Put a new sterio in our 97 RS. Old radio worked fine, but wanted a CD that would play MP3. New unit was a pioneer. Worked for one week and then stopped putting out sound. Turned on fine and dial worked, but no sound. Dealer replaced the unit but gave some bull about there being an amplifyer in the eclipse that had to be bypassed. When we installed the new unit, I traced all the wires. No amp found.

Units were installed using a converter plug that hooked to the radio plug and then into the factory radio plug. New unit worked fine for three weeks and then started doing the same as the first but would come back on when I hit a large bump. I have giggled all the wires, checked the connections to assure all wires are connected correctly.

Dealer is giving a hastle because they did not install the radio. I say it is in the sterio, they say it is the installation. Anyone had problems like this?

Catch22

 

"stereo" "amplifier"
If you have an RS, its extremely unlikely it was the Infinity unit... (which had the secondary amp) to begin with.
Honestly, this could be your car wiring (a short maybe). But it seems more likely (since the symptoms were the same in both units that its just a ****ty head unit. THey were both the same, right? If you can return that one, do it. Try another one, lol. If there IS a short somewhere, youre gonna have a hell of a time finding it. Got a volt meter?

 

check on the fuse on the back of the unit... does it blow? and a bump you said? youve got something there not doing contact the way it should... somethings loose or theres some hot wire touching the chassis.... i would say is the head unit... but then again... you said that by a harsh movement you get different results so... lets trust dusty on this one

 

if it's effected by the car's movement, i'd be willing to bet money that the stereo is grounding out, most likley at one of the speaker leads. With many aftermarket units, when one of the speaker leads grounds out, you'll stop getting sound, but the head unit will continue to operate as normal. So here's what I'd do if it were in my shop troubleshooting it:

1.) Check all connections behind the radio, pull out the aftermarket unit and bench test it just to make sure everything is working properly
2.) Check every speaker connection for a lose terminal that could possibly be touching a metal surface.
**These are probably the two most common trouble spots when I do my troubleshoots at work, if neither of these is the problem, get out your multi meter and get ready for some fun**

3.) Check that the radio harness is making the proper connections. You should have the following:

12v Constant - Yellow
12v Switched Accessory- Red
Ground- Black
White, White/Black- Front Left Speaker (+,-)
Grey, Grey/Black- Front Right Speaker (+,-)
Green, Green/Black- Rear Left Speaker (+,-)
Violet, Violet/Black- Rear Right Speaker (+,-)

There will be a few other wires in the harness (Orange, Orange/Black, Blue/White, etc) but we're not concerned with them at this point. With your meter, check each of the 12v's on both the radio (side with listed colors) and the coresponding pin on the car side. Then, with the cd player switched on, check to be sure that there is signal going out. Switch your meter to AC and probe the pausitive and negative wires. You should see a varying voltage that goes up and down with the volume of the stereo and the song's beat. If at this point, you have not found an answer to your problem, you can do one of two things.

1.) Gut your car and find where the wiring is bad, and replace the section

-OR-

2.) Bypass your car's factory wiring completely and run all new speaker wires. The hardest part in this will be feeding the wire through the boot in the door, but honestly it's not that hard. Everything else is pretty straight foward. I'd honestly go option number two if it were me, it takes fewer asprin.