Hey guys. Newbie here looking for some help.

I got my truck in a trade last week and I love it. 1999 Dodge Ram 1500. Anyways it has an sound system in it. It has an aftermarket deck (don't know what it is but I believe it says 200 watts on it), a roadmaster (or something) subwoofer, a kenwood 4 channel 200 watt amp and (now) has 2 kenwood 500watt max power outlet speakers.

My issue is coming from the right passenger door speaker. When I got the truck the window would not roll down. The guy said a friend of his slammed the door really hard or something and knocked the glass off its track. I managed to fix that but the door speaker doesn't work (it didn't work before either).

When I think about it now I wonder if maybe the track or glass cut/broke something in the wiring there.

Anyways the speaker wouldn't work at all if the volume was low. If I cranked it up high enough it would sputter a little and the bass would somewhat sound out of it. I replaced the speakers (I had some coupons and stuff from best buy so I bought these speakers: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Kenwood+...&skuId=9764366 for only 20 bucks) and the driver side works just fine. The passenger however is still having the same problem.

My sub works just fine like the drivers side. I am wondering if its a wiring problem somewhere but I really don't want to pay bestbuy 80 dollars an hour to figure out whats going on. I think I will check the fuse after I wake up (but if its the fuse in either the fuse box or the radio, would the speakers even work at all?) but I wanted to come here and see if anyone had an idea. I know its a long shot, but I was hoping that this was something I could fix myself.

 

There is no fuse for just one speaker. Actually there are no fuses for speakers so don't bother pulling fuses. You won't find anything.

The best thing to do is to pull the radio, first check the wiring behind the radio to make sure that it is intact. If it has a roadmaster sub in it, chances are that the previous owner installed it himself. Roadmaster is a cheap sub that most do it yourselfers use because they don't want to spend the money. And most of the time, these same do it yourselfers will just cut and splice the wiring together then put electrical tape around the ends to cover it. This is not always a good thing to do.

If the wiring looks to be good, then directly behind the radio, just hook up the speaker by splicing into the wiring there. This will bypass all the wiring through the dash and the door panel in case there is a short. If the speaker works, then you just need to run a new wire through the dash, into the door panel, and your done. Real easy job and since you already replaced the door speakers yourself, you seem to be a handy person.

Npw, if you splice in directly behind the radio, and you STILL don't have sound to that speaker, then the radio itself could be bad. The radio does have individual channels for each speaker and there may be a bad channel. Nothing you can do here except change the radio. Or cheap it, connect the speaker to one of the backs as well. You'll have a small jump in power to those speakers, but you will at least have sound and you won't have to shell out for a new radio.

 

Looked at my deck and i have a dual XDM6825 (http://www.dualav.com/mobileaudio/xdm6825.php)

I am starting to get frustrated with this. I am not really handy lol even though I want to be. There are a ton of wires behind the radio deck and it kind of blows my mind. I sort of located the wires to the passenger speaker though. By splicing you mean to just expose a part of the wire and attach another to it to run to the speaker or something else?

Yeah I am pretty noobish about this. I may just have to take it to some audio shop and swallow the hourly charge ;_;.

*edit*

Oh I forgot to add this. I did get one of those battery operated currency testers as suggested. I put the clamp on one of the wires for the passenger side speaker and stuck the pointy end into the black connector that plugs into the deck and the bulb came on. I haven't been able to repeat that though, but that -should- mean that the wires itself are still good right? Perhaps the deck is going bad.

 

ok, here we go.

Yes on the splice comment. Find the 2 wires that goto the passenger side and expose some of the wire and use new wire to connect it to the speaker. This will tell you whether the wiring behind the dash and into the door is good or bad.

Now for that currency thingy you got. You can not tell if a speaker is bad by using one of those. The speaker has a resistance reading, not a voltage reading. No power goes to the speaker. You would use something like that if the radio did not turn on or a light under the hood or something like that. So testing with a power tester doesn't do anything in this situation. Plus you mentioned that you just bought new speakers. The odds of new speakers being bad out of the box are very slim. With that being said, if you attempt to do the wire splice as a test, you will not get shocked. You can do it when the radio is on.

 

Thank you for the advice LR. A friend of mine saw my post on facebook and stopped by. He looked at my system and messed with something on my amp using a screwdriver and it works now. It was weird lol, but yeah I am happy now .

If you could though, maybe you could help me with another question.

Like I said I have the kenwood 500 max watts in my doors, a dual xdm6824 deck, an amp and I have a roadmaster. I checked it out and this is the one I have: http://roadmasterusa.com/product.php?p=RTS3000T

My question is, is this really a subwoofer or is it more like...regular speakers? I notice that it doesn't really do much bass wise, though it does add to the overall sound in the truck. If I wanted to switch it out for a subwoofer, what would i do? The rear speaker cables (both sets) are plugged into the roadmaster. Would I simply unplug those from the RM and plug them into the subwoofer, or would it require a more...difficult process?

If it does require a much more extensive process then could anyone recommend some nice speakers (or a similar boxed speaker set up like the road master) that gives good sound and bass? Bass is more what I am looking for with this.

 

That kit that you have is more like regular speakers. I don't really like those because they combine the tweeters and the subs in the same box running on the same power which takes away from everything.

If you are looking for more bass, you are going to want to get at least a 10" subwoofer in a box all by itself. I will assume that you have a regular cab truck. They have skinny boxes that you can buy to put subs in that will fit right behind your seats. As for the type of speaker, I don't know what your budget is but there is a wide variety of speakers out there. You can even goto Best Buy and see them in action on there wall units. Sometimes they have deals there. Just stay away from used ones from Ebay. They usually show up ripped or blown and then you are out of your money. BUY NEW, you will be safe.

Now I don't know how your amp is wired so I do not know if you still will get the sound. In theory, your amp should be wired to the radio using the RCA outs for the low bass sound. The box that you have, probably tells me that the amp is wired in to the standard rear channel wiring so there is a low/high combo coming through for the type of box that you have now. This will not sound good coming through subs only.

Your friend seems like he knows a little about sound systems and you might want to recruit his knowledge to help you check out to see if you need to rewire your amp hook up and assist you on choosing a speaker/box. Oh, and depending on the amount of bass you want, sometime it is better to go with one really good expensive subwoofer than 2 really cheap woofers that would be the same price. The better the subs, the better the bass will sound.

 

Yeah you are right on the amp. It being done through the back. The deck isn't hooked up to it using RCA's.

Ah well. I could probably find 2 speakers to do in the back that have more bass then the thing i have there now anyways.