A few weeks back I bought a 2014 countryman s. When I test drove it I focused on the drive and did not put a lot of thought into the audio system because it looked stock. The sound was pretty bad but I have done some work on audio systems in my youth so I thought 'the speakers are blown and I can deal with that np'. But I went to change out the speakers and when I did I realized that I am only getting sound from the subs under the seat (hence the terrible quality) and even once the new speaker was installed there was no sound coming from it. In addition to that I found that the door speaker that I pulled was not stock...

My next thought was that someone must have done a custom audio in the car which is not ideal but maybe they cut the speaker wires from the stock harness and did not reattach them when they threw the stock head unit back in. This seemed plausible given all four door speakers are not working so I bought a cheap endoscope and checked out the wiring to the head unit and it appears to be intact and it also appears to be stock. There is no splicing or any noticeably aftermarket wires hanging out.

I then went and checked all the fuses on the passenger side panel and they all looked good. I did see what I think was a left over amp wire running (jumper style) from one of the fuses so I disconnected it. No change in the sound quality and nothing kicked on.

I also looked around the trunk for signs of the amp and I do not see any holes or wires. Then I opened up the back quarter panel vents and on the passenger side I saw the same aftermarket wires that I saw by the fuse box and on the drivers side I saw what looks like an amp ground wire connected to the body. Still no clue where the amp would be if it still exists or were it was mounted when it was working.

I am stuck because at this point I am not really even sure what exactly I am looking for and I am not real keen on the idea of pulling the whole car apart to look for "something" that looks wrong. If the previous owner had not replaced the head unit and had just thrown an amp in and new speakers how/where would they have spliced into the stock speaker wiring? Also is it possible that the head unit is the issue and that it is not providing output to the doors only?



Any thoughts on what I should check next would be helpful.

 

I have an update.

I have not found where they spliced into the speaker wires but followed the wires I saw to their logical ends and I did find the location where the amp once lived. Predictably it was in the trunk and when I pulled the plastic trim on the drivers side it was pretty clear that someone had tucked the wires in and tightened them into the trim to never be discovered again. Of course if someone had taken the time to connect the 8 speaker wires together like I did I might have gone years without ever realizing that someone had even had a custom stereo installed... Of course nothing was labeled so I just had to use the fade and balance features on the radio and a multimeter to locate the outputs and then it was just trial and error for the speaker wires. Now of course the big question is because the wiring is all set up already should I purchase a new amp to set it all back to what once was..? I'm going to say no for now..

 

I redid the stereo in my MINI F56, all speaker wires are OEM and connected with a harness. If I want to pull everything out, I just have to plug the old amp back into the system. Your car was apparently hacked apart. Hopefully they didn't mess with other parts of the car.

I couldn't live with the basic sound system, nor the HK system MINI uses so I had to add more power.

Good luck with what you choose to do and let us know. Always interesting to see what people do with stereos.

 

@cut7 Tom- is the USB customization for the Axxess Android-only?

 

Nevermind.

Mac as well.

Wait- nope. Need another box from Axxess to use with iPhone/pad