New headunit - power but no sound?

[dave73chally]

I'm not running an amp. As a test, I took a small household amp and hooked up the speakers and they played fine so I know it's not the speakers or wires connected to them.

No sound from the speakers when connected straight into the headunit harness. Powers on and shows the audio playing but no sound.

[Bullitt-]

There seems to be a lot of this going around on other forums....Only thing I'm seeing is to make sure there are no shorts in any speaker wires(solved one guys problem) that there is a solid external ground, & that you have constant power to the yellow wire & switched power to the red (pretty standard colors for aftermarket radios)

I've installed dozens (hundreds if you count my job back in the 70s) and don't recall having an issue of this nature other than the odd pinched speaker wire and that usually only affected that channel.

[dave73chally]

How do I test for shorts? My ground is the same as the old unit but I'll try a different spot. My yellow constant is hooked to the BATT terminal on the fuse box, red ignition is hooked to the ACC terminal on the fuse box, is this ok? Think I read on here someone else used the same.

This may be a dumb question, but does the constant mean I could power on the unit without turning the key in the ignition? I don't think it does

[Bullitt-]

Those connections should be adequate, you might test with a meter to make sure that your getting full voltage.
No the yellow constant power wire is strictly for memory when the key is turned off.

[dave73chally]

 I replaced the front 2 speaker wires and they worked fine then. The left rear speaker worked and the unit didn't play when the rear right was connected. Assuming the issue was in the wiring because when I reran new wire to that speaker, it worked. Now I dropped the front 2 into the dash locations and no sound, no popping nothing. Grounding out on the dash??

[Bullitt-]

probably something like that...had a speaker that was malformed that worked fine out of the car but would short internally when mounted solid.

[dave73chally]

Figured it out finally. One of the front speaker terminals was grounding out on the dash, wrapped them in electrical tape and that solved the issue. Also, the drivers side right rear speaker wire was bad and also grounding out. Stereo now sounds awesome, thanks for all the help guys