I just got the vehicle - a surprising 6,000 mile 2004. Looks like new.

After a couple hours driving on a 90-degree day, I stopped to get gas. I had been listening to the stereo. When I continued after fueling, the sound was gone. No nothing. The CD player was incrementing the counter, the Track numbers would change when I toggled them. The FM scanned (still no sound).

In other words the display gave every indication the system was working but NO sound.

No, it was not MUTEd. No, there were no incoming Cell calls (not connected to the head unit (yet)) No, the CD was OK. Yes, the radio worked before.

I went through the USER 1 USER 2 USER 3 and checked for anything there - looked normal.

I made sure the sound was turned up - display showed volume numbers going up and down as I turned ****.

I stopped at home, shut off the car and YES, checked the fuses (5, 8, 23) ALL FINE. Even swapped in some new ones even though the old ones weren't burned. Still nothing. So I put back the old fuses and tried it again.

Then it worked, so I figured something reset. Shut off the car and went in the house.

10 minutes later I came back out and started the car. Stereo on - no sound!

I went through it all again for about two hours - nothing.

Gave up, got in the car to go to the store, left the stereo on and about 10 minutes into the drive - the sound came back on...



I went looking for the power amp up on the kick board under the dash on the passenger side - found what looked more like an on-board computer bolted to a power-coat-white panel under a styrofoam piece. Is that the amp? If not, where is it? And even if I find it, will there be a reset button or some other user-serviceable thing related to the problem I described? Has anyone ever heard of this before?

Thanks in advance!

 

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I never had a problem with my stereo so I can't be much help here but somebody in this forum will probably offer some useful info. Keep watching.

 

Sounds like an excuse to go shopping for a new one if you ask me. I've had the stereo (non nav) in my '04 go wonky every so often as well. It will refuse to power on or off and all the buttons are non-responsive. I usually have to pull over and shut the car off for about 30 seconds and then everything's fine again. I can't seem to correlate it to any other factors.

Yours on the other hand, sounds like its heat-related.

 

I agree, I am thinking the power amp is getting too hot and goes into self-protection mode.

Is the power amp the unlabeled box under the passenger firewall partition? That box has no writing and appears to have too many wires in the harness to be an audio component.

I do listen to some "peaky" music and I may be hitting the limiter, so to speak. But it's frustrating because I play the same program material in my Pioneer (in another vehicle) to the point of making my ears bleed and it just keeps asking for more).

And it's one of those problems that the dealer will likely not be able to isolate and correct. I may have to dun them with it until they give up in frustration and replace the whole thing. I had that result with a Volvo OEM unit a few years back. One little bump in the road and the CD player would trip a little switch to stop playing. You had to pull the unit from the dash and reset it to keep using it. Needless to say it wasn't very convenient. The replacement would have let me drive off a cliff and keep on playing. Clearly the first unit had "issues".

 

The amp is the silver box under the passenger footwell. I have a photo of it here: https://www.crossfireforum.org/forum...75&postcount=2

If you decide to replace your amplifier, please post your experiences (i.e. difficulty wiring, mounting, powering etc.).

 

What kind of music? What volume level?

1.) If you use your controls on the unit to isolate the speakers, are all of the speakers in good shape, or is one (or more) distorting?

2.) If the loss of sound happens regularly, keep the volume quite low. Do you still lose the audio? Does it happen as quickly?

3.) After you've lost audio turn up the volume, if you put your ear up to each speaker, do you hear anything at all - hissing, background noise, etc. or is there zero sound?

 

All kinds of music. All volume levels.

All speakers when sound is produced sound clean and tight - no blown speakers.

Kept the volume between 10-15 and unit still stopped producing sound (head unit appears normal and everything works on it).

Turned up the volume - no sound of any kind - no hiss, no background noise, etc. Zero Sound.

It's so quiet you can hear the CD spinning in the head unit. The dealer has a record of the problem being reported for this vehicle before and the head unit was replaced. Sounds more like a power amp problem to me... They say they'll fix it but I have a 10 hour road trip Sunday and right now it sounds like I will be treated to random periods of silence from my stereo...

 

I decided to test my theory that the amp was getting hot inside the compartment. I flipped the panel down and left it on the floor during my drive to work. ten minutes into my drive with 65-degree temps outdoors and the A/C on, the amp checked out. (Coincidentally?) it happened when I hit 62 mph and the wing deployed. I wonder if there's a relationship? I know the speed controller is connected to the amp (why?) and the wing...

The dealer is supposed to be ordering me a new amp. Sure hope that's the problem...

 

I believe the speed controller allows the radio to automatically adjust the volume as speeds increase. I don't know if the amp just passes the signal straight through to the receiver or if the amp makes the adjustments itself.

 

Yeah that's what I figured.

The dealer was trying to get me an aftermarket stereo because they sold me the car with warrantee but the factory warrantee has expired - he wanted to save himself some money. I took a ride to the stereo shop he uses to make sure what was going to be substituted was at least as good and compatible. By the time I got to the stereo store the guy working with the dealer had concluded there was no plug in replacement for the factory amp and told the dealer to order the factory amp.

Not sure if that's good or bad for me but I didn't want someone to start hacking into the harness - I only have 7,000 miles on the car!

 

That answers some of my questions in the "New amplifier?" thread! So, there is no drop-in replacement. If I wanted to replace that amp, I'd have to either run new wires or hack up the existing wiring. Neither option sounds fun.

 

I'm not sure. I just got tired of chasing it. I did some searching to see if I could find a power amp plug adapter of any kind that went from the factory harness that plugs into the amp, to ANY aftermarket amp. I didn't find anything. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but it does mean you'd have to probably contact a good stereo shop to find one if they do. I think the guy here could see that he was going to have to actually do some work to make it happen and he decided it wasn't worth his time...

Look up the wiring diagram for the power amp harness and you can probably figure out which connections can be re-used. Make a harness to go from the factory harness to your replacement amp using the right connections on each end and you could avoid cutting your factory harness or duplicating speaker wires. Do the same on the head unit side and you could avoid cutting there. Some of the factory leads may end up unused.

Check the rest of the forum here - there seem to be plenty of stereo upgrade threads and I am sure tid-bits can be found about all this.

 

The dealer replaced the amp (at no charge) and my problem is cured. Bum amp!

 

Great! Glad you got a fix.