99 cadillac seville strange wires

I just recently bought my wife a 99 seville (not the bose system, or possibly they did not reinstall the biose for the sale).. just noticed the door speakers are not working...

took a peek inside the door panel and i see a bright red metallic looking crossover, it's kind of round and looks like a fan.. So i am guessing it has components in the doors..

next i looked in the trunk and found a harness (not factory) of about 20 wires connected to a plug that looks like it would plug into the back of the radio

So next i looked behind the dash and found the other end of this plug just laying there.. anyone know what this is? It lokks like it is an extension so the radio could be mounted in the trunk????

 I am thinking it has to do with none of my door speakers working... any help would be greatly appreciated, I want to take advantage of the next 3 days and get it all working while the weather is nice...

Here are some pictures of the plug in the trunk

Thanks

   Mike

Fosgate3,

why would you need to hook up the factory radio in the trunk if you changed the head unit upfront? my factory doors must be tapped into this reverse harness? and no longer in the original harness??

And it's just the door speakers out, right? the rear deck speakers are doing fine? In that case, you could check the continuity between the speaker and dash to make sure your speaker wire isn't broken or otherwise not connected. If you are certain that there isnt an amp or anything in between the speaker and the dash, you can even "pop" the speakers with a battery. You may want to check the wiring at the speaker to see if its factory or not. If there's an amp the colors may be different but typically, you'll have biege/grey for the FLeft and lt.GREEN/ dk.green  for the FRight. I'd be very critical if there are other colors than that. You may have to physically trace the wires however, for me, I find it easier to just run new wires from the doors to the dash and be done with it.

As far as why the harness is in there, I dont have a clue. If you are putting an aftermarket radio in it, I wouldnt worry too much with it, just grab your 12v constant, switch and ground and anything else you need and run with it.

Can you pop the speakers from the dash? To do so, take any battery (a typical AA will do) and with the speaker connected, touch one of the two speaker wires to the + of the battery and the other speaker wire to the - of the battery. You can use additional wire to jump to the harness or whatever it takes to connect the wiring to the battery. Incidently, this is a good way of establishing polarity of the speaker: if you do this and the speaker goes out, then whatever wire you have touching the + side of the battery is the wire that's leading to the positive terminal of the speaker.

So, I'd check that to begin with. If you can pop the speakers from the dash then you have a connection running from the dash to the speakers. If you cant, then the connection is broken somewhere or feeding into a factory amp that you may not know about. That's something else to consider: if whoever it was that did this was willing to change out the harness in the car, what's to say that the person didn't do something silly like try to add a bose amp or something. I seriously doubt that's the case but it's something to consider.

Normally under many circumstances, the speaker wires from the dash will usually go into a factory plug in each kick panel. The plug will connect the wiring from the radio (traveling through the dash to the kick) to the wiring in the door (traveling from the kick to the speaker in the door, through the door jamb). So, if nothing is changed from the dash to the kick, then the wiring at this plug will have the same colors as what's in the dash. You can also double check this by using a digital multimeter and checking the continuity between that plug and the dash. If you read something close to 0.0 ohms (0.5 something in that range), then you are doing great. Naturally, the wiring is a different color at the kick, then something  has changed in the dash. Keep in mind that regardless if there's a plug or not, there is some method of the wiring going from the kick to the door. I have yet to see this happen without a plug of some sorts.

Even if you can or cant pop the speakers or whatever, it is so remarkably simple to run wires in the car... it just takes a little time and patience. I'd run minimum 16 gauge wire, and run through the door jamb (there's info in this site about doing this--it's not hard). Run the wire from inside the door, probably leaving around a good 12 to 16 inches in the door to work with... go from there, through the jamb, under the dash to the back of the radio. Sometimes the area that houses the radio is encased in plastic making it difficult to run wires to that point... a Dremel works well on this (hey! it's just plastic!)--just make sure you dont cut through a wire or something (it's highly likely you wont). Do this for both doors and you are done. It's probably an hour job or so, maybe an hour and a half and it will cost you all of $10 for wire, if that much! So, you go into it saving a good $40 to $60. I wouldnt throw the money away on getting someone else to do a job that you can do!

It's so worth considering. At any rate, start with popping the speakers. Look for the plug in the kick. Test continuity from the dash to kick--if you have continuity, go from the kick to the door; if you dont, trace or rewire from the kick to the dash. If all this reveals nothing, run new wires. Again, it's easy, it's simple, and something you can do for considerably cheaper.

Thanks Fosgate3, I am no newbie when it comes to installing stereo systems.. I just don't know the caddy and reall wanted it to work on it's own natural ability... I will try popping the speakers, I have a 9 volt already with leads that i have used in the past.... but if all else fails I will just run new wires to all 4 doors... All 4 doors not working leads me to believe the harness is tapped somewhere.. This weekend I will tear it apart and trace everything and let you know how i made out...

Thanks for all your time and help, it is greatly appreciated..

I'll let you know what happens as it unfolds..

Mike

not really, you'd be surprised at how much some installers can hack up a car doing a "rewire". The history of your car probably goes something like this, cust wants to upgrade the factory system so the shop yanks the factory radio and use the relocation harness to put fact radio in trunk to retain data functions,RAP circuit, door chimes etc. they then add an aftermarket radio w a 4 channel amp for the interiors, maybe running new wires to the front component set they installed in the front doors and maybe the new back speakers, along w an amp and sub in trunk. so when they get rid of the car they remove MOST of the system and leave some of it in. Lazy or whatever. So you are going to have to pop the door panels and check for remnants of the factory wires, remove the crossover, and try to get everything back to factory. worst case is get a vehicle wiring schematic and locate the factory amp (probably behind back seat or over/under rear deck) and identify the affected speaker outputs and run new wires or fix breaks. You might want to get to the amp anyways to see if they hacked it up, which I wouldn't be surprised. You probably could use the component left in the front, just not the crossover b cause the amp is crossed over internally.