kickass audio

100 amp seems a little too much for 4ga wire, I'd get it down to 80 max, 60 would be best but 80 would be fine. The fuse serves two purposes, to blow when it is shorted out (touching the ground of your vehicle) or when you draw more current thsn the wire can handle safely. That's what all fuses are made for, short circuits and over powering. Edit: what kind of fuse holder is it? Is it an anl, agu, midi, etc.? Also do you have a reducer on the inputs of the fuse holder? A loose connection can cause a ton of heat.

oh dear god that really scares me that you just said that!!!! You can exceed the power capability of a wire when you draw more current than it is intended to carry. This is why they make fuses. Fuses blow and stop the electricity from flowing on the wire when you exceed the threshold that the wire can allow current to travel before it heats up/melts/catches on fire. For example if i were to run 4 gauge wire to my dc 5.0k it would fry in a second because my 5k draws over 300 amps of current and 4ga is made to be at most 80 amps. The 80 amps is basically the red zone of the current the wire can carry before it starts to produce heat and melt the sheathing and catch on fire. It would be very wise to let us know what gauge wire your power wire is and what fuse you have for safety reasons.

Sounds like you are heating up the fuse holder and melting the fuse block. When you bump your music does the power wire/fuse holder get warm at all? If it does then you either have resistance in the line or are exceeding the power capability of that power wire.

Sorry man i read someone else on here that got a kinetik for real cheap but it was resting at 8 volts or something extremely low. Nevermind then. lol

You can get a high to low converter but most ones i have found are crap. I would get one that is also a sound processor too. My 3sixty.2 has the high level input and outputs rca's and i used it playing around with my home theater system in my room and it sounded great through it. I helped another guy on here with a high/low converter which would clip at any level he set it at but he got a high/low converter that was also a soundprocessor/eq and it worked great for him. His dd-1 didnt find any distortion till he turned up the gain where his old high/low converter had distortion at all volume levels. If you really want a clear sounding system with a ton of great control i always recommend something like the rockford fosgate 3sixty.2 (and soon enough the .3) as they are great tools to have when you install a system whether keeping the headunit stock or aftermarket.

dont get an o-scope, a dd-1 is cheaper and more accurate. I would get a dd-1 if i didnt have my scope but im perfectly fine with how mine are set with the scope. I havent done anything wrong with my system other than popping off the dustcap on my smd but i glued that back on and its not moving at all. lol. I learned that whole under powering thing with my old solox sub i had. I fed it 1400w rms at 4 ohms and it barely got it moving and it was far from being loud but that damn thing got hotter than hell and smelled a ton. I eventually wound up burning the coil on it for good and it quit on me. I always recommend to save your time and money and do it right the first time. Trust me, i learned this the hard way. I blew well over half the cost of my current system blowing up subs, amps, burning wire, etc because i couldnt afford the good stuff at the time and quite honestly didnt know crap about it then like i do now so it made me waste a damn hefty amount of money on things im just throwing out to the curb. Its like i tell everyone i help on here, take my advice because i have learned a lot of good things from the expensive mistakes i have made with my system and a ton of other things i work on.

if only i didnt have the 3sixty.2, i would LOVE to have this. Steve, do you, Tony, or Juan have any room for me to live over there? Ill live in the storage space if you want. haha. Looks nice man cant wait to see it come out, im sure everyone will hop on this like the dd-1.

as previously mentioned it will not get that btl to move at all, it will play the frequency but wont hit at all. you also can really cook a sub if it isnt moving and you clip it. I have seen this with my SMD. If i play a clipped song at full tilt it barely gets warm and doesnt smell but if i play it at a lower volume but its still clipped a little, it gets even hotter. The reason for this is because the sub uses the high excursion to cool off the coil and inner parts of the subwoofer. The more excursion, the more air flow it produces, the more air flow it produces the cooler the coil will be and the more power you can toss at it. I have 5kw of clean power going to a single SMD 18 sub and as long as i dont clip it, it stays perfectly cool and does not smell. I have had the sub for a few months and it handles the abuse im giving it like a champ.

