altoncustomtech

he's doing that troubleshooting step right now

Hey guys.... I been talkin to him... it's different than you're realizing... Right now, the only wires connected to the amp ARE: BATT+, Ground, speaker wires AND RCA's. The wire from the HU is no longer connected to the amps at any point in the line. What happens is that when he connects, with a short 4" lead, the remote terminal of the master, to the slave, the master powers on. I have seen these kinds of problems in motor control centers when a relay or contactor's neutral/ground gets a bad connection. It can cause a strange feedback like situation, for reasons unknown to me that causes others to stay pulled in, or not work, and otherwise wreak complete havoc in the panel on anything that shares the same set of power and ground connections. I believe there's a problem with a remote relay inside one of the amps.

^^^ X2.... patience grasshopper....

Oh, no. We don't compress the gas like that, our pipeline is all standard Natural Gas in gaseous form. The maximum amount of compression differential these can handle is ~300psi. In other words if you have 600psi of suction pressure, the maximum discharge could only be around 900psi.... any more than that and they'll tell you all about the load they're under and how they can't handle it.... LNG is usually several thousand pounds if I'm not mistaken.

Actually we do quite a bit of small routine maintenance, otherwise as long as things are going smooth they don't require a ton of maintenance to keep runnning. Adjustments to the lifters and "balancing" the power cylinders are done on a weekly basis. Otherwise we just keep em cleaned up and running smooth. LOL @ the turbo on the GN!! I said the EXACT same thing about my Jimmy on a blazer forum!!! LOL.... After saying that I looked at the valve train a bit closer. Are those individual oilers on each unit? I was thinking of the fulcrum and contact points needing a lot of lubrication, but then i noticed what looked like oilers on it. Nope, no oilers, we grease all those points every other day roughly. There is a oiling system that oils points in the upper power cylinder walls, the pressure packing in the compressor cylinders and the compressor cylinders themselves, but when it comes to the fuel valves we have to grease them ourselves. These engines were built and installed in 1959, back then there was nothing automatic on them at all, lol.

Actually we do quite a bit of small routine maintenance, otherwise as long as things are going smooth they don't require a ton of maintenance to keep runnning. Adjustments to the lifters and "balancing" the power cylinders are done on a weekly basis. Otherwise we just keep em cleaned up and running smooth. LOL @ the turbo on the GN!! I said the EXACT same thing about my Jimmy on a blazer forum!!! LOL....

LOL.... not quite..... gives an average of 4-6psi boost to the engines.... maxes out at 15-16psi if the waste gate sticks closed.... but the sheer volume of air is crazy...

Awesome.... our parent company has quite a few LNG assets.... Yeah, gotta love a turbo that has to be lifted with a crane and has to be pre spun with compressed air before the engine can start..... LOL

Well, I used to have that component set too. I'm pretty sure there's a poly switch for the tweeter and if the signal is getting clipped it's probably trying to save the tweeter. Doesn't mean that there's not a possible problem with the amp, but I'd lean more toward the fact the dull sound is the tweeters about going out, mine would do that too. What are your bass/treble settings? If you've got them turned way up you could very possibly be just over driving the tweeters. You may want to try doing this -> Tweeter Savers <- may help save the tweeters.

That's plenty of power.... that's a very efficient set to begin with....

sounds like there's problems where the leads meet the coil in the center. What size enclosure and what was the tuning?

yep, what you have circled there....

Firstly, Thank you sir, took my wife longer to pick the colors than it did for me to build it, LOL. Secondly, have to thank Fi for the dustcaps. And thirdly, Thanks again, the false panel was the only way to get everything stuffed in the thing and believe it or not there's a C&D batt behind the thing as well! Thank you man.

Lookin' good dude!

Awesome, welcome to the forum! You've come to the right place to learn, lots of very knowledgeable people here and good info available on the forum.

You mean Fiday? lol, congratulations dude, you're going to love it. Welcome to the Fi family of nutheads. LOL

LMAO..... BABY!!

Not only are they full of fail, but they continuously and unknowingly make themselves sound dumber and dumber. I left a comment on YouTube that I'm sure won't be approved, but I felt it had to be said. Between what I saw under the hood, and the catastrophe that is the battery/ground strapping, and all the other upcoming fail that we can all see, this thing will end up flame broiled for certain.

Pretty much the same boat a Bozz here. There's only one shop here that sells anything worth purchasing. Most of the time I do all my purchasing online, it's just quicker, easier, has a better selection and let's face it, pretty much always has the better price. I do what I can to help support the local shop as it's the only good one we have, but at the pretty much retail prices it's hard to do when I know I can get it cheaper online. I do try to get installation accessories and such items from there as much as possible and we've drummed up enough business with our car club to get a discount for members.

Some updates here. We changed the turbo charger on the #3 unit last September, I put some pics of this up to give everyone an idea of how big the turbos are that run these engines. Here's a shot of the intake tower for Unit #1 on the left, and the engine coolant cooling towers for all of them on the right. In the background you can see the crane that is being used to lift the old turbo charger out and the new one in. Here's a shot of the Old turbo being flown out to an awaiting trailer. Here's the new one being set down and moved into place. As you can see, it's not a run of the mill sized Turbocharger, LOL.

Yeah, if they were to burn diesel or something along those lines you'd probably never be able to keep fuel to them. One engine can burn enough gas in one day to heat your house for nearly a year, maybe longer. The small Turbine burns enough gas in one day to equal two of the recip units and the big one is more than twice that. They use ALOT of fuel to do what they do, standard fuels such as gasoline or diesel would just be impossible to keep enough supply to them and would cost an ungodly amount of money.

In an ideal world that would be great. Some vehicles just won't allow for a second alt bracket without removing the AC compressor or something like that. My '98 Venture is one of them for example. No way in hell a second alt could be strapped to it without removing something, and lets face it. If it were a competition vehicle, who would give a rat's ass about AC, but in a family DD it's kind of a necessity.

It kinda does.... I mean, almost everyone you hear of who still has dimming trouble after upgrading to a HO alt and adding an extra batt or two have some sort of GM built vehicle. Damn, wish I could find that freakin' article.

I read an article somewhere, (I'll see if I can find it) that stated the new ODBII systems have a ramp rate on the voltage regulator. In other words, it doesn't immediately change the output of the voltage regulator to keep up with the load. According to the article it had to do with some crap concerning emissions and the sudden drag on the engine. So it wouldn't matter how much battery and alt you had (unless you had a second that wasn't ODBII compliant) the voltage will always drop on sudden large current spikes like bass hits cuz the voltage regulator won't adjust that quickly. Now, if the article is correct, there's your problem. Problem with the article is, I can't remember the source so I'm not sure of the accuracy of the info. It makes some sense, but at the same time it's kinda hard to believe. I would go through EVERY regular troubleshooting step before assuming any of that information is correct. Another possible solution, if everything checks out, may be one of the XS Power VCM controllers.

Glad to hear you got your box dude! Now it's time to get some pics of everything and the build log going!!