kickass audio

Yea my old precision power pc2350 amp i have shorted out several times (the wire from its previous owner was not thick enough and caused the quick connect terminal to melt and it made a fray of wire touch the positive and it sparked a little before the fuse popped) but ive ran that amp on poor electrical and it worked great too.

The only amps I know that sparked were my high powered amps like the one I have now and my previous sub amps. They have a really quick spark when you put the fuse in because its charging the caps up but even then it isn't always a sign its right because the same amp that sparked the first time I put the fuse in, didn't spark the next time I put it in.

First of all it sounds like a poor ground. Grounding to your seat belt bracket is NOT a good grounding spot. A better grounding spot would be a bolt off your strut tower, luggage tie down bolt, or frame. I highly doubt they will cover your amp since its smoked, you should have sent it in or had a professional shop look at the amp and see what they thought of it. If i saw someone grounding to the seat belt bolt i would not cover their product at all. It may be that you crossed a wire on the amp by removing and re-installing the ground wire on the amp so many times. They are not made so you can remove and re-install the amp several times. They are made to be installed and left alone. The more you take the wires in and out the more fragments of wire break off from the screw coming down on the wire and if just one tiny piece of wire crosses a contact between your positive and negative it will spark a fire. No offense and im not trying to bash you but you should have stopped after blowing the first few fuses and asked us for help.

What ohm load do you want the 3k to operate at? I have a working massive audio db8000 amp that puts out 4000w at .5 ohms, 2000w at 1 ohm, and 1200 at 2 ohms. I had two of these strapped together to my aa smd 18 at .5 ohm before imp rise and it worked great until the one popped 3 fets but im thinking to get it fixed or just get rid of it. Either way only the one amp was busted but it still works (weird) and the other amp has 0 problems and works great and is still warranty sealed up. Heres a gut shot of the one that blew, i never opened the one that is working 100%: I am getting ready to soon post this on here so if you or anyone needs me to i can post a pic with my name in it and the date but just thought id toss the idea out there for ya.

Heres one major thing i noticed with amps and their current draw. I have owned a decent amount of car amps over the past 2 years i have really been into car audio and i have learned that there are amps that are regulated and not regulated. There is a big difference between the two types of amps. Basically an amp that is regulated will put out very close to its rated power at a wide range of voltages where an un regulated amp will change its wattage output greatly. Now with un regulated amps, if your voltage for example is very low, the amp will draw more power to keep up with putting out its rated wattage. If you understand ohms law you can easily see what i mean. Ohms law states that volts divided by amps is equal to your wattage. So basically with a regulated amp that puts out 1000w rms, if your voltage drops down your amperage will need to go up in order to keep the 1000w power level. It also works if you have high voltage it will not take as much amperage to get the amp to put out that 1k rms. The benefit to amps that are regulated is if you have poor electrical in your car and suffer from voltage drop your amp will put out very close to its factory rating in wattage. The down side with regulated amps is that if your voltage drop is very low you will be drawing massive amounts of current through your vehicles electrical and cause a huge strain on your battery and alternator for it to handle that excess load. Another down side that i have noticed with several highly regulated amps i have owned and used is that when the voltage off your battery falls down, the amp gets really hot because it is working its butt off to try and support itself. Now for unregulated amps you can have different voltages and it will change the output of the amp a pretty good amount. With an un regulated amp it will really only care about voltage as opposed to amperage. With unregulated amps, if your voltage is low, your amps output power will also be low. If your voltage is high, your output power will also be high. These amps tend to draw the same amount of current on a wide area of voltages which is good and bad. The good with an amp like this is that you dont have to worry as much about drawing a ton of current through your system to support the power output you want. Another good thing is if your voltage is pretty high on your cars electrical, you can squeeze out a decent amount of extra power out of that amp. The bad thing with this is that if your electrical is low on voltage you will lose a considerable amount of power output from the amps. So basically current draw is mostly on how regulated the amp is. The impedance load and efficiency do play a role in it as well but if you were to take an amp that has the same efficiency, impedance load, impedance rise, wiring, class, etc but one amp was very regulated and the other amp was not really regulated you would see a difference in current draw from the two amps.