I always have seen when the diodes go on an alt you have a ton of flickering with your lights at all rpm's or a slightly varying voltage, his is too drastic to be a diode calling it quits. It may be a bad brush or winding in it. One thing you can do to check up on your alt would be to take off your belt for it and rock the pulley on it from the top and bottom and left and right side. If the pulley seems to wobble a little your bearing on the alt is bad and you need either a new alt or new bearing, id just get a new bearing depending on how old the alt is. Also since it isnt very clear, what happens when you are at idle or in a complete stop and your engine is idling slowly and your voltage is in the 12v range but you slowly rev up the engine? Does it slowly go back up or does it take a ton of gas to make it raise? I had a problem with my first alt from mechman where it charged great at idle but was super loud and whenever my rpm's exceeded 2000 the alt would turn off and stop charging and i would be running straight off battery power until i let off the gas to a little below 2000 rpm's and it charged back up. Id start by checking your connections and making sure they arent corroded or loose, check the alts temperature when the engine is cold (preferably let the engine sit overnight and turn it on, let it idle for awhile and see if the alt gets super hot or if it stays fairly cool) alts do get hot when they are loaded down or the engine bay gets really hot but shouldnt get hot after 5 minutes of idling with little to no current draw. Im personally thinking your alt is bad and needs replacing.

that kind of line driver is good, i was meaning that the ones that are super small and just plug into the rca itself and dont get any power to operate it are garbage.

I highly advise against line drivers unless you buy a high quality one. Line drivers are nothing but distortion unless you spend some bucks and get a good one or get a sound processor like i have which is also a line driver too.

Are you talking to me about helping the one guy figure out what he had going on with his line driver distorting to all hell or something else? Im totally confused. lol

I learned most of the things i know from guys on here and i still learn from ppl on here all the time. I was originally going to do the same thing as you with SOTM and making a build log but i got so involved with it i just said screw it and threw the camera aside and did the work and nailed it out in a few weeks.

yes, my 3sixty.2 is not something the average guy needs in their vehicle. I bought mine so i could have fine tuned adjustments and have a perfectly sounding system and have the crossover points right down to the point and the time delay feature with it to make it sound even better. If i had the expensive tool steve has called the "x-adjust" which will tell you what your subsonic, lowpass, highpass, etc are all set at on your amp i would probably have just said screw it with my 3sixty the first time around but then i would have bought it for the eq control and the time delay.

Yes you would have the fade control on your headunit. If you hooked it up like i mentioned you would not have fade only balance so if your mids were too loud and you turned it down, your sub would turn down as well. With it being like eagle mentioned, if you have too much mids and highs you can set the fader to go toward the rear and have less mids and highs but the same amount of bass. I would personally do it this way if you can as like you said it is a hell of a lot easier and you will get a little more control over it, plus with my old headunit i had the rear channel had extra features for bass control since it was supposed to be used on subwoofer amps.

Oh crap good point, i didnt even think to lookup the radio to see if it had front, rear or sub outputs. If it does i would use like you said with the rear being for the sub and the front being for the doors.

