My driver's door was hit as I was getting out of the car (in a parking space, guy came in too fast) so my driver's door needed fixing at the body shop. Prior to the accident everything was working fine. I couldn't tell if anything was wrong before getting to the body shop because the door wouldn't close.

I have MB Quart RSB218 (6.5" woofer, 1" tweeter, crossover) and I followed the instructions in a walkthrough that I can no longer find to splice into the factory wiring for the input (cut the factory tweeter input wire, splice and connect to the crossover's input). Other than the speakers and crossovers, the rest of the system is factory stock.

Now that the setup has been explained, on to the problem....

The driver's door speakers (both tweet and woof) put out next to no volume. If I connect a ground into the system (anywhere in the system on the ground line whether it be at the input, the woofer, or the tweeter, or any of the ground connectors on the crossover) then the speakers come to life. Even with the extra ground, however, the left side is still not as loud as the right side. The funny thing is I just have to use that extra ground temporarily it seems because if I remove it after it's been grounded the volume from the speakers stays the same.

So right now I've got it hooked up normally (identical to the functioning passenger's side setup) and balance is at left2 to compensate for the lower volume.

This has got me stumped (I'm no guru on audio). Any ideas on how I might fix the problem?

Thanks in advance,
Andy

 

You'll have to try and isolate the problem. Are you running an aftermarket amp? If so, this can become very easy. First, try running your own speaker wire from the amp to the speaker. You don't have to install it, but use a length of speaker wire that will reach from the amp to the speaker/crossover. This will check the integrity of the existing wires. If the sound quality increases to normal, you have an issue with the wires. You can narrow down which wire by leaving one of the existing lines attached and then substituting your own for the other. The one that you substitute that sees better results is the faulty wire. It is possible both can be bad.

If not, then the issue is likely in the components. At this point, I'd probably grab the components from the other side and swap each component one at a time. When the results change, the component that caused the change is likely the culprit.

If you have a factory amp, you can still do the test, but you'll have to splice into the harness near the amp or pull the pins to the wires you need access to.