I say elevate it just for shits and giggles, cant hurt anything. Also i noticed a huge difference in power when i went from active/passive crossover to full active. When i was on active/passive i had to set the volume for the channels at -4db just to get my tweeters to start playing loud whereas now that its a full active crossover network i have the tweeters at -16db. I know the crossover was sucking a ton of power but that much i am shocked. I also had the passive x-over from fosgate set to 0db for attenuation so it wasnt that being setup wrong. It may be the amp, speakers, heat, who knows until you try messing around with it. If you were anywhere around me id swap amps with you for a day or two just to see if yours protects on me at all or if mine protects on you because that can prove if the amp is the problem or if its your speaker/crossovers. Oh another thing i thought to check.. Look at where your speaker wires go from the inside of the cabin to the door. Are they pinched, chaffed, cut away a little, or rubbing? It could be a small possibility you have one speaker wire that has a slit taken out of the jacket causing it to short out on your cars ground.

My 175.4 is tempermental. Sometimes it gets really hot other times it is barely warm. It doesnt matter if i get in my truck with it being hotter than hell in the cabin or if its been sitting all night and its cold in the cabin it still has weird moments where it gets warm or is cool. Did you try to do like i said before with this issue to take the amp up on a 2x2 to elevate the bottom of the amp to keep it cooler? I have noticed with my amp when it was mounted flush on my old box it was hotter than hell but when i got my new (current) box built i put all my amps up on 2x2 stair risers and they running great. I have never had any amp protect on me and i beat the hell out of mine. One thing i noticed on my 175.4 is that the amp gets really warm first on the side where the rca's are then it spreads to the outside part of the heatsink where the mosfets are. This side is where the amps internal crossover network is if you take the back cover off your amp. I would say to try like you said with putting it in your cabin and monitor the warmth on it closely if you can. I noticed that with both my dc amps, if i have my truck off and im bumping even though the voltage doesnt fall below 11.7 it still gets pretty warm and the 175.4 is so hot it can make my hand stick to it if i hold it there long enough but with my truck on i get 14.4v of power to the amps and the 5.0k runs cold (no warmth at all on that amp) and the 175 is sometimes a little warm other times its cool. If you notice that it is still heating up in your cabin and it is indeed cool enough in your car too then i would highly recommend you do like ppl have mentioned. Plug in each channel one at a time and then see how it works. Also if you havent already try to check the resistance of your power and ground wires just to be sure it is all good and inspect your power wires for any warmth because i found one of my power wires the other day that was really warm on the fuse holder but it wasnt melting and had no resistance on it.

I noticed the same thing you have Fish with my Envoy and my other systems ive had installed. When its the middle of the summer my system will play loud but not as loud as it does during the winter. When its like 80-90 in the summer up here, my alt likes to charge at 14.4-14.6v when its hot but in the winter when its like 30-40 outside, i get about 14.9-15.6v output when its hot. The only thing though is i dont think the cold or warm does crap with how your air in the cabin compresses and heres why.... When its warm outside my amps, alts, and sub are already up to the interior temperature of my truck so when i start slamming on them they dont take too long to heat up and once the amps and sub heats up, my power output seems to go down a lot by ear. Now if its cold outside my amps and sub are ice cold so i can slam on them and it will sound a hell of a lot louder to the ear but again if i keep it bumping long enough to get the amps and sub warm it will start to lower the volume to the ear. Now i know for a fact my voltage is affecting the output of my amps because when its colder on the alt, i get way more power output but when its hot, i get less power output from my alternator. So either way the temperature doesnt have anything to do with you getting louder, its the fact that your equipment is cold so it doesnt have to waste its energy to try and keep up with the power its demanding. Think of it like this.. If you were to run around your block on a very hot day outside, you would drag your butt around the block. Now if it was a reasonably cool day outside you would run around the block without any problem. This is basically what your vehicle is doing. Since the electronics are cold it can slam longer before it starts to heat-up and lose output power as opposed to the equipment being warm and heating up in a short amount of time.