Thank you sir. I was once a noob... well still am to some extent haha. I hated when i asked for help and get stupid responses like "if you have to ask dont do it". The sound processor will greatly improve your clarity of your speakers but like i mentioned would not be necessary unless you wanted to do that down the line. Either way you would need to use a 2 way splitter but only 2 of them. Pretty much the output on your monoblock will need to be split once per channel (the left will be split into 2 left channels, the right will be split into 2 right channels) and then go to your amp. If you want to save a little money and some mess of having extra wires hanging all over the place heres how i would wire it up. 1.) Connect your amps up and wire them up like you normally would. 2.) Once the amps are wired up get like a 3-6 foot (depending on how far you are going to have the 4 channel from the monoblock) 2 channel RCA wire, two female to 2 male rca splitters like shown here: http://www.google.com/imgres?q=female+to+2+male+rca&um=1&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbnid=2Da7fBBGaWMbbM:&imgrefurl=http://www.dinodirect.com/wholesale-jack-cable-2male-rca-stereo-female.html&docid=1AjNJEidPaZtFM&w=750&h=726&ei=_wCRTpGJBsnG0AHM9PUW&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=821&vpy=119&dur=769&hovh=221&hovw=228&tx=126&ty=111&page=1&tbnh=142&tbnw=147&start=0&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:18,s:0 3.) connect the 3-6ft 2 channel rca cable to the pass-thru output on your monoblock amp then route the wires to your 4 channel amp (note: make sure you know which output is left and right by matching the colors on them or labeling them) 4.) Connect both the rca splitters you purchased to your 4 channel amp and note which side you hookup (ie. channel 1+2 is your left channel and channel 3+4 are your right channel speakers) 5.) once everything is all set mess with the fader on your radio to ensure when you take the balance to the right only the speakers on the right play. If they do then you have been successful, if not just swap rca's on the amp and you will be fine. It sounds like a whole lot but its not really as hard as it seems. Just dont do what i did like a total moron. I had my left front door speaker connected to the right rear speaker, and had the right front speaker connected to the left rear speaker and it was canceling out the sound so bad i didnt know why my mids and highs sounded so crappy until i played with it today. hahaha.

Processors as great as they are in your case would not be necessary. You can use a splitter just be careful how many times you split it. Now if the pics on google are accurate you wont even need the splitter. Your 500.1 shows it has a pass-thru rca connector on the side of the amp. If you have this then you can use that pass-thru to connect the rca to your 4 channel amp then use a splitter right before the 4 channels connector so the rca will be split into 4 outputs. Basically connect the 500.1 up first, then for the output on the monoblock get a 2 way splitter (either a male to 2 female or female to 2 male connector) and hook that to your 4 channel.

I kinda have this with my truck but it takes a lot to make it kick on, typically i have to restart the engine a few times for my voltage to drop down. If this is not the computer telling the alt to charge at a lower voltage try to have the car cold and rev the engine up, if your voltage drops down as if you are running off straight battery power then your alt is bad. I had that happen with my first mechman alt that was damaged in shipping. The alt was super hot when it was working the first 2 days but the third day it had a loud groan on it when it was spinning and when i revved the engine above 1500rpm it would stop charging and send me down to run on battery power. Thank god i had my xs power battery to help me drive 25 miles home on.

do you know how many times the protect light flashes? some manufacturers have them setup so if they flash a specific number of times sequentially it means different faults occurred. If you havent tried it, disconnect everything from the amp, even the power. Keep the amp disconnected for a few minutes and hookup just the power, ground, and remote wires. leave the rca and speaker wires disconnected. Try to turn the radio on and see if the amp still throws itself in protect, if it does then the amp has a problem and it could be your wiring for it or something in the amp blew.

Just keep an eye on that kinetik to make sure it doesnt have bad voltage drop with how you said the voltage was resting so low before. For your post here about the orientation as previously mentioned it doesnt matter at all. You can take the battery and put it upside down if you really wanted to as long as the terminals dont touch or ground out on your vehicle you will be perfectly fine.

Good idea, I didn't even think about that. Thank you bro.

Again ipod videos have a hard drive and when my bass hits it shakes so bad that it makes the heads of the hard drive slam on the platter and im done paying for new hard drives every few times a year. So far to the best of my knowledge only 2nd-4th gen ipod touch's have solid state memory which is what im really after. Its too bad i cant get something like an external hard drive for mine.

Damn man! I need you to follow me around in my town so the cops can keeps their eyes off of me hahaha Edit: IO've heard this song a while back and could never figure out wat it was called.... Thanks Fish! Haha i would but you are nowhere near where im at. Plus tbh i have never had any cops give me a dirty look. Even when they have someone stopped or are sitting on the side of the road catching speeders and im doing 20 over the speed limit they dont care (knock on wood) Im glad i havent gotten myself a sound ticket because up here in NY they are pretty costly and they charge you extra b.s. too.

That's not how imp rise works, imp rise is only the amount of rise your enclosure gives you. Usually from what I've read a new box design or maybe a new port will change your imp rise but I don't know for sure since I just started getting into designing and building boxes the hard way.