I need professional help with electrical problems :(???

[TheLeeStrikes]

I had recently posted a thread but it gives me an error when i try to open it, well here i go again, Hello to everyone im new in the forum and i just want to add im not a noob in car audio but im not a professional as well, i do understand most of the things that consist in car audio, now heres my question i bought a system for very cheap, 150 dollars got a power acoustik mofo 12 dual 2 ohm and a Hifonics GLX1400d box is tuned to like 34 or 35 hertz, its actually pretty loud now i understand power acoustik is not that good but this mofo is actually not bad for wat i got it for, i install all of this in a 2004 chevy cavalier with stock electrical, this car comes with a 105 amp alternator which is not to bad for the size of the car, im using real 2 gauge cable to connect the amp to the battery and ground, i did this installation in a rush yesterday because im going to travel tomorrow all the way to salt lake city from NM, so i wasnt able to set the gains with my multimeter i did everything by ear heres my problem though i think i set the gains pretty good i, method i used was getting a hard hitting song lowering all gain down and then turning it up till the subwoofer wouldnt get any louder then i lower it a bit more, bass boost is all the way down, bass level on head unit is all the way down, i have a alpine deck so it has a subwoofer feature that i need to use at +15 other wise the subwoofer wont even move, im only using 14 gauge speaker wire to connect this subwoofer idk if that matters, i got stock wal mart battery havent even done the big 3 upgrade yet like i said i really dont have time for that right now, the subwoofer was getting real hot within the 5 minutes of playing it on full tilt and it was getting kinda smelly but not alot, so i thought i was either overpowering the sub or sending clipping signal, checked voltage at battery and volts wont drop from 13.70 V in the hardest hitting song i could find, then i checked the voltage on the amp and the amp would stay around 12.50- 12.70 13.00V but heres the thing on a song that has a really long consistent bass note the voltage on the amp would randomly dropped from the voltage i said above down to like 11.7 even 10.8 but this only happens for like less then a second it happens really fast then goes back to above 12.5V on the same bass note of the song i was wondering if this could be like a bad ground somewhere in the car because i got the ground from a bolt on the seat didnt even sand anything because i was in my uncles house and i ran out of light and another question is how come i read above 13.70 volts on the battery but alot less on the amp?

[evermaxx]

If only there was an eletrical section.....

[Tarball]

clipping, you need to find where your deck clips and stay below that. Chances are you want more bass than the system can really produce without clipping.

[TS2GFrank]

Could be bad ground location you used because even though you used a bolt screwed into the chassis, once its tightened back down it's on paint. Sub is most likely getting hot from clipping.

[SnowDrifter]

Post pics of connections and grounds

Also: you need to do your big 3

As for subs smelling: Voltage isn't helping your issue. However, without knowing what your deck clips at it's hard to set your amp. As you are turning up your amp, the squaring off of the sine wave will make it sound like it's getting louder when it really isn't. IMO levels on your deck and gain need to be reset. Preferably with a proper tool, but if that's not accessible to you I'll show you a slick way of doing it with a DMM

[TheLeeStrikes]

Yeah i dont got a dd1 i got my alpine deck and i only turn it up to 25 out of 35 if it means anything, can a bad ground cause voltage drops?? i checked the voltage again today and i tried the white cloud song from decar and the voltage would stay 12.5 volts and above and it only seem to drop when the bass tone changed and was only dropping down to like 11.8 for like .2 seconds, im pretty sure the ground i did is bad so ill try to fix right now see if i can sand the bolt paint and why not like i said it was really dark when i was doing to it and i just bought the car so ill take some pictures and ill upload them so you guys can see.