It sounds like your fuse block for the relay may have either been loose or just not plugged in all the way. I noticed this with my hids and i have futurevision hid's. When i was playing around with them to figure out why my one fog light would have issues igniting i pulled the fuse on my relay harnesses and the relay would still click even with the fuse pulled but the relay would not throw any power to the ballasts. It was really weird when i noticed this. What amperage relays are you using, do you know? Id recommend a 30-40 amp relay for your hid's (20-30 would be more than enough if its one relay per light, 30-40 if its one relay for 2 lights). Also, one thing you can do is to check that you have adequate voltage that is turning on your relays switchable wire. I noticed a problem with my trucks hid's for the normal low beam lights when i unlocked the truck in the dark. If i unlock the truck in the dark the reverse and low beam lights turn on to "guide your path" to the vehicle. Well it turns out that the circuit that engages this feature sends like 8v of power to turn on the relay and this doesnt cause the relay to engage all the way. Because of this, i would hear a loud buzzing noise from one of my 2 relays that turn on my low beam lights but if i go in my truck and flip the switch to turn on the lights manually the buzzing goes away completely. Id just hit your wires that are BEFORE the ballast with a DMM and set it to dc volts to see what voltage it reads, chances are you may not have enough voltage to kick on the relays.

It could be but that still wouldnt make any sense. I was screwing around with my old amps strapped and i disconnect the master/slave rca and it still produced bass but it was half the power since one amp was taking the job instead of sharing the load with both amps but it still worked and didnt throw itself into protect. Do you have an oscilloscope? If you do id see if you can try to burp it and look at your scope to see if when you get to the point where it protects if it has a dc voltage output or something because my amp has dc offset and yours MAY but idk for sure.

IDK man, id try to see what your impedance rise is if you can because that will help us all out to see what your impedance load is for different frequencies.

Alright little update on this, i finished tearing the one headlight apart that originally was halfway from falling off the truck. Im going to get started on the other one in a day or so with tearing off all the old crap on the seal and sand down the ledge of the light itself and prep it for the 3M stuff since its what my dad bought and wth, i might as well give it a shot. cant hurt anything but the light. lol. I was just wondering something about my projectors for the light though. I know Steve has futurevision hid's just like i do (i cannot say how much i love their product and customer service, they are a great company to order through and stand by their product) but anyways i was wondering if anyone knew the size projector Meade used in his tahoe for the low beams, no not the fogs, his low beams. I have 32mm projectors in mine and they are good but they dont really shine for distance worth a damn. I swapped my ballasts from 35w to 50w for the projector to see if that helps me too but i was wondering if anyone knew if steve had a 32mm too or a bigger one for his lights. My projectors will shine about 4 blocks but you can only see the light from it bouncing back off the reflective tape on the street signs, it stops in the road about 10 feet in front of my bumper. My old halogens would go further out than this. If anyone knows please chime in. I watched his vids and looked at all his logs and everything and dont see anywhere what size projector he bought.

It must have just been the guys car, i was only in one car which was a custom fiberglass dash and doors. There wasnt any stock trim on the vehicle when they got done with it. The car looked great but in broad day light the dash would have a big glare on it from their neon blue paint they painted it. Again it was only one car i actually sat in so it may have just been how they did it or something.

this took my awhile to find for you, this is exactly what you need!! this is what my mazda3 had stock for sealing them, I take it the plastic clear part is coming apart from the rest of the headlight? this stuff you have to warm up while pushing the peices together, like with a heatgun/hairdryer, and once it cools, you will never get it apart, unless you heat it again, and it still took my 45 minutes to get my headlight apart because it was so strong, this stuff is perfect though, its exactly what you need, seals it, and will hold it SUPPPPERR tight Link to Sealer - I have bought from this company, they have excellent service! did my mazda3 projectors through them Yes you are correct that the clear lens is whats not sticking to the actual light at all. I was looking at that stuff but was just wondering if the 3m stuff my dad got me will be a little better. The one thing im attempting to do is get the little locking tabs on my headlight to hold the clear lens on for extra support. Like the 3m stuff apparently doesnt need any heat and has about 10 minutes before it starts to cure. I was thinking to do like i did with my other headlight that was mangled to all hell from me trying to tear it apart by taking a small sandbag and setting it on the top of the headlight's lens while the silicone dried up. I was also thinking to get a small c clamp that can fit around the top and bottom of the light to bring the retaining clips in while it is drying. Do you think this would be practical to do?

that i wouldnt have the knowledge on how to make it work. id leave that up to the guys who build woofers on here.

You shouldnt be able to screw it up, just take your time and make it as tight as you can for where it forms around the tinsel itself and knot the string so it wont come apart. Also be careful to not rip the spider from going in and out a lot with the needle. edit: if you really want to be smart grab an old woofer if you have one that also has a single spider on it and try to sew the tinsel down on that one for practice.

