Layla.7

Two weeks ago I replaced my stock speakers (front, tweeters and rear) with Rockfords. I didn't read much about the AFBS until AFTER I finished installation. Everything was working fine until 2 days ago, I get in my car, and NO sound is coming from ANY speakers. All fuses are fine and from what I can see, no wires are touching, nor is anything melted. At this point, I had already purchased an aftermarket Deck And Amp, however, hadn't had the time to install them yet. Yesterday, I hooked up the new deck, and am left with the same problem of no sound. Alright, now that i've explained the low down, I have a few quesitons..

1. I have HID lights that I installed a few weeks before I installed the speakers, could they have ANYTHING to do with this issue?

2. I didn't do any research on "bypassing" the stock amp. Basically. I realized that the stock speakers had two plastic mountings (the mics) on them and the only way to get bass to run to the aftermarket speakers was to attach the wires to the new speakers.. Could this have messed something up in the long run?

3. I have a new aftermarket amp to put in the car (I'm hoping that maybe the stock amp is fried? Or something is wrong with it) And the new amp will fix this silence problem. Is this reasonable to believe?

4. I've never done any stereo work and after gonig through hell with all of the speakers and getting them to work right, I'm willing to BEGG for help to install the amp.. So does anyone have a "how to" with pictures?

Bottom line. I need help =(

Thank you in advance!

hubbardjr28

hey man i have a 5th gen type sh. the stock speakers are only 25 watts and there are no stock amp. you should try the interior light fuse. it also controls power to the radio and speakers.

Layla.7

Thanks! I'll check that fuse as well, however, my interior lights are working =/ So i'm not sure if that's the problem. PS. I'm a girl!

hubbardjr28

haha interesting . is the radio working and not making noise or not at all?

Layla.7

The deck is lighting up, functioning correctly, just no sound is coming out. =( It's like, all the speakers are on mute (which they arn't, I checked )

gstrudler

There is a small stock amp for the rear speakers (attached underneath the rear deck on the right hand side if you're looking through the trunk - it's brown), however the fronts should still be working if for some reason that died as I'm pretty sure they're driven straight from the deck. What's strange is that ALL of the speakers aren't working from two different decks. Did you utilize all the stock wiring and just swap the speakers? I would try a couple of your old speakers if you still have them around just to eliminate the speakers as an issue (which is unlikely). Do you know what the resistance is of the speakers you bought (4-ohm, 8-ohm, etc)?

Layla.7

The speakers worked for about a week and a half. It wasn't like they just didn't work after I put new ones in... I've seen the stock amp and done my own form of "bypassing," if you will. But yeah, they just all went out. I don't think it's the speakers. When I turn my HID lights on, the rear left speaker still pops (which it did before all the speakers went out) I really want to install the aftermarket AMP to see if that eliminates the problem... but I don't know how to do certain parts... It is weird that NONE of them are working (that's why I hoped it was a fuse) because like you said, only the 6X9's are hooked up to the stock amp. I tried Unplugging it, to see if that would make at least the front speakers play, and it didn't. It has to be something in the front of the car, because the wires have to hit the front speakers before the rear... I just don't know what it is =(

gstrudler

Alright, just did a little searching through the 5th gen electrical troubleshooting manual. There is one connector that is common to all four speaker outputs: it's a gray 20-pin connector located on the left side of the dash. If you pull the driver side vent out of the dash (the one above the cruise control/moonroof buttons - it pulls straight out), there is a group of connectors; it's the one on the far left. Other than that, the front speakers have one other connector (which is the door connector), and the rear speakers run through a connector down by the passenger kick panel before hitting the stock amp. Either that connector is loose (mildly likely) or there is a short somewhere that is toasting the amps inside the head units.

What did you do to 'bypass' the stock rear amp?

Also, you shouldn't be getting any noise in your speakers when you turn your lights on; there must be a grounding problem somewhere if that is happening. Does it happen when the rear amp is unplugged?

As far as hooking up a new amp, it's relatively straightforward. The biggest pain is running a new power wire to the battery. FYI, I just ran cable last night for a new amp in my trunk and I found running it down the passenger side by the door sil (the carpet comes up and you can see where a stock wire loom runs, I just put it next to it) pretty easy. Then to get it to the engine bay you can pull off the passenger fender and you'll see a large rubber boot/grommet close to the door where a modest sized stock wire loom is already running up next to the battery. Just pull out the rubber grommet and punch a hole in it and run your power wire through there and zip tie it to the stock wires along the way over the wheel arch and it will drop out right next to the battery. If you have a stock air intake it will be a little trickier with less space to put the fuse holder and run the wire, but with a cold air or ram intake there's plenty of room. FYI you can usually buy amp wiring kits that will come with everything you need if you don't have one already. Your headunit should also have a remote turn-on output, which you would run to the remote turn-on input of the amp. If not, you'll need to find another 12v source that turns on when you want the amp to turn on, which is pretty much anything on the ignition circuit (the ignition line to the headunit would be a good choice; I also saw another thread about somewhere wondering about using the cigarette lighter line, which should also work fine).

