Head Unit On, But No Sound?

4x4orbust · April 28, 2009

so on sunday, i took the truck on it's normal weekend work excursion. (hauling firewood from the back of our 23 acres) before i drove down the trails, i turned the radio down. cut, split, loaded the truck, drove out of the woods, then tried to turn the volume on the radio up and nothing. i know the radio is on, i can change stations, go from FM-AM-CD, turn it on and off, but there is no sound coming from any of my speakers. It is not a bose system, and i had repaced my door speakers with infinity kappa's about 6 months ago. there is no amp running them.

any ideas what i should be looking for? why this would be happening? i can't understand why all the speakers (door and back seat) would go out at once.

teh truck is my 01 1500 4x4 ex cab (5.3l)

thanks in advance!!

bill190 · April 28, 2009

Is there a little bar which normally lights up when you press the volume up?

Try pressing volume down and see if this bar shows up. But does not show up with volume up.

If this is the case, the electrical contact behind the volume up button may be dirty and no longer making contact.

Some buttons are somewhat open to the air and dust can get in there. Then when they are dirty, they no longer make contact when you press on the button.

A factory service manual is NO HELP with this problem because it will just say to replace the whole thing. Sometimes you can take these apart and clean the buttons (you are on your own for this). Other times everything is soldered in and you can't clean any buttons.

If this is the problem, you may be able to find a used head unit at a wrecking yard for not too much. Try getting one from a truck with a clean looking interior which was only driven on Sundays (no dust in buttons!).

asilverblazer · April 28, 2009

Plug loose on the back of the radio.

ScottyBoy · April 28, 2009

Its also a possibility that the factory amp crapped out on you. I'm not 100% sure if all trucks had factory amps or not, but I know mine does. I have a 2001 suburban ls. And I don't have the bose system either, just had the regular delco AM/FM CD player with a remote mounted tape deck in the center console. I swapped it out with an Alpine CD player and pioneer 6.5 inch 4-way speakers I had laying around that were previously mounted in my wife's nissan altima before we traded it in. (Worked out pretty good, the altima also used 4- 6.5 inch speakers, so does the burban) If it is the amp, I'm not sure how to test it . The only thing I know is that the amp remote turn on wire is a pink wire connected to the radio, and the amp will not come on if this wire isn't powered. But If you decide to get an aftermarket stereo, I'd run new speaker wires from the radio to each speaker, bypassing the factory amp.

4x4orbust · April 28, 2009

thanks for the replies, i had some time this morning to play with it. before i did i picked up a clean used one from a local yard for $25. turns out i won't be needing it though.

there are no bars that go up with the volume, just a readout of time, station, mode (am-fm-cd) and a ST (stereo) below it.

not really sure what i did, but it works now. I pulled the head unit out to check the connectors on the back, all were tight and in place. i then checked the splices i did to put in the infintity crossovers and speakers, no problems there. (all soldered) tried the crossovers in my 82 to be sure they work, worked fine. put everything back together and turned the key on, radio worked. i have no idea what happened. guess i'll wait for it to happen again, then start over.

i didn't know our trucks had an amp without the bose system. where is it located? anyone know what the power outputs are on it??

GARB55 · April 28, 2009

thanks for the replies, i had some time this morning to play with it. before i did i picked up a clean used one from a local yard for $25. turns out i won't be needing it though.

there are no bars that go up with the volume, just a readout of time, station, mode (am-fm-cd) and a ST (stereo) below it.

not really sure what i did, but it works now. I pulled the head unit out to check the connectors on the back, all were tight and in place. i then checked the splices i did to put in the infintity crossovers and speakers, no problems there. (all soldered) tried the crossovers in my 82 to be sure they work, worked fine. put everything back together and turned the key on, radio worked. i have no idea what happened. guess i'll wait for it to happen again, then start over.

i didn't know our trucks had an amp without the bose system. where is it located? anyone know what the power outputs are on it??

With Luck like that I would buy a Lotto Ticket!! Glad you got it working.

DofD · April 28, 2009

On my 90 Silverado I would have a similar thing happen. For no particular reason the radio volume would stay where ever it was set and would not go up or down. Though after shutting the truck off it would return to normal.

ScottyBoy · April 29, 2009

thanks for the replies, i had some time this morning to play with it. before i did i picked up a clean used one from a local yard for $25. turns out i won't be needing it though.

there are no bars that go up with the volume, just a readout of time, station, mode (am-fm-cd) and a ST (stereo) below it.

not really sure what i did, but it works now. I pulled the head unit out to check the connectors on the back, all were tight and in place. i then checked the splices i did to put in the infintity crossovers and speakers, no problems there. (all soldered) tried the crossovers in my 82 to be sure they work, worked fine. put everything back together and turned the key on, radio worked. i have no idea what happened. guess i'll wait for it to happen again, then start over.

i didn't know our trucks had an amp without the bose system. where is it located? anyone know what the power outputs are on it??

On mine, the amp is up in the dash above/behind the glovebox. It is a silver box that looks more like an ecm computer or somthing than an amp. It has no fins or heat sink or anything on it. I have no idea what the power output is, but it can't be too much. My radio is rated at 60 watts peak per channel and it sounds way better than using the factory amp. When I first installed it, I took the easy route and wired all the speaker wire to the wires in the dash (that go to the amp) and then wired up the amp turn on wire to the radio remote wire. Now I just have the amp bypassed.

4x4orbust · April 29, 2009

thanks for the information. i'll have to check out the amp and location, is it possible to mount a new amp in it's place? i have been thinking of installing one along with my factory head unit to get the full potential out of my infinity's. I have been looking for a good spot to mount it towards the front of the cab, up under the dash, to "hide" it. i'm not even sure if it would be worth running an aftermarket amp with a stock head unit...

ScottyBoy · April 30, 2009

You could try and squeeze one in there, but it would have to be a pretty small amp. The factory amp isn't too big to begin with. Not to mention you'd have to pretty much take apart most of the dash just to swap it out. I would just put in under a seat on on the rear cab wall, behind the seat.