I have a speaker not making sound in the rear of my 98. I removed the speaker and want to replace it, maybe both, but am confused how there is only ONE wire plugging into the speaker. When I look at the connector/adapter on the speaker itself and see it has TWO wires in the adapter - one of the left and one on the right, if you will - but the speaker wire feed only has ONE wire in the adapter.

How does this work? I'm thinking of just unplugging the other rear speaker wire and plugging it into the one I think is dead. But at the end of the day, curious what folks do if they want to put a new speaker in - how do you/we deal with the ONE wire feed?

Thank you,

Jay

 

The steel car body is the ground "wire". The factory stereo is wired for this. An aftermarket stereo will require you to run new wires with both signal and ground.

 

The 1 speaker wire is signal, or 12V. The speaker grounds through the sheet metal of the car. If you buy an aftermarket radio each speaker will have 2 wires, 12V signal and ground (red & black respectively).

 

Thanks guys!

 

Make sure the speakers are the correct Ohms for the radio. Aftermarket is usually 4 Ohms, GM radio's are 8 or 10 Ohms. The Ohms are marked on the speaker.