Re: Bose blowups

[Ed Kellock <edkellock@juno.com>]

I was in LA for Xmas and found myself having a look at the antenna
on my mom's 94 Accord EX.  Ultimately we found ourselves at
European Car Stereo on Artesia in Redondo Beach.

While a new mast was being installed, I happened to mention the failure
of
Bose speakers in Audi's.  He seemed familiar with Bose problems in many
different makes of cars, but had never heard of one catching  fire or
smoking.

He apparently has always become involved at the point where the
speakers are hissing, popping, or otherwise sounding terrible.

He explained that they have integral amps which involves a capacitor
etc. which was basically familiar to me due to list discussion.

He further explained that when the capacitor leaks it can damage the
proprietary Bose circuit board which is not available separately.

His remedy is to replace the capacitor if caught in time.

I understand the motivation behind getting Audi or Bose to own up
to this problem and take care of it, but if the remedy is as simple as
it sounds (to me at least), aren't there bigger battles to win?

We do all kinds of proactive things to our cars, why not this?  If I
lived 
in the area, I'd take my car to him and ask him to at least have a look.

I'm not sure if this info adds anything to the discussion, but I thought
it would at least serve as another "proof" of an existing weakness.

Direct contac info:
Alex  
European Car Stereo
310-370-0086
"Since 1979"

Ed
Woodland Park, CO

On Tue, 28 Dec 1999 21:52:37 -0800 "Buchholz, Steven"
<Steven.Buchholz@kla-tencor.com> writes:
> ... well, I figured I wanted to know a bit more about the situation 
> than I
> did at the time, so I pulled the right rear speaker out of the V8 
> ...
> 
> I took some digital pix of the board ... (Chris, let me know if 
> you'd like
> me to e-mail them to you if you'd like to post them to your website 
> or
> something).  I was actually pleasantly surprised to see that Bose 
> used a
> 2-layer fiberglass board.  There are two large electrolytic caps on 
> the
> board and a number of smaller ones.  There is some sort of liquid 
> adhesive
> that covers some toroidal inductors as well as some of the caps.  I 
> saw no
> fuses.  I saw no conformal coatings on the board (which is what the 
> recall
> for Intfiniti claimed was the source of the problem).  As far as I 
> can tell
> from date codes and such this unit was probably the original for the 
> car.  
> 
> Steve Buchholz
> San Jose, CA (USA)
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > 
> > > I would like to take a look at a working or failed Bose speaker 
> to
> > > identify a repair that can be done by ourselves if or when AOA 
> tell us
> > > to take a hike. I have worked on a wide range of electronic 
> equipment
> > > to component level. If it is capacitor failure that causes the 
> problems
> > > then it is worth while to replace all capacitors at the same 
> time, as
> > > they will be of the same quality and age. It would be a 
> reasonable cost
> > > to buy good quality components in small bulk quantities. I hope 
> that I
> > > can work on this with you guys as a list project to make sure no 
> more
> > > cars are unnecessarily killed by a small electrical failure.
> > ---
> > The people at Bose are looking into this as we speak; and 
> > Phil has sent off a letter to audi and cc'd the NHTSA.  Brett 
> > (earlier in the year) started a file with Audi; who knows 
> > what that means.  
> > 
> > I don't know of any failed speakers available; wasn't there a 
> > fire damaged 200q20v in Dad's in CA?  They'd likely sell a 
> > speaker cheaply if it's fire damaged. (anyone know who's car