For the last 4-5 months, until my car sits in the sun for a few hours, the speakers on the passenger side wouldn't work-except for the pillar mounted tweeter. The factory Bose in the 2000-2003 Maximas have a nasty habit of cutting out like that and the problem is the HU. Even though I have the base audio system (Clarion makes it), I thought the HU was my problem as well. Put in a new Pioneer DEH5100UB and wouldn't you know it, the next morning the speakers in the passenger side wouldn't work until the car sat in the sun.
Rained this morning and my afternoon customer's truck was in the shop so I pulled up my FSM (factory service manual) on my computer and looked to see how to take the door panels off. Since it rained in the morning and the sky was hazy, the speakers on the passenger side weren't working. I pulled off the passenger front door panel and the driver's side rear to access both speakers. Interesting to find the driver's side speakers weren't stock. Anyway, I took the speaker out of the left rear and hooked it to the wiring on the right front and SOUND! I went ahead and put that speaker in the right front door so I'd at least have sound on both sides.
Went up to Best Buy (5-6 minutes from my house) and picked up a pair of Alpine SPS-600 6.5" speakers. Rear speakers are mostly for fill-in so I wasn't going to go nuts buying something really expensive. Besides, I've had Alpine speakers in the past and they are pretty decent.
I ripped out the old speakers and mounted the new ones in the factory speaker enclosure.
You can see the new speakers have much larger magnets-the old speaker is just a magnet because I tore it out of the enclosure and hacked it up a little for the new speakers to clear.
Crappy cellphone pics:
Huge improvement in sound, noticably more bass-of course, you can only get so much out of four 6.5" speakers. Also have the satisfaction of fingering it out for myself and not paying someone to tell me I need new speakers.
