Dereke

the audio sticky got me motivated to try and fix the sound system in my car. its never worked right and a few months ago stopped working all together.

i started by pulling the deck out where i saw many many wires cut and a few were spliced into speaker wires(looked like the other end of the rca wires that were dangling in my trunk.) so i re connected all the wires to the stock harness. then i pulled off the drivers side door where i saw a 6.5 kicker and a kicker tweeter in place of the stock units.. the stock speaker wires were cut and tied into this thing




not sure what it is, probably a crossover? anyway i took it out and ran the stock wires back to the speakers. but only one wire per speaker so the other end must be a ground? grounded them out and still no sound. im going to just buy a new deck friday and replace it all but im curious to know about the funky box that was in there. any ideas?

PureDrifter

iTrader: (10)

pretty sure thats a crossover.

edtbjon

That gizmo is indeed a crossover where the input (probably) is the two connectors on the left, the output for the 6.5" woofer is in the middle and the two rightmost connectors are for the tweeter. (There ought to be some inscription on the crossover with instructions on how to connect the wires. Else, check Kickers website for instructions.)
(I recently installed 6.5" speakers in all four doors and the sound is soo much better.)
As it seems you're not getting any sound from any speaker, you should look at the head unit first, as it's very unlikely that both crossovers (for the front doors) should fail and also both speakers in the back door should give up at the very same time.

But, you can check the speakers and the crossover with a small 1.5V battery. I suggest that you first check the woofer, which should move when you give it the 1.5V current (simply hold the battery poles to the speaker wires). If it works you can optionally check the tweeter as well, but as the movement is much smaller, it's harder to see if it's working.
Next you connect the speaker wires back to the crossover (you did note how the wires were connected, didn't you ) and check with the battery to the input of the crossover. If the woofer is moving, then the speakers and crossover are in order.

BTW, what year model is your LS. There is a big difference in the audio system between the first and second generation and we need to know which year model you have in order to help you better.
Depending on your model, there are links to audio wiring diagrams etc. If you search and find these diagrams, the job will probably be much easier.

//Björn

fourthmeal

That is a crossover, and it handles input / output duty exactly like edtbjon said. There are no "grounds" in the familiar way with speaker wires. Just a polarity to have correct phase, + and -. There are 6 terminals on each crossover, and you will find two of those boxes, one for each pair of woofer / tweeter combos. Judging by the corrosion I suspect you found these in the door. Inexperienced or amateur installers typically install crossovers in the door, but it is a mistake! The delicate inductors (that's the copper coils in the top of the crossover), capacitors (the round black things in the center-right), and the resistors (the white blocks at the bottom) as well as the wiring that runs all that simply can't take the abuse of moisture, extreme heat and cold, etc. Its a good way to kill a crossover, frankly.

there are some constants to how car audio goes together, and you can learn those at www.bcae1.com

Dereke

it is a 93. i did take note on the wiring and found a wiring diagram for everything yesterday. it did look like a shop install but very amateur. i will clean the rust and corrosion off these and move them into the cabin. they were in fact in the door.

fourthmeal

The corrosion is the external visual cue that they might not do so well ever again. This is due to those capacitors taking that abuse. Coils of wire (the inductors) don't have much to worry about, and neither do resistors, but caps can only tolerate so much variance in moisture, heat, cold, and vibration. Just be mindful that the sound quality may not be as good as it is supposed to be if those caps are damaged. It is not a certainty it is a possibility.