Stereo Problems!!

[OaT97Se]

I Have Alpine Head Unit, With MBQuart speakers, i recently added 2 10 Inch Rock Ford Fosgate Subs and a 500WATT Jensen AMP. For SOme reason some times my amp juss clips off.. sometimes juss for a few seconds and sometimes for a long time.. i got my amp and the wire installed professionally. does anybody know wut could be happening.. thanx...

[WizzaMax]

I'm with you but remember these contacts are electrical and sometimes just the slightest change in contact affects performance...you put a lot of faith in professional installers if you think they wont miss a good tight long-lasting connection once in a while.

Turn your stereo on and go thru each reachable contact and try to duplicate the condition...as well check the fit of all in-line or in-amp fuses.

Good Luck!

[OaT97Se]

it happens every day.. when i put the music on at about vol 25 + then it will clip. also if the song has too much bass it also clips.. could it be a compatabilty issue between my alpine head unit and my jensen amp?

[riceburner]

Since it happens all the time and also resets itself there is three possibilities.

Install Problem, Amp Problem or car problem ( I realize this is general and I will get more specific)

The integration between your amplifier and head unit is not an issue.

What is happening is the amplifier is going into a protection mode or temporary shutdown. This can be caused by several things.

1. Poor ground on amplifier. This is usually the most common problem. 2. The subwoofer impedacne load is too low for the amplfiier. This is a common problem with people trying to get the most power out of the amplifier. You said you had 2 10" woofers and I assume the bridged the amplifer. So the woofers are either dual 4 ohm or single 8 ohm woofers or the amplifier is capable of driving an woofer load of 2 ohms bridged. You said it was a Jensen (decent amplifier) but I doubt is was designed to drive such an low impedance load.
3. Too small power wire. If the wire is a 10 gauge or larger. I doubt this.
4. When installed, there was not a ground wire of equal size (or larger) installed from the battery's ground terminal to the chassis of the vehicle. The Maxima (and all new vehicles for that matter) has the current capacity only for the electronic is was designed to run. An extra load (Like the one you created with the stereo) puts an extra current demand on the factory electrical system. To ensure that the system is up to snuff, adding this ground wire will ensure that you can get all the current needed to the amplifier.
5. The amplifier has a problem.
6. Tired battery. Batteries have a lifespan. Depening where you live. this lifespan fluctuates between 2 to 5 years. Putting a stereo on your electrical system reduces the life of the battery.

For a solution I would take it back to where you had the installation perfomed. They should troubleshoot it for you. (for free) If you need help on troubleshooting yourself, post so on this thread.

Good luck

[OaT97Se]

Thanx for all the information i got my amp installed at bestbuy with a 4 yr warranty so im gonna go raise hell, also my battery has been dying rather easily lately, i left my lights on for 2 minutes without the engine running and i needed a jump so maybe my battery is being a bitch and that could be a reason for it. could u give me some quick trouble shooting i could do myself before i take my car to bestbuy and slap them with my warranty papers. thanx again - OaT

[time2reup]

How do you have your subs wired? if its anything other than a four ohm load that could be causing your problems, unless your amp is stable at 2 ohm mono.. Also is the amp getting hot? Otherwise try to switch out the amp and switch out the subs, that should tell you if the problem is one or the other, if no changes problem must be in the wiring/HU which I doubt.

P.S. when you go back to best buy see if they will take that Jensen back and let you get a better amp.

[97wvmax]

before i had my subs and amp in my cd player used to clip, that was like the same day i had it put in. the guys at circuit city told me that there wasnt enough power goin to the cd play and the chip was gettin to hot, urs could be doin that?

[BigJ2Kool]

hey, i recently put a 10" jensen sub and an MTX amp in my car and I have the exact same wiring set up as I did with my old amp and the system worked great. All of a sudden, it would just short out for short periods of time and then it just stopped working altogether so i bought a new MTX amp. ever since ive had that amp, i still havent been able to make the system work. How could the system have worked with that wiring for several months and then it just stopped working and now i cant get it working again. Please give me some things to look for and help me get this thing up and running again. thanks.

josh

[Whitebread]

I thought the impedance of a load an amp is driving only matters at high volume when the amp is near it's limit because it will be able to put out more power than it voltage rails can handle.

[maximafever]

to answer a few of you guys questions about your amps. Yes the impedence load will make a difference if you have an impedence lower than what the amp can handle. The best thing that you can purchase to assist you in troubleshooting a problem with your system is a multimeter.
simple rules to see if you are getting power to the amp correctly:
1. check to see that the connection at the battery is free from corrosion.
that is because if there is corrosion you will sometimes get enough volts and sometimes you wont.

