No Power

woodbutchr

This is a little change from what y'all used to seeing on here. I installed an amp in the little womans car tonite but have no power? It's a 1200 w. Sony amp, 4g. wire with 30amp inline fuse. Ground wire is prolly 16 g. or so. All fuses are good, power to the bus bar on the amp but no lights? There's a remote line that I have hooked up to a 30 amp fuse in the fuse panel cause I don't care to go into the dash & hook to the remote anntenna wire (factory radio, 04 Tahoe). Idunno, y'all reckon the ground wire ain't big enough?

shanekw1

What circuit is the 30 amp fuse you plugged the remote wire into for?

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JumboJack

Did you scrape of any paint that may be where you hooked up the ground?

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in texas with framing and cornish people will do it for 3.00 a foot. What do yall think about that? Just laber

Shocking

Try another ground location.

woodbutchr

The 30amp fuse is the hvac/heater fuse. I did not scrape any paint away from the ground & I tried two different locations, one of which was an unpainted bolt.

jrclen

If the ground wire is to small it will get hot and smoke. But it will work until it burns clear. I think the ground is connected to a non grounded spot. Todays cars have a lot of plastic and a lot of rubber mounted parts. Not every screw and hunk of metal is connected to the -battery pole.

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John

Shocking

Diddo.

Dan_Watson

Meter between the positive and negative...
If your pulling 12v DC your neg is ok.

What model amp?

dlcj

Ah car audio, I know a little about it or used to. In '97 built completly by myself a $7500 system in my truck, won every show i went to in my power class and 10th place out of 100 much more expensive syterms at '99 USAC world finals in K C Kans. All my power and grounds where 8 gauge to dist blocks then 2 gauge to dedicated batt. The only connection to truck was a 8g charging wire to the alternater through a iscolator.
1st Check voltage at amp with meter
2nd If none run a jumper ground wire direcly to batt.
3rd Still dont work, jump the remote (blue wire) to hot
4th Still nothing connect a speaker directly to amp with
short wires, adjust gains or eq if equiped
5th If works, find a chasis ground or run to batt. With at least 8g if amp is true
500 watts or more.
6th Still dont work, take that pos back

To make things easier all this could be done on the
work bench with battery and a speaker completly
away from car
Amps are rated at max power on paper into 4 ohms. NO amp will give you more than half max rating in actual output. Look for the rms rating and thats is you true output.The cheap ones will be much less than that. Sony is a good brand so 300x2 stereo 4 ohms- rms is probably correct for a 1200 max rating.
Also most aftermarket amp are rated at 4 ohms stereo and most factory speakers are 8 ohm or more. While not a big problem that will cut power in half also. So if your amp is 1200 max and your factory speakers are 8 ohm your getting 150 watts to each speaker.still good (assuming 2 speakers)

woodbutchr

Imma try another ground wire

fastg60

so you did run the 4 gauge all the way to the fuse box?


i'd run a minimum of 8 gauge for ground. that 16 might show 12v, but can't handle the amperage requirement.

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Around The House

Remodeling and painting.

dlcj

Thats true but for an amp that big, skip the fuse box and go directly to the batt with a inline fuse. Ground too if no better one can be found.

fastg60

yeah, it sounds like he did. i think he just got the remote lead from the fuse panel.

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Around The House

Remodeling and painting.

woodbutchr

It was the ground wire, I replaced it with 10g & found a "good" groundin' place. Like "jrclen" said, lots of rubber mounted parts that looks like it would be a good ground.
Thanks y'all for the help!

jrclen

Glad you got working. Thanks for letting us know the outcome.

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John

dlcj

glad we could help.
wish i could still afford that hobby but with car audio like all electronics, if its a year old its out of date and you wont win a competition with it.

woodbutchr

It's only money

dlcj

yeah, till you get married. 3 years now. 3 happy broke hobbyless years