I took the Formula, with its new Alpine receiver and XM radio, out on a road trip over the holiday weekend. The car and stereo perfromed flawlessly until this evening. The sound now cuts out to all 4 speakers, but tapping on the side of the radio pod will bring it back each time it cuts out. I am going to pull it out tomorrow and check all the connections, but I am wondering if there is something specific that I should focus on? I used a harness from Crutchfield, and all other connections were made using Posi-Lok no-crimp connectors.

Thanks for any help you can offer. My fiance is taking ti car on a trip on Wednesday, and she'll be pretty bummed out if the new stereo isn't working!

 

Without physically looking at it myself, I cant really help you much. The only this that I could really say, is that it probably is just a loose wire in the harness.

 

Loose wire in the harness or one of the speaker wires is going to ground/B+.

 

Well, I found and fixed the problem. I had forgotten that at the time of the install, I was short 2 posi-loks, so I used 2 regular crimp connectors for two connections. Those things suck, and one wire for one of the rear speakers came loose. Replaced both crimp connectors with posi-loks, and everything works fine!

What I don't understand is, if just one speaker wire was disconnected, why did that kill the sound to ALL of my speakers?

 

One of the wires was going to ground, you're lucky...

 

Lucky that my stereo didn't burn out, or my car catch fire?

At any rate, I swear from this day forward never to use crimp connectors again, I just hate them! Posi Locks NEVER come loose.

 

BOTH! More likely to just kill the deck, car fires aren't as common as they should be...

 

Damn, good thing neither happened. I haven't put an extinguisher in the car yet!

 

Really unlikely to have that bad a problem, almost never happens, but it can.