Your new deck should have RCA preouts on it, just run a pair (or two depending on your configuration) of RCA cables back to your amp(s). If you want to keep it simple, run the front speaker wires out of your amp back up towards the head unit and splice into the stock harness. If the amp is under a seat, I would do the same with the rear speaker wires; if the amp is in the trunk, I would run the speaker wires up close to the speakers and splice into the stock harness.

bigblue7t6

Its a grounding issue, one of the speakers is grounding out somewhere, happened after I let a certain company install speakers in my car, I finally fixed it though, its a way of the stereo protecting itself from self destruction, to turn off the sound, if I punched my door panel it would usually come back on for a little while, but go back and check all of your connections, one of them had to work itself loose. There is also usually a tiny fuse in the back of the radio (7.5-10amp) or so, this can also sometimes blow (the few high end radios I have owned have them anyway) you could also see if your radio has one of those if you have no faults in your connections.

asianpoet

just wanted to bump this, considering i have somewhat of the same problem... except, I do have sounds on the front.. and im just to lazy to check things out in the back...

gstrudler

5th gen? Sounds like a problem with the rear amp. Check the fuses first; there is a fuse in the under-dash fuse box that runs power to it.

Layla.7

Thanks for everyone's replies. It was a grounding problem. Now I have another problem... I hooked up my new amp and can't get the rear speakers to play. I'm using all of the stock wires (when it comes to speakers) I have the RCA's running to the amp from my deck. Now, I also used a wire harness that came with my amp. In the back, I spliced the Red/yellow wire, brown/white wire, blue/yellow wire, and the grey/white wire, and hooked them to the harness that runs to the amp. Was that wrong? I'm not sure what else to try...

Layla.7

Here's some pictures to give you an idea of what I've done.

Layla.7

Now my passenger side headlight fuse keeps blowing =( This is ruining my life. ahh

bigblue7t6

Well your amp is getting juice from what it looks like with the green light in the picture, though I am a little baffled to the route of the wiring, you have the rca's from your deck to the amp to transfer the signal from the deck to the amp, but the wiring you did from the speakers to the amp is done through the harness with the purple and the green wires correct? I just wonder because above that it says that is an input not an output? Am I not looking at this thing right?

gstrudler

Yes, that harness is for speaker level INPUT (like if you were using a factory headunit that didn't have RCA preouts). The speaker wires need to be run to the front/rear speaker outputs of the amp (the gold screw-down terminals). Splice some new wires or cut the amp harness you have and put spade ends on them (the open/half-circle ends). Also, you really should wrap any connections you make with electrical tape to prevent them from grounding out anywhere (good possibility why your fuse keeps blowing) and from moisture and other things getting into the connection.

Here are the stock wire colors:

Driver Front +: Blue/Green
Driver Front -: Gray/Black

Pass Front +: Red/Green
Pass Front -: Brown/Black

Driver Rear +: Pink
Driver Rear -: Yellow/White

Pass Rear +: White/Yellow
Pass Rear -: Light Green/White

gstrudler

The pictures are definitely helpful btw; and kudos to you for trying to do the work yourself. Live and learn; that's what working on cars is all about!

xOtakuBuster

This is very true

Layla.7

Thanks guys I'm sure you were looking at it right, I just had no idea what I was doing haha. Anyways, I unplugged the amp, and put tape on all the ends, but my fuse still keeps blowing =( Also, what do I do about the harness that I snapped in the back? LOL, I don't think I have enough slack to attach those wires back together... Should I still need them?? And, I have some other RCA cables, can I cut those and use them as speaker wires for my front speakers?

bigblue7t6

The wires that you attached that are coming from your speakers you need to disconnect from the plastic harness with the green, white, purple wires....the wires that are coming from your speakers need to be stripped on the end and screwed to the mounts that say speaker out, the gold screws. As far as stripping rca cables to be used as speaker wire, I don't see why not, just try to make as few splices as possible, because you begin to increase your chances of having more shorts. As far as the headlight deal, that's a tough one, is it blowing the fuse when you turn on the headlights or when you turn on the radio/amplifier?

gstrudler

I wouldn't use RCA cables for speaker wire mostly because it would be a hassle and a waste of cable when you can buy some speaker wire so cheap; I'm also not sure that RCA's use the same gauge wire on the common and hot leads, not to mention they are built for line-level signal and not speaker-level. You're better off using electrical wire of a similar gauge.

You don't need the harness that connects to the "High Level Input" of the amp, so you could just cut the harness short and use those wires since you have them spliced in already to your speaker wires; just match them up to the appropriate speaker outputs on the amp.

As far as the headlight fuse, we need to know when it blows in order to help you out. Did you make all your cable splices in the trunk? The reason I ask is there is a Red/Yellow wire for the high beam indicator lamp in the gauge cluster that runs off the left headlight fuse, but that should only be under the dash, so I don't think you should have run into that.

gstrudler

UPDATED WIRE COLORS ABOVE

I realized for the rears I listed the wire colors coming from the stock deck, not going to the speakers from the stock amp, which are different colors. My apologies; connecting the amp to the colors listed prior would send an amplified signal to the stock deck and not the speakers.

Layla.7

The headlight ended up being from a bad ballast. I ended up just directly connecting the rear speakers to the amp. they're not hooked up to any harness at all. Is that okay to do?

Now i've come to trying to hook up the front speakers to the amp... Are any of those wires in the trunk connected to the front speakers? Or do I need to run speaker wire directly from those, to the trunk.

BTW. You all have been so much help And I thank you! I could have just paid someone 100 bucks to do it all, but I wanted to learn on my own. (Three weeks later, I'm almost done! )

ps. Anyone coming to the HondaTech meeting in VA on SAT?

slammedbbs

i wish we had a ht meeting in tx! i was reading threw this and this caught my attention.


Also, you shouldn't be getting any noise in your speakers when you turn your lights on

since i have had my car it has always bad a sound threw the speakers when i turn my head lights on. the best way i can describe the sound is like a base sound its weird.

"The headlight ended up being from a bad ballast"

this fixed your little noise that comes threw the speakers when you turn your hid's on?
what could happen if you dont fix this problem? sorry if iam high jacking your thread iam just interested i had no clue that it was a prob i never thought twice about it lol