[harrg67]

Originally Posted by lkchris

The original equipment door speakers are woofers, at least on pre-2003. The crossover for the low frequencies is part of the amp in the trunk.

Here's some interesting information ...

I installed the rear shelf speakers and in conjunction fitted a 6X40 amp from a 996/911 to replace the original 4X40 amp. (all 911 come with rear speakers). There are two versions of the 911 amp ... coupe and cabrio. The coupe amp I tried first didn't impress much, but when I fitted a cabrio amp the door speakers came alive and now it's obvious they are woofers. I think Porsche goofed up on specs for the original 4X40 amp and it didn't drive the woofers as well as it should be. Your original amp probably has 323 in the part number ... get the cabrio amp with 323 in part number.

The original Porsche (Becker) radio has two sets of outputs ... direct to speaker and to aux amp. Both have front and rear terminals. The lazy guy approach to retrofitting the rear shelf speakers is to use the direct to speaker outputs. The right way is to get the 6X40 amp. If you didn't have door speakers in the first place, you didn't have the aux amp, and it's then difficult and wouldn't call you lazy. Either way, when you finally fit rear shelf speakers and run them from the rear outputs, your fader control finally works.

The terms 4X40 and 6X40 may be confusing. For Boxsters with 4X40 this means 4 channels, but the channels are front dash speakers and door subwoofers. For 6X40 there are 6 channels, front dash, door woofer and rear. In all cases the fronts and rears are full range and the OE dash speakers have tweeters with the high frequency crossover at the speaker units themselves. Things changed for 2003 with the MOST system, and I can't comment definitively. Also for the earlier models, if you have the BOSE system and/or the equalizer unit in your dash stack, my ideas likely aren't applicable either.

Do you need to have a different connector/harness to support the extra speakers or does the factory loom already support them with the 911 amp?