I drive a 97 Civic and audio is not really my thing so please bear with me. For about a week I have been having this problem where I am driving down the road with the radio (cd playing or radio) on and the speakers suddenly sound like all four are blown out. It will sound like this for about a minute and then go back to normal. I have done things like turn the a/c off, or the fan off, or rev the motor to see if it is disturbance, but none of those factors seem to affect what is happening. I figured that maybe the ground is bad, so I just pulled the head unit out and checked to see if I am getting good ground through the ground wire and I show zero ohms, so I believe it to be good.

My head unit is an Eclipse 5441 that is maybe three or four years old and has been in a few cars, but never really abused (dropped or had a soda thrown on it). All four speakers are still stock.

Any insight on my problem would be much appreciated.

 

It sounds pretty much like static with the music playing in the background. Kind of like if you were tuning a analog radio and couldn't quite get a strong signal.

 

Thanks for the advice Teken.

I had some of the dash out, and as as far as I can see, none of the signal wires have been damaged behind the dash. Actually everything is very clean looking back there.

The front speakers also seem to have no wire problems near them.

I took a look at the RCA cables coming out of the head unit that I don't use and noticed that one of them is missing its rubber hat. I remember finding this cleaning out the car before this problem started. I didn't know what it was, so I tossed it, but there is now some tape over top of it (it was on the line marked "non fader out").

I am going to check the near the rear speakers, and if I don't see any obvious I am going to reinstall the head unit and go for a ride. If I still have the problem I will begin to check each wire for continuity.

Thanks again for your help.