I just bought a used xB. The previous owner upgraded all the speakers and had an amplifier supplying power to ALL the speakers he said.

When I bought the car, the amp was removed and a stock radio was put back in. It was just brought to my attention that the rear speakers were not working. They are connected in the rear, but perhaps the wires are cut somewhere between the radio and the speaker where it was routed to the previous amplifier (which was under the passengers seat).

Using a multimeter, which function do I use to see if there is current going through the wire(s)? I know it's Ohms, but what numbers SHOULD I be seeing? How do I test the wires, etc??

Thanks for any help!

 

Personally I would just pull out the radio and make sure everything is connected back there. If he used an amp to power the back speakers, then he either ran new wires directly from the amp to the speakers or ran wires from the amp to behind the radio. Either way, you'll probably just want to hook up the factory wires, which will take place behind the radio and behind the rear speakers.

If you do want to test with the meter, you should see around 4 ohms. The alternative is to use a battery, like from a cordless drill, and touch your speaker wires to the + and - tabs on the battery. It will cause the speaker to "pop" so you can identify the location.

 

well, there is a couple of different ways to check. If the factory wires are hooked up to the rear speakers and there is no passive crossover, you should see around 3.6 ohms on your multimeter. (barring anything weird in there.....)

If you are not sure of the factory wire colors, here they are:

RR positive is red
RR negative is white

LR positive is black
LR negative is yellow

If you get no reading behind the deck, try to find where the amp was mounted and see if you can find the wires there.

Hope that helps!

 

I downloaded the wiring guide thats stickied on top of this forum and I know the colors b/c I already looked at them yesterday. But I was not sure what numbers I should be getting and I wasnt sure on how to test them either.

Thanks for the help. I'll check them later today.

 

After going a little nuts wondering what was wrong... turns out the actual speakers are blown or something. Luckily my brother has replacements so I'm going to do that now.

Thanks for your help again guys!!

 

If you have it on the ohms setting, it should say somewhere between 2-8 ohms.

 

I tracked it down to being non-working speakers. I bought new speakers and put them... Works great now! Thanks!