover thingy.

SOunds like a bose setup to me

can you post some pics of the rear sub wannabe things? I'm curious to see what they look like

i will asap

I also have 1989 IROC with the bose. Another site said that there 4,532 IROCs with that option in 1989. The speakers in the back are woefully small. I kept the little amps and got some 6x9 sail panels from another base model and screwed them into the sail panels. Right now in yours there is just a square with some foam in there. Fortunately the panels just unbolt and bolt in, they are not welded. I also took the foam insert from the donor car. I then grabbed some bose 6x9s from a Cadillac and am running them. An improvement. Remember an interface is needed for an aftermarket CD player to work with the one ohm speakers. Most posts say rip it all out. You can keep it for the value of the car. If you want to upgrade the 4x6 brackets are still in the dash. You could run 4 inch seperates in the front 6x9s in the back with an amp, and run all 4 stock bose at the same time!

actually i plan to take them out, replace it with a box for my subs .

so the bose box normally takes up the whole back of the trunk area?

No, it is two small speakers in the locking storage cover. Underneath is a chamber for each one to try and produce some lows but that is only a few inches thick.

yep i thin he means the bose setup, heres a pic of what i assume is the "sub wannabes", from the bottom, when the panel is open

thats exactly what i have, along with the smaller speakers by your feet in the front seats

btw is their an rpo code for this speaker option?

I bet that still sounds better than a system without subs... I wonder what sounds better, those, or the subs in the sailpanel option?

My 89 had the Bose system, UQ4 option code. The Bose system did sound really good sitting still or in town, but on the highway the lows couldn't overcome the road noise.

My '87 had this also, or at least part of it when I bought it. I don't think it's all that rare. I lucked out the other day on ebay and found the peices of it that I was missing, the HU and the rear panel/speakers/amp. A full stock restoration is in store for her once I get boered making her as fast as possible. I can post pics of any of this if anybody wants.

More pics! I can't seem to find any!

What wattage are the little amps?

I'm not sure on the wattage. I just know that the deck that came with these didn't have an internal amp. Here is a post with some more pics and info:

https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hreadid=159543

The amps are rated at 25 watts per for a total of 100 watts.

rms? cuz that's not bad... unless thats all they get because thats what my h/u puts out... maybe they run them at a lower impedence to get more watts... or its like most good systems and they run them at like 8ohms, like I'm pretty sure the monsoon system does in the new gm cars... although I may be wrong

My guess is that the rating is peak. The old brochures say up to 100 watts of power. They are very small and the stereo is not loud. The ohms for the speakers are 1 ohm. If you have an aftermarket deck (4 ohms) you need a interface that sends out a 1 ohm signal for the system, otherwise it will be overpowered by the 4 ohm and distort.

How do you send an ohm in a signal?

the ohm value of the information coming from the cd player (lets call it a signal) is changed by the interface from 4 ohm to 1 ohm to match the charatersitics of the bose system

I don't doubt that such a device exists, but I wonder how it works? maybe it raises the resistance of each speaker somehow?

I bet the headunit would still work, you would just have to keep the volume very low, right? or is the volume **** just not sensitive enough to deal with such a low impedence?

I say this, because I have accidentally hooked up my amp with an overall 1ohm load, and it just made it louder at the same gain setting at the h/u, all I did was keep it down and it played fine... dunno if the same applies to h/u amplifiers...

When I purchased my car the CD player was a cheap Pioneer hooked up directly to the Bose system. Only the left side worked and it sounded terrible when turned up at all. I had a blown amp which is very common and one that was not hooked up. The stereo shop couldn't figure it out so I had to. I couldn't tell you how the interface works, but the sound is much better.

sounds like the cd player was broken, and I bet you could have hooked up the 1 ohm speakers to a new deck, you would just have a hard time keeping the gain at an acceptable level...
all that matters is that the gain is set to where you don't actually put out more rms power than the deck can do per channel.... otherwise it will overheat, and/or get blurry really quick...

