Amp help please!

[PhishHead 6]

Ok so I was on my way home from work and my sub stopped hitting so I pulled over immediately got out and looked to see what was wrong. My amp was in protection so I made sure my headunit was completely off and turn my car off and back on again. I went back and checked and the amp wasnt it protection but there was no power light either. I popped the hood and looked at the fuse for my power wire and it was blown. So I changed out that one with a spare one i had. As soon as I turned the car again the inline fuse blew again. Can someone help me? What is making it do this? My gain was set with DMM and I have been driving it for two weeks with no issues. Any help would be awesome.

Thanks,

Jeremy

[jcarter1885 995]

Check your grounds and all your connections (even the subs in the enclosure).

[shizzzon 461]

sounds like your power line is grounding somewhere.

Take your dmm, set it for continuity, touch probe on power wire and other probe on negative battery terminal.

If u get ~ 0 ohms, your power line is grounding out somewhere.

If it's not, pull the amp out and put it on a bench power supply, the power supply in the amp could be damaged but hopefully unlikely.

[PhishHead 6]

Ok I will check both of these tomorrow. It's starting to get darker and I dont want to have stuff all pulled apart and have it get dark. Thanks for the quick responses. I hope nothing is wrong. Would kind of suck to have something wrong after two weeks.

[PhishHead 6]

So I checked the entire power wire to make sure there was no kinks or spots it could be grounding and I didnt find any. I didnt check it with dmm yet but I did see that the ground wire from the sub had wiggled out and was no longer screwed in. Could this have been a problem with the power light not comming on and blowing the anl fuses. I am going to pick up some anl fuses tomorrow and see how that goes. God I hope nothing is wrong with the amp. Well Happy Easter everyone. Enjoy your day.

[PhishHead 6]

Any insight guys? I havent gotten the fuses yet to check it but does anyone think that could have been the problem? Someone has to know. I am stressed and bummed beyond belief. Just spent almost $700 on this setup and for it to not be working is driving me up a wall. Any insight is appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeremy

Sorry for the tripple post.

[Sir-Lancelot 216]

If a wire came out on your sub and grounded on some metal it would cause a dead short and send your amp in to protect/blow a fuse.

Get a fuse and try it out.

I would suggest going over every inch of your wiring and double/triple check everything before you start it up.

Get a DMM.

[PhishHead 6]

If a wire came out on your sub and grounded on some metal it would cause a dead short and send your amp in to protect/blow a fuse.

Get a fuse and try it out.

I would suggest going over every inch of your wiring and double/triple check everything before you start it up.

Get a DMM.

Ok so I am going to get the fuses after work. I have a DMM but dont know how to go about checking the wire. Would I check after the fuse location? Thanks again for the help. Oh and the ground wire that came out was on the amp to the speaker. I hope nothing got messed up on the amp or sub. Thanks again. Another reason I love this forum. Quick answers.

[Sir-Lancelot 216]

If a wire came out on your sub and grounded on some metal it would cause a dead short and send your amp in to protect/blow a fuse.

Get a fuse and try it out.

I would suggest going over every inch of your wiring and double/triple check everything before you start it up.

Get a DMM.

Ok so I am going to get the fuses after work. I have a DMM but dont know how to go about checking the wire. Would I check after the fuse location? Thanks again for the help. Oh and the ground wire that came out was on the amp to the speaker. I hope nothing got messed up on the amp or sub. Thanks again. Another reason I love this forum. Quick answers.

That wire came, hit the amp's heatsink, and caused a DEAD short that blew the fuse. Good thing it had a fuse or your car could be on fire. Thats the bright side, but you are not out of the woods just yet. It could have caused damage to your amp before the fuse popped. I hope not. thats why I sday get a DMM and check all the grounds and power spupply. Check it all.

There is plenty of info on here if you do a search to see what to set the MM on.

[BanginGMC 23]

This is why people should use a inline fuse... so much more could have happened.

Good thing you used one!

I wish you the best of luck.

Edited April 5, 2010 by BanginGMC

[PhishHead 6]

Ok so I am to the point that i want to sell all of my shit. I'm that pissed off right now. I check all my grounds and check my power. I get 14.4 volts back to the amp. The amp is putting out volts. Everything is fine until I hook up the subwoofer. As soon as I do the sub like does a short little hit. Makes a low boom noise and then it blows the fuse up front. I tried rewiring the sub to make sure there was nothing wrong and it still isnt working. I checked the posts on each side of the sub and get a reading that bounces from 2.9 to 3.4 on each. I dont know what the hell to do. I'm so frustrated. Can someone please help me?

[Impious 1,476]

Double check your subwoofer's wiring to make sure it's not shorted out somewhere and that there aren't any stray strands touching anything else.

If possible, try a different amp on the same wiring and same subwoofer.

