What's the best way to troubleshoot car speakers?

Question

My cars has four speakers but only one is working. How do I find the problem?

Answer 1

Here is what i would do...

First verify the balence and fader are not the issue. make sure they are set right in the middle. if they are then i would pull the deck out from the dash. then take a small battery like a size or c battery. and place the speaker wires for each speaker over the batery, positive to pos and neg to negative. move the wire around on the battery. (will need your vehicales wiring diagram) you should hear static. If you do then the internal amp for that channel is likely not working properly (i'll talk about later) if there is no sound, then the porblem is with the wire, connection or speaker itself. the next step would be to pull each speaker that did not create static and do the battery test at the speaker with a short speaker wire you know is good. if it still does not make a static noise, the speaker is bad, if it does, then it is the wire between the deck and the speaker, run new wire.

Now if the speakers did all make noise with the battery test then the internal am has a issue, i would pull the radio completely out and disconect. then open the protective casing, many times inside the radio there will be a small fuse, this may have blown. simply replace with the same size and retest as i described. there may be more than one fuse, so be sure to take a close look and verify you checked them all. if all fuses are o.k. then it sounds like a new deck is in order. you can get a quality deck for around $100 and for around $130 you can get all the installation hardware and the deck

(visit crutchfield.com for a new deck)

Hope that helps and good luck.