Rep Power: 0

Hi all, I just bought a 01 Civic Coupe. (first Honda ever for me)

The seller had just installed new Pioneer speakers (all six, stock-replacments, in stock locations) and a new Pioneer head unit. I didn't like the looks of the head unit so I put the stock one back in last week. Everything seemed to work just fine. But a couple days ago, I fire it up, the speakers crackle and then nothing. No sound at all. Radio comes on as normal, but no sound. Tried it again today and the same thing. Little bit of crackle then nothing.

I'm NOT a stereo guy, but it seems to me it's gotta be a connection issue. And since it's also a global issue, I'd think it'd be the harness/connector in the back of the radio, but I plugged that in myself and know it's locked in nice and tight. So that makes me wonder if one bad (local) speaker connection would kill all the speakers? How can I go about finding this problem? Do I have to unplug each speaker (one at a time) and see if that works? Or...?

Please help, it's no fun driving with no stereo in a loud, noisy car.

 
Rep Power: 518

Any of the speaker wires touching ground can kill all audio output.

I'd use an ohmmeter at the connector on the back of the radio, check each one of the speaker wires for any continuity to ground.

Connect one lead of the meter to chassis/body/frame/dash structure/ ground, touch the other lead to each wire one at a time and take readings. I would bet one of the door speakers has a connector post touching the steel panel of the door.

 
Rep Power: 0

Didn't have time to dig into this last night. But now I've got audio.

It's warmer today and it was cold(er) when this started happening. Any chance this is weather-related? The speakers crackled this morning (around 40 degrees), but seem to be just fine now that it's almost 60 degrees.

BTW, how do I know which wires go to which speaker? I'm assuming you're saying put the meter needles on those wires in the main harness/connector that plugs into the back of the head unit, right? There's 20 some-odd wires there, and I didn't see any labels so how do I know which wires go to what speakers?

 
Rep Power: 518

Sure, almost anything is possible when electronics are involved. Don't hope for it too much though.

You need a diagram for the car, or a common diagram for almost any aftermarket radio. Most aftermarket radios use similar wire color scheme for speakers. Google is your friend.
Most also have them labeled right on the insulation of the wire. You may need a magnifying glass to read it. Same for adapter harnesses.

Also, it needs to be in a state of broken before you will find anything wrong if you actually test it.
If it all is working, you probably won't find any problems.

 
Rep Power: 308

Spot on about the grounding out of the leads, I would take a look 1st at the door speakers. Double check and insulate door metal and speaker terminals.

www.the12volt.com has the factory wire color info. Sounds as if the original owner cut the plugs off...? Bad move.

 
Rep Power: 253

You can buy "OE" Metra connectors then buy connectors for your aftermarket speakers. No splicing and no more problems.

 
Rep Power: 0

I don't know anything about the speaker install yet. I'll have to dig into it in the next few days and see what's up. It was cold this morning, but the speakers were working fine. So maybe weather isn't a factor

As for a sloppy install, surely by 2001 there wouldn't be any cutting/splicing involved? I know in the old, old days when I put 6x9 speakers in my 75 Nova's package tray there was. But I'd bet these Pioneer speakers have the proper tabs so you can simply plug the OEM connector in, right? (That's what I'm a bit worried about: popping off the door panels and finding tight, OEM-like speaker connections and well-wrapped OEM wires, making the obvious bare/crimped wire problem not so obvious.)

Does anyone know if there's known issues with the stock radio?

 
Rep Power: 518

Did YOU do the install?
YOU don't know until you look.
Amateurs can destroy a lot of perfectly good stuff.

Some people can go to a LOT of trouble to turn something easy into something difficult.


Aaaaand you'd be wrong.

It doesn't look cool.

 
Rep Power: 308

The factory cutout is such that with the Pioneer speakers that if speaker twisted slightly left or right during install it is very easy to short the terminals to the doors metal.
You can get pigtails and connector adaptors for the wiring but the Pioneer input terminals are still utilized.

 
Rep Power: 0

BUMP...

Spent HOURS double checking the wiring on my recent install. Everything worked great, then suddenly no sound! Tore everything back out, checked all fuses, all wiring, etc. Removed the door panels and checked all the speakers with my volt meter and everything checked out. I was ready to send everything back to Crutchfield and put all the stock crap back in...

Then when I was looking at the rear deck speakers (Rockford Fosgate=BIG), I noticed the positive terminal was touching the rear deck (Package Tray) metal ever so slightly. I took the rear interior panel back off and took out the mounting screws and moved the speaker just a bit to where the wire terminal wasn't touching metal and lo and behold I had sound!!!...HALLELUYAH

Just wanted to bump this in case anyone else has this problem in the future...

Honda Civic Speakers No Sound
Deck Works
Speaker Ohms Short Ground Wire

 
Rep Power: 0

I had an '01 Coupe EX long ago before the '12 and now the '08 which I currently have.. and don't remember the '01 having Tweeters, just 4 speakers, 2 in the doors and 2 in the rear deck.
So perhaps the previous owner added them (you mention 6 speakers)... when they installed the aftermarket head unit/radio. If they added tweeters they likely also added crossovers.

Is the wiring factory of adapted from the factory to the new head unit.. there are harness's available for that but most, especially 20 years ago, require cutting and splicing. If this is the case I'd suspect that area something is shorted form remove/replace action when you installed the factory unit.

Where did the factory headunit you installed come from and do you know it was good ??

Try putting the other Pioneer you did not like back if it was plug and play and see if that resolves the problem.

OEM Radio /HU has only 4 speaker outputs..
LF SPEAKER|grn/blk - lt green
RF SPEAKER|grn/yel - gry/red
LR SPEAKER|blu/wht - blu/blk
RR SPEAKER|pink - blu/yel

 
Rep Power: 125

I’m pretty sure my ‘01 LX had tweeters. They look to be factory as well. I’ll check back when I get home and take a look at it. Maybe it was a dealer option?

 
Rep Power: 367

I think Jboat already solved his issue and is just giving additional info of what solved his issues

 
Rep Power: 0

One thing I'm a little confused about here is why the current would choose to flow through the GND if terminal was still connected yet touching car frame... Speakers operate on an AC voltage produced by the head unit so what is encouraging it to flow to gnd which is connected to the cars battery DC voltage.. I thought current chose the path of least resistance back to its original source being through the speaker back to head unit regardless of contacting other metal providing it is still terminated to speaker. However if both terminals connect metal that's a total dead short bypassing speaker.. If I were to probe between a speaker wire in operation and the ground of the car with multimeter on AC would I witness any potential differences occur or just OL?

 
Rep Power: 0

Best way to test speaker wires is at harness find speaker pairs.. Test pairs both to ground and between each other with multimeter on ohms either + or - doesn't matter if you know they're a pair.. Find speaker with abnormally low res ie short..Go to specific door disconnect speaker wires..twist together, back at head unit test both wires to GND wanting an OL result,if still shorting then you have confirmed it's bad wires not the termination.. No time wasted.. If clear re terminate carefully and repeat.. May be worth noting the resistance of one wire in a pair should be pretty much half the resistance of the full loop...
​​​​​

 
Rep Power: 224

In this case the positive terminal was touching the chassis. The resistance of the chassis back to the radio should be very close to 0 Ohms. The resistance of going through the speaker and then back to the radio is going to be 4-8 Ohms depending on the speaker. It did take the pass of least resistance. If it were the negative terminal shorted to ground the speaker would still work, possible with some noise or feedback.

Yes. Probably not much but something nonetheless.