Ok, here is my problem. I have a 99 Sunfire GT. My factory radio is not playing at all. Let me give you a little background. I replaced my factory radio once before with an old Sony that I had. The radio played fine for about 2 weeks. Then one day, I went over a speed bump and it went out. I had an adapter for it so I did not cut any wires. I put my factory radio back in. Two years later my rear speaker starts to pop. I replaced my speakers (which I was planning on doing anyway) and the popping sound was still there, I figured it was a short and went out to purchase some speaker wire to run different speaker wire to the speaker when I find the short, but I hit a pot hole in the road and the sound stops and for another month or so it sounds fine. Well I get up one morning to go to work and all I have is the display but no sound coming out of the radio. Now before I buy another one, I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction on what the problem could be. Could it be a problem in the harness?
Troubleshooting is all about eliminating possibilities.
Got a digital multimeter? You can get a decent one at a hardware store for under $20 if not.
Do the easy one first. Probe your speakers to see if there's anything amiss there. Set it to ohms and find out if any of them are shorted/blown. You should see a resistance anywhere between 2.9 and 4 if they're four ohm speakers. If it says OL (or "open"), the coil is blown. If it says "0" the coil is shorted. Either way, the speaker is to blame.
There's a chance you toasted the stereo's built-in amplifier if one of the coils are shorted, hence the reason for a display with no sound.
If speakers are good, take some speaker wire and connect the bare ends to alligator clips on your DMM. Try playing some music. You should see some voltage. Don't worry if it's not constant. At least then you know the unit is sending voltage. Connect a known-good speaker to these leads and see if you get anything. Home speakers are okay.
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Hey Weisinator, the problem was the speaker was grounding itself out. I took care of it Saturday. Thanks for your suggestions.
