Mazda Stereo woes...

[John_Mc]

The factory stereo on my wife's 2002 Mazda Protege stopped working. Displays are all there, just no sound. I bought one off of Ebay from a wrecking yard and installed it. Worked fine, then after a while it stopped making sound as well. The sound comes and goes, but I'm wondering how I can diagnose the problem. Any suggestions? You can rightly assume I only have a basic understanding of electronics.

 

[GBlearner]

Pull the head unit out of the centre console on the Protege. Shouldn't be too difficult to do that. Than turn it on, (don't touch wires together). And then see if adjusting any wires gives a different sound. It could be as simple as loose wires or the alike. That's a first step.

 

[Banjo]

Last time I fought with an issue like that it was a speaker wire that would intermittently short to a sharp metal bracket under the dash that had rubbed through the insulation. When it shorted it would take out the factory amp. Took months to finally find the issue. I wound up opening up the last fried amp, and finding the burnt component, then following the traces in the circuit board to see which speaker was causing the problem. then I inspected all the wiring to that speaker and finally found the cut.
This was an a completely factory system in a Toyota Sienna. no custom butchering had been done.