[cirlogeamircea]

Hello,

I've got a 2009 ls chevy cruze j300 european model.
The factory driver door speaker has died on me in 2015, since then I've installed 50w blaupunkt speakers in both the driver and the passager door.
Yesterday morning without any notice the driver side tweeter and the passager door speaker were blown, the driver side door speaker works if I hit the volume over 80% but with a distorted and rambling noise below that there's no sound, the passager side tweeter works allright.

Has anyone encountered this problem before?
Is it a short somewhere or a wire, I guess it's relatively uncommon for basically 3 speakers to just go at the same time.

P.S. pardon any grammar mistakes, english is not my 1st language

 

[Cruzen Vegas]

I think get another Pair of a speakers and try again, get some Focal's....

 

[NickD]

Installed Blaupunkt overdrive speakers in my 88 Supra around 25 years ago, still working great.

Maybe this is the problem.

"Blaupunkt (help·info) GmbH is a German manufacturer of electronics equipment, noted for its home and car audio equipment. It was a 100% subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH until 1 March 2009, when its Aftermarket and Accessories branch including the brand name were sold to Aurelius AG of Germany for an undisclosed amount. Since 2011, now they are all made in China."

I removed the original speaker terminal connectors and soldered them to the Blaupunkt's. To get the best connectivity. On practically all speakers the two voice coil wires are glues underneath the cone to eyelets in the cone where two Liszt wires make contact to the input terminal strip. At times you find the soldering isn't done very well, typical is a flux connection. I like to touch these up.

Spades on the speaker terminals can be 3/16" or 1/4", females have to be tight, getting difficult to find good plated terminals now, more crap from China. Door speakers are the latest problem, were kicked out for airbags. You sure don't find pretinned 16AWG wire anymore, mostly all bare copper that corrodes, and the gauge is so small, wires can break inside of the insulation. Really bad in -30*F weather, that plastic gets awfully stif. Ha, not only the speaker wires, a ton of wires now. So can also be other connectivity problems or corrosion.

Just some things to look for.

 

[Nightmistx22]

I would double check (visual and physical) all your connections first. If they check out then look into getting some new speakers.

In a different car I had all my driver side speakers stop working suddenly.... turns out the rca to the amp for that channel worked its way out of it's plug just enough so it looked ok but pushing it back in let all the speakers work again.

 

[cirlogeamircea]

Thanks for the tips guys, I'll check these out

 

[NickD]

Rings a bell with my brand new ordered Cruze with radio problems, didn't dare fool with it myself so took it to the dealer. Joe Weak on the production line didn't fully plug in the connectors at the rear of the radio.

But I didn't know if this was the problem or the radio was bad, and fooling it by myself could void the warranty.

 

[cirlogeamircea]

Rings a bell with my brand new ordered Cruze with radio problems, didn't dare fool with it myself so took it to the dealer. Joe Weak on the production line didn't fully plug in the connectors at the rear of the radio.

But I didn't know if this was the problem or the radio was bad, and fooling it by myself could void the warranty.

I'll try that as soon as I get home, hope it will be that simple in my case. I'm deterred to remove the whole console just to get to the radio, hopefully I won't brake anything.
I've got the Cruze since 2009 so warranty isn't on the table anymore.
And to bring it in for service in my country is very expensive, I'll try to diy it and if I can't reach my head around it guess I'll pay that 25$/h rate.

 

[NickD]

Ha, sure find natural born liars in the audio field, over the years, managed to pick up high end audio equipment. General Radio, sound level meter and calibrator, an HP distortion analyses.

Manufacturers advertise maximum power in that will toast the voice coil, nothing to do with distortion. Tested a bunch of 6.5 inch speakers, most power the best can handle is about 6-7 watts before hitting distortion, Blaupunkt's were the best, about 12 watts before distortion occurred.

Other thing I learned with my spectrum analyzer, rare to find any music below 150 Hz, that bass drum everybody is at 150 Hz, even the lowest note of a piano is around 120 Hz, but pulses at a 16 Hz rate. Only thing I did find was music from a 32" organ that was close to 30 Hz. Sure a huge difference in enclosure size from 20 Hz to a more reasonable 60 Hz

With a sound level meter, one watt applied to a speak at 1KHz outputs 105 db, OSHA says above 85 db can cause ear damage, so what are some people doing by adding a 1,000 watt amplifier to their vehicles. But if it is RMS, lot of these guys advertise peak to peak power, such a parameter doesn't even exist.

Ha, sure a lot of BS in the audio field. Dealing with Sweetwater for years, their number one product is a distortion box for all the new stuff. Electronics got to the point of being distortion free, so now have to add it.

 

[cirlogeamircea]

What really grinds my gears is that this particular car is my "weekend car" during the week I've got a company vehicle, so my cruze is from 2009 with ~30000 miles, I don't listen to the radio at high-volume just at about ~30%.
If I were to blast it day-in day-out and go trough my adolescence again I could understand a problem occurring but god ****...

 

[cirlogeamircea]

So I wanted to give a little update, I took down the door panels and the driver side A pillar, the speakers in the doors were ok but the wires connected to the speaker terminals were corroded and full of rust, so they didn't make contact at all (the passager side was so bad that the corrosion caused the wires to break all together and they dangled in the door compartment).
As for the pillar tweeter, that was completely dead, removed it and installed an aftermarket one, I didn't like the fact that I had to cut off the original connector and solder wires directly but it is what it is.
Now everything works great again, I took the time to solder everything in place, put some heat shrink tube on all connectors, sprayed some wd40 on everything.
To remove the A pillar I disconnected the battery negative connector so to disable the airbag and yanked it parallel to the ground, then lift it, disengage the little rubber clipping on the top of the pillar and the whole thing came apart easily. FYI you don't need to remove the rubber door gasket to remove the A pillar, just get your fingers under it and pull, I've seen tutorials that guide you trough the process and started with the removal of that gasket.
I'm glad it wasn't a problem with the head unit (output, fuse, bad wires)
I've installed the mac audio mpe 2.16 speakers, because of the price (they're ~50$) and the fact they are component.

 

[chevrasaki]

Thanks for the update!

 

[NickD]

So are your speakers the culprits or the victims, use to put rain gutters on all vehicles, then started making doors half way up into the roof. Problem with this, if caught in an ice rain, couldn't open the doors. And when you opened the doors in the rain, your front seat would be soaking wet.

Car is already 8 years old, is your lower outside window weather strip all dried up? Rain water gets down into the door, not only your speakers, but but your window mechanism is a pile of rust. Should have plastic speaker shrouds to help protect your speakers. As far as corrosion, silicone works best. Also have weep holes at the bottom of your doors, rolling down a dirty window gets mud down there and blocks up so road salt builds up and rusts out the bottom of the doors.

Your dealer has a real good solution for this, trade them in every 2-3 years.