No rear sound

[USSkoval]

There is no sound coming from the rear speakers, and it's been this way since I bought the truck. '88 Suburban, BTW. RF sounded good and LF sounded like crap and the rears were gone (missing) when I bought it. Replaced the fronts with some Kicker 3.5's and added some Pioneer rear 6x9's in boxes. Nothing changed, so I blamed it all on the stock radio. Well two years later, I finally replaced the radio with a Pioneer unit. The fronts both sound great now, but there's still no sound from the rear speakers.
Is there a common spot for the rear speaker wires to go bad? Or do I have another problem? I would rather not rip out half the interior to replace wires if I don't need to.

 

[dhcomp]

Use a continuity tester to test the wires. Or test them with a battery and a light. And also check your body ground if you apply power to teh wire, and make sure its not shorted somewhere.

Check to make sure all teh harnesses are wired right in teh back of the stereo....isn't the rears on a different plug than the fronts?>
I ran all new wires when i did my stereo.

 

[USSkoval]

Yep, there's a separate harness for the rear speaker wires. The connections are good at the back of the radio, at least as far as I can tell. I was hoping that there was common spot for the wires to fail, like under the front passenger seat for example. That way I could just pull up the carpet in that one spot, fix the wires and be done. Probably wishful thinking

 

[BulldogK5]

Not sure of a common spot for failure but you can pull the seatbelt retractors and the front of each interior side panel and check from there. You should be able to see the wires, if they look good then f=get in behind the dash on each side and see how they are when they come down the firewall and under the door sills. If that's not it then you are gonna have to pull the carpet back, but you already have the sill plates out so there is nothing holding it down but the seats. The wires should not be out from under the channel under the sill plate. At least that;s how it has been on the 4 I have had.

 

[BulldogK5]

Didn't catch the 'burb part. On a positive note though, a crewcab has the wires running down each side just under the sill plates and tight to the B pillar between the doors. I would imagine a 'burb is the same way and then you would have the side panels to look behind.

 

[chevyin]

As stated above, a simple continuity test should tell you all you need to know. Pull the head out, and run the test on the rear speaker wires. there's should be continuity. If there isn't, the wire is unplugged from the speaker at the other end, or its been cut. If there IS continuity, then the poblem is in the head unit not supplying it power for whatever reason. I assume you've made sure the fader doesn't have the rear speakers turned off, your h/u doesn't have a rear defeat buttn, etc...

 

[USSkoval]

Hehe, I actually did remember to check the rear fader The rears didn't work with the stock radio and they don't work with this one either. There were no issues with the radio when it was in one of my other cars. What's the chances of the rear speakers being faulty? I got them from the junk yard a while back, and never tested them in anything else.

 

[dhcomp]

What's the chances of the rear speakers being faulty? I got them from the junk yard a while back, and never tested them in anything else.

Sounds like you answered your own question

 

[cdoggwsu]

It's possible that the speakers are just junk but if they look like they're in good shape (surrounds intact, etc.) it's unlikely that both of them would be shot to the point that they wouldn't produce sound.

If you don't have any other way of testing them you can use your battery as a reference. hook some test wires up to the + and - of the speaker terminal and then touch the wires to the corresponding + and - on your battery. If you see the speaker suck itself in a little bit then the magnets are still good. It's not 100% accurate but might give you a better idea...I use this on subs all the time to check polarity.

 

[Leper]

A real easy way to check a speaker is to (very briefly) drag a 9V battery across the leads of the speaker. It will make noise and jump around if it is good. An older, more used 9v is best to use for this.