tiburon2

Alright so I just bought my subs and amp in December and everything has been fine since then. However lately my subs will not continuously work. I checked all of the wires going into my amp and they are fine. Under the hood the conncection is good. The amp light will turn on and off randomly while my car is on. The cap will do the same thing... What should I do? Could it be a bad wire? Imput much appriciatied thank you.

optimoprime

either

A. your ground it coming lose or you dont have a good ground
B. you have a short somewhere in your remote wire thats not at the deck and is between there and the amp.

most likely your ground isnt getting contact and thats why it turns on and off.

DTN

It's either that, or power. Usually, like optimoprime said, it's ground. Remove the ground wire, brush it with a steel brush and brush wherever it makes contact with ground. Make sure all the paint is removed from that area. Use oversize crimp-on ring connections for bolts. You can also apply a sealant like a battery terminal anti-corrosion spray to make sure it dosn't happen again.

To turn on an amplifier, you need 3 things. Power, Ground and Remote wires. If it's turning on and off, one of them is either turning on and off, or lacking the power to drive it.

optimoprime

^^+1 yea i used a dremmel to clear about an inch circle of paint near the spare so i knew i had a nice and clean ground. then i used a oversize washer to go between the bolt and the terminal so that there is no way it cant be touching metal.

its not his power because he said his underhood connection was good, unless his power wire is in multiple peices this problem should be his ground.

tiburon2

Alright I will check the ground tomorrow. But one more thing, does it matter what guage the ground is? I mean I just ordered a 0 gauge power wire and I was wondering if I need to equal the qround out as well... I have my ground on the rear spot above the tire i believe. Just underneath a plastic part in my trunk and then i sanded the paint off and attached it to the screw. Is that a good spot?

optimoprime

my experience has been that the bigger the ground the more power you are allowing to be grounded. so i would say get the 0gague and then watch the smile on your face when you hear it aftert he wire swap.


i would drill a new hole and not use some screw hole thats attached to plastic. i just picked a fairly flat spot at random around where my tire well starts. then i drilled my hole and used a spare bolt.

tiburon2

Alright that means more money... lol know of any good online spots for wires cheap? Ive been looking and couldnt really find priced too reasonable. But thanks for the help so far and I'll try it out tomorrow and if that doesnt work I'll get back to ya.

DTN

ground needs to be equal or greater then the size of the power wire. It is the source of current.

I grounded mine under the center seat bolt.

tibbytib

Something else to consider is an actual short happening to the wires going to your subs. I had a very similar problem involving my amp turning on and off randomly. I checked all the wires including ground, power, remote. Everything was in order. Last thing I could possibly think was my actual wires running to the subs. yep, sure enough, the short was happening about 9" before the wires went into the sub. Most amplifiers have a safety circuit built in that will turn the amp off if the wires to the subs short in any way.

I also had a similar experiance with a severly blown sub, where the voicecoil was actually shorting out and doing the same thing, turning the amp on and off randomly.

Hope this gives you a few more ideas to help solve your problem.

Kantizuni

^^^^
VERY IMPORTANT.
Everyone should have that spraypainted on a wall until it's burned into memory.