I was driving to an appointment after work when the pavement level changed due to the never ending construction on Florida roads. They didn't grade the thing at all; essentially it was as if I ran over a 2x4 at 50 mph.

In any event, as soon as I hit the bump my left side speakers just quit. I messed with the balance, shifted all signal to the driver-side speakers, and it was like listening to Bad Religion through a broken Fisher Price walkie talkie.

I opened up the dash in the parking lot, checked the harness and everything was still in place.

On my way home I hit the bump coming in the opposite direction and the driver-side speakers came back to life!

I installed a new headunit almost two months ago -clean install; soldered everything- and haven't had any problems until now. Moreover, I didn't touch the speakers.

Other than avoiding that road, does anyone have any ideas as to what could be up? I know the thing is working now, but I don't want something that could possibly be loose becoming a big problem.

Any help is appreciated.

 

Sounds like either a speaker is grounding out(or it wires) or a bad solder joint..

 

Did you check the connections on the speaker itself?

 

I haven't checked the speakers. I mean, both speakers quit simultaneously on the driver-side. If it were the speakers themselves could they both die and come back to life at the same time?

 

fuses?

 

Fuse's wouldn't cause one side of the speakers to go out, just the radio power to go out.
I would give it a couple of days see if it does it again. If it does put the factory back in and see if the speakers still cut out. If it does you have eliminated the radio as the problem. If they dont cut out again it could be a bad circuit coneection in the radio amplifier. You are gonna have to double check everything and trouble shoot the problem out, so do a process of elemination on components to find the problem.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll get on it this weekend.

 

Sounds like an unorthodox thing.

Just don't drive backwards over the bump. The world may cease to exist.

 

I need to read a little closer don't I

 

It is strange. I'll check it out and report back promptly come Monday.

However, I picked this up on eBay:



I am thinking it will basically help me from having the problem in the first place. Whataya think?

 

WTF is that, it looks like a flux capacitor from Back to the Future..

 

Exactly!

You know, it pretty much "makes time travel possible."

I mean, it should work. The guy had a 98% positive feedback rating.

Off topic, but whatever; great movie.

 

Your not right , I think the sun has gone to your head. Keep us updated on what you find with the system thou.

 

The sun or fiberglass resin fumes, possibly a combination of both.

In any event I'll let y'all know what's up.

Thanks again for the knowledge.

~C

 

So...to the original question.

Check to make sure the speaker leads aren't contacting eachother at the amp or the amp side of the x-over. Mine did that once...couldn't figure it out for the life of me...then realized the tiny wire I had in the amp had loosened itself to the point that it would randomly short the + to the - and kill the music.

Definitely not a good thing.

 

Mandos:

Does that affect the factory speakers if I'm only running the drivers (EU 700's by the by ) through the amp? Wired them per your instruction; 2 dvc EU's parallel.

If so, how does that work?

The only other thing I could think of is that I am running the power cable to the amp along the driver side of the car. I secured it using the white clams underneath the door sill. Could the power cable shift, touch the speaker wire, and cause the distortion?

 

You only have an amp pushing your subs, correct? Not your door speakers? If you are just running an amp for subs then dont worry about it being the problem, they are two completely different entities from each other. It's either the radio, factory wires, speakers or the wiring that you put in for the radio.

 

i believe they are connected in series

 

I checked the harness and everything was still soldered and in one piece.

I am leaning more towards the the power cable bumping into the speaker wires along the driver-side.

These pics are NOT pictures of my car. They are from Mandos' eDead Install Tutorial. I just needed some way of describing what the set-up looks like because I can't get to my car at the moment.

The first picture is showing how I ran the power. The red line represents the power wire; through the factory rubber boot in the firewall and along the door sill.



The second shows how the power is getting to the amp located in the spare tire well.



There is a point where the power crosses over the speaker wires. Could that have caused the distortion? Moreover, what does that type of distorition sound like? I explained earlier that it sounded like a "Fisher Price walkie talkie;" i.e. I could only hear faint voices which were drowned out by a soft static sound.

Does this clarify anything?

 

Hmm...didn't realize you weren't running comps as well

If the wire running from the HU to the tweeter got pinched or shorted, that would also shut off both speakers at once. The speaker wires run from HU to tweeter, then to mid. Both out at once = the wires to the tweeters shorted or something.

Since they came back on, it likely was just a temp short in the wire...of course...finding out where the short is would be a pain.