Well, I took it back to Circuit City where I had the new stereo unit
installed and had new speakers put in the back.
After 4 hours of working on the installation at 9:30 last night there was no
sound out of the back.
They started again today and fixed the earth wiring and now I have great
sound with the new rear speakers.
I suspect that the problem all the time was the wiring and not the original
speakers.
But by having Circuit City do the installation of their speakers it only came
to $30.00 installation fee and they did a bunch of work to do the trouble
shooting.

I will post a set of pictures on my website when I put up the vanagon page
hopefully soon.
Thanks for all the useful replies.

Sam W
63 singlecab
70 bay Westy
87 Vanagon Westy

'twas writ:
I installed a new CD/MP3 player before going across the country and back in
September/October.
Everything was fine when we left San Jose.
On the way back the rear speakers stopped working and the front speaker sound
really fuzzy now,
I went back to Circuit City and they said that there was no connection to the
rear speakers and that I must have overpowered them with my new stereo.
So I had put in 5 1/4" speakers with an adapter in the rear by the
air-conditioning.
When it was all done, nothing worked in the back.
The installer said that there is a VW supplied amplifier under the
speedometer console and that I must have blown that. The new stereo does not
require an amplifier so he can just bypass it.

Am I being cornswoggled or is this true?
Does anyone have a pair of good speaker for the front?
Or is there an option for new front speakers?
They talked about putting a tweeter in place of the old speaker and a 5 1/4
"cut into the door panel.