A week ago I replaced the front door speakers in my 2003 TL with some moderate priced pioneer 6.5 inch speakers. Worked fine and sounded better than stock (not hard). Today I lost sound to all speakers but my rear sub-woofer. All parts but the two new speakers are stock.

Does it sound like my cheap Bose amp got fried?

Is there a chance a different speaker resistance drew more power than the Bose amp could provide? If so, is it my fault or the Best Buy installer who said it would be fine?

 

well the bose door speakers are powered by the headunit the sub is powered by a amp that is located behind the rear seat... i am not sure how you went about installing the aftermarket speakers did you just simply replace the bose speakers with the pioneers or did you run an amp and all that... a little more info would help isolate the trouble... also a quick test would be to hook the bose speakers back up and see if there is still no sound... if not then i would have to say that the headunit output side (that is if you are not using an aftermarket amp) may be gone....

 

No separate amp, just different speakers.

So if I have blown the output of the head unit, am I screwed? What options would I have? Any possibility of grabbing some other output and running thru a new amp?

 

i really dont think that you blew the radio... i would say to check all the fuses and all the connections and if all else fails and you decide to put an amp on the stock radio you can snag the signal before it hits the bose eq and wire in a loc then you will be able to add an aftermarket amp.... but i know i have heard this problem before you might want to do a search on it before you do anything.....

 

hey i figured if anyone has ran across this problem before it would be southbound and sure enought i did some searching and here is what southbound says.... "ALSO, IF ALL OF YOUR DOOR SPEAKERS EVER QUIT WORKING SOME DAY DOWN THE ROAD... YET THE SUBWOOFER STILL PLAYS... Don't panic. This has happened to a couple of guys. It will mean that you have developed a short from one of the new speaker terminals to ground... or one of the wires got pulled off of the speaker by the window and shorted out to the metal door frame."

 

Thanks! I'll hope for the best and assume it is a short. Hate to keep opening the door panels up.

Would I be safer with a dedicated amp for the speakers or is this not a concern?

 

Yep that is what i was just about to post. Almost anytime that you experience this in 12volt car audio it is because of either a blown speaker or a speaker wire shorting to ground. The internal amp shuts down to protect itself. I see this quite frequently (I install for a living), I'll put a new deck in someones car and they decide to crank on it or replace their speakers (self install) and they either blow a speaker or have a speaker termial grounded to chassis and then come back to me saying I did a shoddy job or their deck is a POS b/c it looks like it is on and still playing but there is no sound. Should be an easy fix. What I usually do is wrap 3m super33 tape overthe terminals on the speaker and wire tire any extra slack on the speaker wire to the basket of the new speaker so you don't have to worry about it being caught on say the window. Good luck.

 

Thanks for the faith and for covering me on this one, shawhite!

YES, RELAX WHITEHME... YOU HAVE A SHORT ON ONE OF YOUR SPEAKER WIRES TO GROUND. The ONLY good thing about the BOSE headunit is that it does have short circuit protection. The output stage will foldback and shut down ALL FOUR outputs when ANY ONE output has a short on it. There is no way to tell which speaker has the short on it, except by taking the door panels apart one by one and looking VERY carefully for the short. It may be an obvious pinched wire, or the wire may have been pulled off by the window and shorting inside the door frame, or the speaker terminals may be resting up against the door frame hole cutout.

I WOULDN'T TEST THE SHORT CIRCUIT PROTECTION FOR LONG... IT DOES MAKE THE AMP RUN REALLY HOT, AND COULD EVENTUALLY SMOKE SOMETHING INSIDE. Don't turn on the HU any more than you have to until you are in the troubleshooting mode. Take off the door panel that you might suspect first, and then check the speaker connections. As soon as you find the shorted speaker(s)wiring, the rest of the speakers will jump back to life and you will know you have found the problem. Even though it's the hardest, I'd probably try the driver's door first... just because you have probably rolled the window up and down several times on that door. If the installers didn't use short leads that are tie wrapped tight to the harness, they are REAL easy to be pulled off by the window. It's only 1/4 inch from the back of the speaker!

I'M SURE THAT THIS IS YOUR PROBLEM... You just have to go on a goose chase to find it. Better that than a blown amp! As far as being safer using an aftermarket amp... NOT! It would be just as vulnerable to a shorted speaker wire. A cheap aftermarket amp might not even have the same protection circuit that is saving your headunit right now... (although I would assume that most do)

GOOD LUCK... You just got lucky! It can be fixed, but I'd give hell to the installers. The door frame hole clearances and window clearances are very tight... they probably did a sloppy job, and one of the terminals got yanked from the speaker by the window, or the terminals are resting against the door frame and it took a week to cut through the insulation over the terminal You've just got to find it after you paid to not have to mess with it...

Trust me, you'll find the short and be back in business.

Southbound

 

Back in business. Seems like it is really easy to have a speaker short out in these TL door frames.

Thanks for all the help. Your quick response to my initial plea for help really help calm me down. I gave the installers their share of heck and they fixed the problem fairly quickly.

 

glad to hear that you are back listening to tunes....