cd player in 1992 chevrolet cavalier

I am not at all proficient in car stereo intallation, but I have intalled stereos in my cars in the past. I am currently attempting to install a cd player into my 1992 chevrolet cavalier following the guidelines set by the schematics. When I hook up the constant and the switched power to their respective wires, and turn the car on the cd player appears to have power but I can only hear music faintly coming from one of the rear speakers. In addition, the back of the cd player gets hot. I attributed this to poor graounding and even trid to ground the cd player directly to the body of the car, but this does not help. The device has been sitting in a trunk for about a year, so it may be damaged, but I doubt it. Can anyone offer any advice? Thanks.

I suspect you have the speakers wired incorrectly or they are shorting to ground.  If the power ground was bad the unit would not turn on.  If the head unit is heating up right away, it is being overloaded.  Did you use an adaptor to the factory wiring harness(prefered method)  or did you cut off the factory harness connector?  Are you trying to use the factory OEM speakers?  Did this car have  "premium audio system" or a Bose system?

Orginally I was using a harness, but in order to try to correct the problem, I removed the harness to test the wiring. I tested the speakers with a 9 volt battery, and I have them all correcly wired. I am using the factory speakers and the car (until now) had the factory audio system.

thanks for the advice...I'll check it out.