2. check to make sure that power is getting to the amp most amps will not work without at least 10volts.

3. when the amp is clipping check to see if the amp is going into safemode or shutting completely off. if it is going into safemode the problem could be that the amp is overheating from being overworked. solutions: turn the gain on the amp down, make sure you are not running to low of an impedence (a lot of amps will say that they are stable at a certain amount of ohms but that is depending on where you have the gain set at), check all connections to make sure that they are secure and not loose, the smallest gauge that should be ran to any one amp is 8gauge the larger the better.
If the amp is shutting off but there is power coming back to the amp make sure it is at least 10 volts and if it is check the remote turn on wire and make sure it has at least 10 volts coming to it.

to explain my last statement I'll tell you about my recent experience. I have 2 amps and for a while I was having a problem with only one shutting completely off so I started checking all the connections found out that somehow the power to the remote turn on wire was dropping to about 5 volts which caused one of the amps to turn off.
To fix the problem I rewired the remote turn on amp to another wire that is only hot when the power is on and i haven't had a problem since.

this is getting to long so if you have any questions that I may be able to answer please post them.

[Lewtion1]

1. bad ground

2. clipping amp into protect mode due to the amp's inability to handle the load (ohms too low)

3. voltage drop....some amps go into protect when the voltage drops too low...check with a DMM to see if the voltage drops below 12v alot.

4. loose connection - highly doubtful, but still a possibility

5. amp is overheating - going into protect mode

6. one of your wires is shorting/grounding out...check all wiring. sometimes best buy or CC does some chopshop work and may have gotten lazy or something....no offense to all BB and CC workers here..

if you still can't isolate the problem, then check out www.caraudioforum.com lots of helpful guys on there that know their stuff

[BigJ2Kool]

how do i figure out if i am getting bad impedance or not enough ohms or whatever? also, how did you rewire the remote wire? one thing i noticed on my amp....if i remove the ground wire from the amp, a red light turns on right away. that must mean its getting power right?i dunno, just help me out.

josh

[BigJ2Kool]

another problem i noticed....I tried messing around with the power wire that goes to the battery and I disconnected it from the amp and when i set it down it accidentely touched the ground wire and there was a spark and sure enough the fuse on the power wire blew. does this mean anything? please answer the questions from this post and the one above. thanks.

josh

[Lewtion1]

ok first off... the ohms load depends on your speakers and how you have them wired. most car speakers are 4 ohms....which is pretty much acceptable by any amp, when wired 1 channel - 1 speaker. when you start messing with the wiring and say you have 2 speakers connected to one channel of your amp, you cut the ohms in half...meaning that it is now 2 ohms. this can be advantageous or disadvantageous depending on your application. if your amp is not stable below 2 ohms... i wouldn't wire anything your system any other way than 1 speaker - 1 channel, just to be safe.

second... never remove the ground from the amp first. always remove the power first....and THEN the ground wire. the reason why the amp went into protect is because it's receiving power, but it's not grounded properly....the protect is doing just what it says. but rule of thumb... connect the ground first...and remove the ground last.

the spark you got is from the battery's + cable i'm assuming hitting the floor....another thing that you should probably try to avoid. you grounded the cable to the floor....and your fuse blew because it's not supposed to let a certain amount of amps thru that cable. because it wasn't connected to any application, and you completed the circuit with the floor....the fuse blew out like it was supposed to. simply disconnect the wire from the battery...replace the inline fuse.....reconnect to the amp AFTER you reconnect the ground to the amp....then reconnect to the battery.

as for your initial problem..... the MB Quarts are 4 ohm speakers i believe.... i'm not sure if the Jensen amp is stable below 2 ohms...and your subs i'm not sure about either unless you post a model number or something. this is probably a wiring issue. your amp probably cannot handle the load that you're expecting it to. simple solution is to disconnect the subs...and just use the interior speakers. if the amp still cuts out...it may be time to get a new amp. if not, then it's definately from your subs. it sounds like your subs may be wired so that it's presenting a load of 2 ohms to the amp. this amp may not be stable at 2 ohms (which is not always constant either..there are times in a 2 ohm setup when it will dip below 2 ohms...soooo for a 2 ohm setup, you sort of want an amp that is 1 ohm stable just to cover your own ass).
if your amp is not 2 ohm stable, this would cause the amp to go into protect. if you keep this up though, it will fry the amp soon.

good luck! hope i helped you more than i confused you.

[BigJ2Kool]

alright kool but i dont really understand any of that stuff about ohms and current and crap. could you possibly put that into more plain terms? sorry to be a pain in the ass. by the way, its a Jensen 10" XS1010 450 watt sub and the amp is an MTX RoadThunder 202. what should be done to fix the problem?