Spent the morning trouble-shooting the stereo issues in the wife's rig. I removed the head unit and looked for loose/frayed/torn wires, and didn't find anything wrong, visually. The head unit powers on (when screwed in/grounded to the chassis) and functions normally, except the only sound coming out is from the two A-pillar mounted tweeters. All door speakers are silent.
Next, I pulled off the driver's door panel, and visually inspected the speaker. It looked fine. No tears or dents in the woofer. No torn surround. The woofer moved freely when I pressed on it.
I then removed the speaker ( four screws and a proprietary connector) and used a multimeter to see if there was any voltage making its way to the speaker from the head-unit through the wires. There was, and you could see it rising and falling with the volume of the music, and then drop to zero volts when the head-unit was powered down.
I was assuming that the speaker was "dead", but brought it inside and connected it to a known good input source, my home stereo. Again, nothing... no sound or movement from the door speaker. I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that the driver's door speaker is dead. (not sure how...)
Anyway, I just ordered these two front replacement speakers from Crutchfield: http://www.crutchfield.com/p_777P52/Sound-Ordnance-P-52.html?tp=97
They are the cheapest speakers sold on Crutchfield (their store brand, AFAIK), but they come with the speaker wiring adapters, speaker mounting brackets, and "detailed" instructions for free. It's the next easiest/cheapest way I can think of to test this no-sound issue. Grand total: $36.98
The problem I had was finding accurate info about this issue, especially the non-Bose stereo. Half the online resources said that the speakers were 6.5". Luckily Crutchfield and MTX had accurate vehicle info on their websites.
Anyways, I'll update this post, or start a new one (and link to this one) once they arrive and are installed.