My Question was rhetorical.
The people that get it got it.
And for the people that people that didn’t. The “Bose interface”, to be used when installing a after market HU into a car with the factory Bose option with remote amps and low impedance speakers and leaving the Bose amps and speakers, is to convert the HU speaker lever output to a input level acceptable to Bose remote amps. It has nothing to do with the impedance of the speaker. The only thing that gives a hoot about that is the remote amp and it’s designed for that, but more on that later. The “interface” is little more then a resistor divider network with a variable resistor that splits up the output voltage from the HUs internal amp and sends off what it wants. If you are going to go though taking the amps out, you also replace the speaker. That’s just the most logical way to deal with it. There’s nothing spectacular about them. It’s not that hard to get a better pair of 4 ohm speakers that will sound better and don’t cost an arm and a leg.
Now, about low impedance loads and what they put an amp though. The push-pull amp (most external power amps) used a + and - rail voltage. The amp will try to put out the same voltage no matter the load until you load down the power supply and the rail voltage drops, or the amp is dead. If you look at ohms law you see that if load resistance drops and voltage stays the same current will go up. More current = more heat, there are only two things that will kill these output transistors, heat and a hammer. ScrapMaker, that amp you put a 1 ohm load on was putting out twice as much current (more heat) then it was designed to take (If it was a two ohm stable amp). By turning down the gain you
pulled that current back down into check, some. Still not the best thing for amp. Just because it is OK now, doesn’t mean it will stay that way. As a rule of thumb, the hotter, the shorter the life. Similar things goes for the HUs internal amp IC. 4 OHMS ONLY. NOT BRIDGEABLE.

Didn't the bose system only have the 2 kickpanel speakers and the rear subs, and the base front 4x6 and 6x9 speakers were non existant correct?

wrong, those are in the car as well. i have 8 speakers total in my car. the dash, kick panels, rear sail panels and mini subs in the back

You sure they're there, because that's not how they came from the factory.

positive, and i bought the car from a couple of old people (in their 70's) and they didnt strike me as the type of person to mod a car, they owned it since 92 or 93 they said.

Might wanna actually check behind the sail panels and dash because if they are there somebody put them there. The Bose system never came with 8 speakers. The base locations were non existant and replaced with the kickpanel and rear sub locations.

i have checked they are their


strange. but anyways cool to have 8 speakers i guess?

my RS stated it had the bose system as acknowledged by the badge placed inside the car shortly above the stereo, but it only had speakers in the dashboard and sail panels.

The reason there were no 4x6's or 6x9's is because, once again, the Bose head unit was non-amplified, and the car had 4 amps; one for each speaker.

If you do have all 8, and they all work, and you have the Bose radio still, I want to know how to do it!

PS, you'd be surprised what old(er) people do to cars! I got my car from a guy in his 60's, but turns out he raced it the entire 2 years of owning it

so if you are running an amp beyond its ohm-capability... but keeping the gain down, as to not allow the amp to exceed its current-capability (not allowing it to heat up, or output more than its designed RMS wattage) then there really is no problem, right?

The reason I say this, is I have come across many situations where I could hook up some dual 4ohm voice-coil subs to this 4 channel amp... which can only take 4ohm per bridged side...either I get 2ohms, or 8... so, I ended up buying another set of subs, but it seems I could have hooked them up as 2ohms on each bridged side, and just kept the gain down on the amp as well as the h/u and it seems like the would perform the same as 2 4ohm speakers with a higher gain....

I know my '87 with this option didn't come like this. I'm not sure about the 4x6's in the dash, but the sail panel mounting locations are covered by the plastic interior piece that the sail panel mounts to. You wouldn't be able to put a speaker in there without cutting up that interior piece. I do belive it was a 4 speaker system like most are saying. There are however two slightly different versions of this option though. If you look back through the pics there are two distinctly differnt amp assemblies under the rear hatch. They also have differnt styled rear speakers that mount above the amps. Mine (4 speaker) is the earlier version. Not sure if the later came with more speakers or not.

This is were My knowledge is limited. I know it's still not a good thing for the amp but can't get into the science behind it. Has something to do with dampening factors or back EMF or something like that. So it's still not good, but bypasses the biggest problem. There's a lot of things that come into play.

ah yes I have heard something like this before... people say that if an amp will give you enough power, then run it at the highest # ohm load possible... like if a 2000 watt amp is too powerful, run it down with a 4ohm load or 8ohm and it has better sound quality with less feedback etc...

I have a 87 w/ the Bose system. Does this system have RCA jack to where a CD Player can be installed?