Yea i hear ya on that. I had a few subs with lead slap and its annoying to all hell and made me think i was bottoming out the sub at very low power and it wasnt. I saw my mids from fosgate have the leads woven into the spider of my speaker but i wouldnt try that at all with a sub since they move so much more than a midrange speaker would.

no, you stitch the valley/the low part of the rib. Stitching on the high part has a low success rate. Stitch it on where the rib looks like its going down to the motor of your sub or like if you were to pour a cup of water on your spider back, the water would be sitting in the lower area of the spider, not the higher part.

You could do it but you have to make sure you didnt grab more than just the one spider thats at the top. The glue isnt really necessary. For most of the tinsels ive seen that were stitched they are stitched 3-4 times over eachother. So id do one pass and repeat it back and forth 3-4 times and then tie it all up nice to prevent it from loosening. You want a good amount of slack on the tinsel leads themselves too.

They sew them on just like how you were going to glue them on but you cannot sew them unless you have the ability to get to the top and bottom of that first spider on your sub if its a multiple spider sub. Manufacturers take the tinsel leads and give them some slack and then sew them on either every other or if they are overkill every rib. They sew the part of the rib that goes down like the valleys of the spider. Again do NOT attempt to do this if your sub has more than 1 spider on its suspension because if you do you will screw up your spiders and cause the sub to have horrible suspension since it will lack the ability to move like it should.

^^ what he said. You can try to do something i found on a few of my indoor subwoofer enclosures. They have foam that is hollow and has a sticky backing. They wrapped them together around the leads of my subwoofer and it didnt have any slap from the tinsels.

I highly doubt that will work since the entire spider will be moving in and out with the speakers play. Some people and manufacturers have added foam adhesive pads to the woofers cone to stop tinsel slap. Now good luck finding something thats sticky enough to remain on your subs cone, you may have to add a crap ton of extra glue for it.

I dont know if you thought of something else to do but you could possibly wrap it if you didnt want to paint it. You also have to think about if you paint it and make it highly glossy it has a little chance of coming back and shining right in your face, its slim that that will happen but it can. Maybe if you can see if you can find something that is like vinyl you can wrap it in. That would look really cool to me if you did something like that or painted it.

i wanted to ask around on here to see what everyone could recommend. About a month if not a little longer ago i put hid's in my 2004 gmc envoy. I did the plug and play for my fogs which turned out perfect but i decided to retrofit projectors in my low/high headlights. I bought two brand new headlights for the truck and tore them apart, cut out the opening for the low beam and made my projector fit. I got the projector in, had everything running just fine for over a month and the other day i noticed my passenger side headlight was falling apart. The clear lens that goes on the light assembly is not staying on the light. I did like ppl on trailvoy.com said by sealing it back up with 100% pure silicone caulk and it worked and was a tight fit but here we are and that shit isnt holding a damn thing together. The caulk stuck to the clear lens on the front of the light just not the little lip that is on the light itself. I am in the process of taking the retro fit lights (both of them since my driver side one has a small corner that isnt sealing so i might as well take it all off and do it right if i can) and putting it all back together with something better than the 100% silicone sealant i used. My dad just bought this for me tonight: http://3mcollision.com/products/adhesive-products/glass-adhesives/3m-window-weld-super-fast-urethane-08609-black.html im not sure if this will work or not. I read on some places online that the window weld wouldnt hold that well with the high temperatures headlights give off but you would think that the window has got to be hotter than the headlight with it being in direct sunlight all day long. This is what i used originally to attempt to hold the light together: http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=11420165&CAWELAID=109334869. I read on some areas that they used rubber butyl to hold their headlights together tight and weatherproofed and was thinking about finding it if i could. I was also wanting to make it so that if for some reason i have a problem with my projector and need to replace it, i can still take off the lens to fix it but would need to use a heat gun like i originally did to pry the light apart. If someone could please recommend me something that will keep the lens of my headlight on tight that would be great for me. I did like meade did with the pure silicone and even prepped the surface and it still didnt stick to the backing of my headlight. As always thanks for your help and suggestions.

Yea I can't get that at all. I'm totally confused by that too, I have never heard of the amps sucking more power at higher imp loads. When you blow the fuse, is it just the one going from the rear battery to the amp? If so id just upgrade that wire for now to something bigger for the amp.