yup…i ripped apart the door panel and started messing around with the multimeter that i had. then i took a spare speaker and just started touching wires to each contact. turns out i had the wire leads in the doors in the wrong place in the harness. the wiring harness that goes to the speaker is actually two pieces, one for the built in amp and the other for the speaker. i guess i had them originally plugged into the wrong one!
i was attempting to use a relay because crutchfield said i needed it. yeh…they were wrong.
fmfkid…thanks for the help. no one had a diagram to help me out so i just went with the good old trial and error method.
i have no idea why those wires were cut behind the harness. the guy i bought the car from said the original owner had done that which i find hard to believe. it looks like someone got 2 out of the 3 harnesses needed and just spliced into the extra wiring harness.