[PhishHead 6]

Double check your subwoofer's wiring to make sure it's not shorted out somewhere and that there aren't any stray strands touching anything else.

If possible, try a different amp on the same wiring and same subwoofer.

Well as of right now I have the subwoofer out of the enclosure and I have all the wire out of it. I'm going to try and rewire it. I am going to take the old wire and double check it all over to make sure that no stray strands or anything are touching anything else. I am really puzzled by the fact that it work for almost 3 weeks and then it started doing all this. It's hard paying 10 dollars for 5 fuses just to keep testing stuff for them to blow.

[PhishHead 6]

Well I just rewired it but it seems that the jacket on the wire has a slight cut. I'm going to electrical tape around the spots and see if that makes a difference. I am going to have to pick up more fuses tomorrow and try this all over again.

[ulrisa 26]

Do you have any other amps you could test it with? It would really narrow it down if it worked with a different amp but same wires and sub. If not, you could hook up a different speaker to the amp and see if it still happens, though I kind of doubt its the speaker that would be causing this (unless it is the wiring, which you are checking/already checked). It's too bad you don't have a circuit breaker, must suck having to keep replacing the fuses .

[Sir-Lancelot 216]

Better a fuse then your amp or worse.

Keep it in perspective. You will get it sorted out bro. Wiring trouble happens to everyone at some point. Nature of the beast.

In that cut was there any wire exposed that could have touched some metal? Might be a good idea to check the speaker wire from the amp all the way to woofer. Pain in the ass, but once it's fixed it's fixed.

[PhishHead 6]

Well the wire is the Karma wire from Knukonceptz. Thought it was a good idea because it is in a second outter coating but I guess not. If I were to check the whole wire I would have to cut the entire outter jacket off. It must be the wire from the sub to the amp though because now that I think about it I checked the ohm load on the terminals and got 1.6 of 1.7 I dont remember which but that is a 2 ohm load correct? So It must be the connection from the sub to the amp. God I hope I get this fixed soon. Lol. Thanks for the support guys. I really appreciate it.

[Sir-Lancelot 216]

No dont cut it up, just look it over.

Are you talking about 1.6/1.7 on each woofer coil or total at the amp?

What ohm coils is your sub supposed to be?

[BanginGMC 23]

Hang in there buddy, i know it can be frustrating.. but don't flip out. Something that might give you a laugh is this story that happened to me. I bought my AQ2200 amp and was excited and all that jazz then i hooked it up and it wasn't working.. i rewired it.. nothing.. ran new wire, and made a new grounds.. nothing.. replaced the fuses.. nothing, so at this point im screamin and throwing shit and i remove my seats and carpet and RIPPED alllllllll the wiring out of my truck, and threw it all in a box and thats where it's been sitting for a month and the amp is in my closet wrapped in a robe, shortly after that did i find out that it was switched to slave input instead of master input.. i hooked it up to my buddys tahoe and it worked..

[jcarter1885 995]

Your best bet is to pick a day where you can dedicate the day to the install with a good amount of sunlight, this will give you great light and time to recheck everything + a fresh start. You may also want to change your ground around as well, check the resistance to where your ground your amp as well. Just my .02

[PhishHead 6]

I have DVC 4 ohm. Checking the wires I get as stated above. Checking just the terminals I get 3.4-3.6. So I decided that I'm going to double check the wire from amp to sub tonight and I checked over the wire on the sub last night. If it doesnt work tonight I will wait until this weekend and try to start over. And again thanks for the support. Good to have people on here that know what I'm going through. No one around me is into car audio and the people I do know that are all have mainstream garbage that a dealer or audio shop has hooked up. If this tells you anything the best equipment my friends own is Diamond. No one around here even has any JL stuff.

EDIT: I think I will change my amp ground tonight too just to check but last night when I checked the power wire I got 14.4 back at the amp. So would that mean my ground is ok? Or would I have to check the resistance? As much as I thought I knew is how much stuff I actually dont. Hahaha. Thanks again guys.

Edited April 6, 2010 by PhishHead

[Impious 1,476]

Getting 14.4V at the amp with the amp idling does not necessarily mean you have a great ground.

That said it would still be helpful if you tested another amp on the same wiring and subwoofer. If nothing else grab a cheapie from Walmart, plug it in & see if it works, then return it after you're done.

Or pop the bottom on the amp (assuming it won't void any warranties) and see if anything is obviously burnt.

[PhishHead 6]

So I think there is something wrong with my amp. I left gain settings alone and double checked the output and got 92.4. I was like WTF! I then turned the gain all the way down to reset the gains and it said 90.2. I'm guessing there is something wrong with the power supply? Anyway I'm going to e-mail Jacob tonight and send it back in at some point this week. Even if for some reason it's a user error I'm going to pay to have it fixed. I love this amp just dont know what went wrong. Anyone have any ideas?