replaced front drivers door lower speaker, very quiet

[Eyespy12]

So I bought new Pioneer speakers that Crutchfield recommended for the lower drivers door on my 2012 Explorer XLT. Through crutchfield, I bought the wiring harness and mounting bracket. Tonight I pulled the old speaker and plugged in the wiring harness and attached it to the new speaker. The speaker works, but it is extremely quiet at 75-90% full volume.

I plugged the old speaker back in to double check the factory wiring and it worked fine. So I plugged back in my Crutchfield harness and new speaker and same thing, very very quiet. All the other speakers still work fine. Has anyone had this experience? I have no idea what to try next to figure this out.

Thanks in advance.

 

[bobditts]

your new speakers are most likely less efficient than the stock speakers. I other words, your stock speakers are designed to work well with very little power. Your new speakers need moar powa to sound great. Either amplify the new speakers, your put your stock ones back in.

 

[toypaseo]

Contact Crutchfield about the issue. My experiences with their customer service have been excellent.

 

[Eyespy12]

I did contact them. Twice. The first time the gent on the phone said my best bet was replacing the speaker with another Ford factory speaker. Something about 2ohm and 4ohm not being interchangeable. It didn't make much sense to me that he would say that because their website clearly defines my speakers as compatible with the bracket and wiring harness. They have a bracket and wiring harness available for this, so I can't be the first guy to try and swap out the speaker.

The second time I spoke with a lady who said it's probably the wiring harness and she sent me another package of them to try. Just got them today. I'll try it out but it may be a week or so before I get to it. And the irony of all this is that after attempting to put the speaker in last week, I put the factory speaker back in and the darn thing works brilliantly all week.

 

[toypaseo]

I was kinda wondering if there was an ohm issue. OEM 2ohm sounds odd, but I have been out of the car audio scene for quite a while.

Does the OEM speaker have the ohm listed on the magnet?

 

[Eyespy12]

It wasn't listed on the magnet. But the first crutchfield employee knew by how many wires the back of the speaker had. The OEM speaker had 4 wires running to the wiring harness and my pioneer only had 2. If you search eBay for 2012 Ford Explorer speakers there's a couple good listings that have good photos of the front and rear of the OEM speaker. You can see the 4 wires in those pics.