here are the facts:
2006 COBALT LT w/ pioneer 7 spkr & sub
ordered wiring adapter from crutchfield
connected everything, color matched and followed indtructions to the letter
( I am an electricians mate in the navy and I read schematics every day, install upgrades on US Navy Hovercrafts)

I get the h/u to turn on, but get no sound, I call crutchfield and they tell me that I got the right harness but I have to pretty much rewire the whole thing and bypass the subwoofer??

Need help please

BOSSTED has the same problem

 

yeah i heard that you have to bypass the factory amp. but maybe its a good thing. you can rewire your car and put some better quality speaker wire in it. at least thats what i did, plus it makes it easy to return the speakers to stock so that you dont cut any orginal wiring

 

you have to buy a $130 wiring harness actually. There is a harness witha built in computer chip that will plug directly in and you wont have to run any additional wires.

 

you have to make sure you wire the att wire (blue wire, sometimes blue/white stripe), it turns on the factory amp and thus gives you sound

i have an 06 SS with the 7 speaker...i got the wire kit that came from crutchfield ($15) it worked great. I think the only reason you need the real expensive harness is if you have OnStar and want to retain it.

 

what??? haha i spent like 40 bucks total and im using a the factory amp and everything. But yeah you need to connect a wire to the factory amp wire that leads to the HU for sound. I ran into the same problem.

 

thanks for all your help guys, I rechecked everything and now it works, with factory amp.

 

I can't believe ppl are still spewing that BS that you have to spend over $100 on a harness after it's been gone over and over again.....

 

Here the deal with the expensive wiring harness. After checking with gm, electronics stores, and everyone under the sun. I was told that you can install it with the cheap harness but over time it will mess up the computer in your car. It will not be immediate but It will mess it up. So if you want to do it cheap by all means go for it but when your computer starts to screw up then we will see who laughs

 

Right, yeah it deteriorates over time. How plausible does that sound to you? The problem is that everyone you talked to either doesn't know what they're talking about or wants to sell you something.

I'm laughing right now since I have that extra $100 right here in my pocket, and I'm sure I will continue to do that for as long as I own my Cobalt as I see no chance of it "messing up the computer over time" lol.

 

actually I bought my wiring harness for cost because the guy I bought it from didnt care about making money if he wasnt doing the install. I talked to multiple professionals including GM experts. I will entertain the thought that I am wrong but Id rather be wrong and spend the extra $100 then see my car go down the crapper down the road. $100 now could save a few grand later.

 

we actually ran into (the first one ever) an '06 cobalt that really did need the malibu kit w/ DIC. with the regular harness, the guages didn't work. the caobalt was as base as they come. funny because mine is to and i still didn't need the GMLAN kit/harness

 

uhm??? ok..perhaps its a different problem...if uve done otehr 06 cobalts what makes this one different?

 

Thats the only time u need to buy anything expensive. And it was used to retain my onstar.

 

Yeah - the only time you need the expensive one is if you have onstar you need to keep.

If you have the cheap harness and it wipes your gauges out its probably because something was hooked up wrong. My guess would be the installer tried to tag the LAN data line as a +12v turn on signal, which then made the gauges stop working.........