my friend has a 99 dodge ram qc. he bought it used and had stereo problems from the get go. since i am pretty good with car stereos i told him id fix it. the previous own had put in a set of after market speakers in teh back.. i have pix of the damage done.

bear with me, cause this is long and theres a lot to know.

with my original intentions to get the speakers to work, i pulled the aftermarket head unit out. what a mess that was... who ever did the install had no idea what he was doing, or cut more tahn a few corners. what i saw was horrible.

they had spliced an RCA cable and hooked it up to the speaker wires. so the RCA cable was hooked up to the back of the head unit, while the spliced end was going to the speaker wires...why???? i have no effing clue. they also had a random wire going to the fuse box...again no idea why.

after reading quite a few posts on here, i figured out that the truck does have the infinity sound system. well im gonna assume that. if u look the pix i attaced you'll understand why i came to that conclusion.

so i took the RCA cable out of the equation and removed teh random wire. hooked everything back up and tried to turn it all on. no luck. the only way it works is with the set up i have in the pic. however when it turns on, it resets itself, due to the lack of the memory.

so now to my questions.

how do i fix the effed up rear speaker situation?
how do i wire the head unit to work properly?
where is teh amp for the infinity system located?

 

so i figured it out, after calling crutchfield.. it was the fuse in teh number 12 spot. which i over looked. only cause it was encased in a black protective holding. so i assumed it was something to stay away from.... stereo works fine although i do have one more problem...

i get sound from all 4 speakers....however when i disconnected teh remote wire from the equation i didnt get any sound from the left side of the car...with the remote hooked up everything is fine.

any ideas???

also there is no infinity system, but there are extra wires in the back...still no idea what for...the previous installer must have been outta his mind

 

These should be your wire colors behind the radio bezel:

Function
+12v Constant - Red
+12v Switched - Red/White
Dimmer - Orange/White
Antenna Trigger - Yellow
LF (+) - Dark Green
LF (-) - Brown/Red
RF (+) - Purple
RF (-) - Dark Blue/Red
LR (+) - Brown/Yellow
LR (-) - Brown/Light Blue
RR (+) - Dark Blue/White
RR (-) - Dark Blue/Orange

The factory radio uses a ground strap, so you have a couple options to ground the new unit out. If there is a braided strap in the radio cavity, poke a hole in the strap, and solder the black wire comming from the new radio into the strap. If the ground uses a clip, you can use a speed clip and it should plug right in. If neither of these is available courtesy of the original installer, extend the ground wire and create your own.

 

the ground in this truck is actually a black wire with a blue stripe. since i wasnt the original installer, i have no idea if any ground existed. however ive seen a few wiring schematics that say the wire i mentioned is the ground

 

Let me make sure that I'm understanding you correctly. When you apply +12v to the factory amp turn on wire, everything works as it should. When you disconnect it, you lose power to the drivers side speakers.

Assuming that this is correct, the problem is actually in the passenger side speakers. When the factory amp turn on wire is not connected, you should not get any sound from any speaker. So, with that in mind, the previous installer has somehow managed to run a some sort of parallel connection on the passenger side speakers, so that they are getting audio signal even with the amplifier turned off. Take a look at the wires behind the radio, check to see if anything back there looks like it wasn't factory installed. If you trace bundles back far enough, you should find them taped or in a foam surrounding. anything outside of these is generally added after the factory and could be the cause of your problem.

 

What a mess! I was gonna say to rewire the whole truck startying with a new HU and speakers. Maybe the idiot who did the job before tried to bypass the factory amp if it is indeed the Infinity speakers.