Front speakers wont turn on!!! What the heck am I doing wrong!???!

[chucas11]

I recently bought an old corvette, decided to leave the dashboard unmolested and go with a stand alone system in the rear compartment, and throw in some extra speakers up front. I'll try to over-explain, hopefully someone can figure out what I'm doing wrong. I had my uncle install the stand alone section (Wiring the amp to the battery, remote lead in to the CD player ect..) and figured I'd be able to handle the two front speakers. Guess I was wrong! So the 6X9's, amp, and CD player all work fine, just can't get the fronts to work.

Here is the rear stand-alone section. 2 6X9's, 4 channel amp, and a Sony CD Player.

By chucas11 at 2011-06-08

Here are the 6 1/2's I installed in the kicker panels.

By chucas11 at 2011-06-08

Wiring on the back of the 6 1/2's

By chucas11 at 2011-06-08

By chucas11 at 2011-06-08

Wiring to the amp (12 gauge wire, the top are the front speakers, the bottom are the rear)

By chucas11 at 2011-06-08

Left and right audio cable at amp.

By chucas11 at 2011-06-08

Connected to CD player

By chucas11 at 2011-06-08

So my that was the visual of my though process, wire the speakers (+ to +, - to -), connect the L and R audio wire, turn it on and shazam it would work. But no //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif

Did I miss something here? What the hell am I doing wrong??

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Luca

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[whitedragon551 5,000+ posts]

Did they work before the stand alone?

Sure the stand alone is wired into the right speakers?

Did you check the balance and fade settings?

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

I see six RCA jacks, which is common for Front/Rear/Sub. are you sure one of them isn't an aux input? verify with the owners manual.

excellent post, one of the best question posts i've seen. excellent job taking photos. all other question askers take notice!

My first step would be to disconnect the speakers from the amplifier and use a DMM to measure resistance between the leads. should be between 3.5-4 ohms DCR. that verifies the speaker and speaker wiring are probably ok.

My next step, with the car off, would be to swap the RCA connections and observe what happens. I made this diagram to help with that process. you can assume that L and R are RCA pairs front/rear. the black X indicates what is non-working. So in example two, the blue RCA is bad. it is possible the RCA cables are bad.

i agree that you should adjust balance and fader. use that to isolate each speaker (FL, FR, RL, RR) and tell us which positions active the working rear speakers.

if none of that works, tell us amp make/model number and CD player make/model number.

 

[chucas11]

WhiteDragon - The speakers were NIB when I started the process. Ran the wiress underneath the carpet, chopped up the kicker panels, then connected everything. I will double check on my double check that I have everything wired correctly. Balance and Fade settings were checked, but I didn't check FR or FL so I will do that.

keephope - I'll grab a multimeter on my way home today to check the resistance. I have to say that after my uncle installed the rear speakers, amp, and cd player, I don't believe there was an additional RCA cable that came with the CD player. So I hopped over to radioshack and grabbed one. Are there certain ones that need to be used, or is the one I have fine? If all else fails, I'll list the amp and CD make and model.

Thanks for the quick responses and your advice.

 

[Kold_Killa 10+ year member]

If you switch the speaker wires to the channels that we know are working (rear), would the fronts then work and rears not? This will help eliminate some wiring issues.