Car Stereos: No sound, sony xplod, internal amplifier

Question
The stock head unit on my 2004 Sonata died. I replaced it with an aftermarkert sony xplod unit. All the light and knobs work fine, however no sound comes. I have checked all the wires and everthing is connected but still no sound. I tested the unit on my other car and it works. Can you help?

Answer
Hi Chris,

I'm not really sure what to tell you; there is nothing special about the Sonata that you could be missing.  There's no factory amp, the wiring is all standard, and it should just work.

Being that you've tested the unit in another car, we can rule out things like the deck's internal amplifier.

The only thing I can think of is that you've got a short somewhere in the car that's causing the deck to turn off its amplifier to protect itself (and if that's the case, it's probably what fried the stock head unit.)

The next thing I would suggest you do is to get a multimeter, and test each pair of leads going to each speaker.  They should be providing 4 ohms of impedance.  If it's less, you've got a short.

Justin