sub cutting out

check and see if your amp is cutting out or if it is your sub. More than likely it is your amp, and if it is, check for somekind of thermal cutoff maybe

sub cutting out

Sometimes my sub will just quit hitting for a while. Like it will work 20 minutes then just stop. If I shut the car off and turn it back on the sub works. I've noticed on my voltmeter that my voltage is unusually low. Do I need a capacitor? new battery? did i wire something wrong?

The lights don't dim but my voltmeter bounces around like crazy when the sub hits. I'm only running 400 watts to the sub but I have another 600 watts going to my speakers. I'll check the grounds, I'm a little concerned my battery is just dying since its reading so low.

ya if it is the amp... check your grounds before anything. That way youll have less of a chance of blowing anything up.

double check your ground and your speaker wires. If there is a little bit of contact on with the (+) & (-) wires, once you reach a certain level with the volume, it tends to cut out. I had that problem... could not find where the speker wires were damaged. I ran new wires and never had the problem since.

Hmmm.....This is how you should trouble shoot it. Since I am an MECP certified installer, this is the proper way.

1. Make sure you are getting a good ground, scrape off any paint if there is any.
2. Make sure your power and ground wires are not running on the same side. It is a good habbit to run the ground away from power wire to avoid any noise induced when you are playing your music.
3. Make sure all your connections are tight. Loom them if possible, to avoid any splices on the wires that can cause short.
4. Make sure your speaker wires are connected properly. Even a strand of one wire, if it touches the other side +/- it can cause it to short when you turn up the volume.
5. When it does shut off, look at your amp, is it going into protect? or is it shutting off?
6. If it goes into protect, you are either overloading the amp, or there is still a short somewhere.
7. If it shuts off check for loose wiring, remote, battery, ground.
One way to see which one is loose is to bypass the remote first, use a piece of wire and connect the remote wire to the power wire, if it doesn't shut off, your remote wire is loose somewhere. If the problem presist, do it the other way, connect a piece of wire from your remote to battery and see if the problem still presists.

Lastly, if everything has been check and the problem presists. check the specification of your amp and sub.

On the sub and amp, look for the rms value not peak. Your amp should be atleast 75% of your subs highest rms value. If it is less, you are underpowering the amp and that's what's causing the overload. If the amp is more than the subs, try reducing the gain, you are overpowering the subs and can cause them to be blown after a while. Also check your speaker wiring, are they wired in series or parallel, dual voice coils or single. Is the amp 2 ohm stable, 1 ohm stable? These things can cause it to stop working because when they are not to spec, they overload either the amp or sub.

Good luck!

If you read his post earlier, you will see that he said that his lights don't dim. If it is an alternator problem, the car itself will fail because it is not producing enough voltage to run all his system.

Also if the alternator is going bad, you will start to hear an alternator whine through your system when you rev the engine.

Thanks thats really helpful. I will check all those things.

crutchfield. If the alternator is failing, which I've seen happen, you could be driving in your car and all of a sudden you lose everything because the alternator is not putting out the right voltage. This is not the case for him. I really doubt it is the problem with his car. Also if you look at my post, The suggestions for trouble shooting is mainly his wiring and sub/amp specs. The alternator will give you plenty of clues if it is dying.

ofcourse it would bounce, because when the sub hits, the amp draws alot of amperage from the battery. If he is using a small guage wire, that might cause the problem because he is bottlenecking the current draw. The amp is trying to pull more than what the wire could conduct to push the subs. I hope he's using big enough same guage wires for both power and ground.

What kind of amp and what sub (please include the OHM rating, if it is a dual or single voice coil and how you have it hooked up to the amp). It sounds like the amp is clipping, the protect circuit in the amp shuts down the amp, then you reset the circuit when you turn your car off and back on. I am guessing the OHM load of your sub is less than what your amp can take or the amp is installed in a place where it is just getting too hot. Also, if your sub has a blow coil, this can lower the impedance load on your amp and cause clipping as well.

I got 8 gauge wire for my power and ground, that should be plenty for a 400 watt max power amp shouldnt it?

I checked all the connections on my amp to make sure theres no wires touching each other. I scratched some more paint off around my ground point but I'm pretty sure that had a good connection to start with. I havn't driven it for more then 10 minutes at a time yet but I'll let you know if it goes away.

My voltmeter is reading a little over 13v with the car on and under 12 with the car off right now. Normally I was getting 14v with it on and 12 or a little higher with it off. It's not too low but its a change.

hmmm....... your guage wires are ok. Under 14 while its running is ok, but under 12 when its off, I think its still ok. have you installed anything else besides those? some equipment even when off should have a small current drain. As long as your volt meter doesn't drop below 11. You should be fine I guess. If it does go below that, you have a current drain somewhere, but that's another story. I will help you with the as well if that is ever a case, but for now keep checking and make sure your first problem is fixed.

Drove 3 hours today, still cuts out.

Mncrolln i bet youre right but I'm not sure what the stats are, I will try to find them later tonight if I can. The amp is shutting itself off probably because of a protect circut. The amp and sub are kenwood, max power i know because it says it right on the the amp and sub but I'll have to find the boxes.

Alright got the boxes next to me, I don't know what half this stuff means.

SUB:
Kenwood KFC-W2525DVC
peak power 600w
rated power 150w
frequency response 28hz~800hz
sensitivity 91db/W at 1m
Impedence 4+4 ohms dual voice coil

AMP:
Kenwood KAC-6201
max power 350w x 1
bridged 150w x 1 (4ohm 1kHz, lesss than .8%THD)
2 channel 60w x2 (4ohm 20-30kHz, less than .08%THD)
2 channel 75w x2 (2ohm 1kHz, lesss than .8%THD)
2 ohm stable

Thats everything that is says on the boxes. I'm not sure I hooked it up right.

how do you have the voice coils wired up? parallel or series?

Parallel is ngative negative, positive positive then positive to positive terminal, negative to negative terminal.

Series is negative positive, then positive to positive terminal, negative to negative terminal

are you bridging the amp?

I will check at work tomorrow so I can find out more details about your sub and amp.

I have it hooked up like this:


Is that the correct way?

What would happen if I just disconnected the 2nd connections on the sub?

I tried it today and the sub sounds way better, how come? Still cuts out every 20 min or so though.

hmm.... you are running the speaker under 2 ohm load. If you have it bridge on the amp, you are running it on a 1 ohm load which your amp is not stable for. Run the speaker in series, then bridge it to the amp. When the speakers are run under series, you actually have 8 ohm, when bridge to the amp, it puts it down to 4 ohm which gives you the most power. I believe that would solve your problem.

alright thanks a lot man, i will try hooking them up in series tomorrow morning

So would it do the same thing if I wired the sub in parallel and didn't bridge the amp? Just wondering. Because that would make it 4 ohms also right?

see on the pic above? even if you have them in parallel, your amp will still see 2 ohms even if its not bridge because the 2 for ohm voice coils when wired in parallel causes them to drop to 2 ohm. Think about this, when wired in parallel and not bridge at the amp, you are only using 75w as it said on your earlier post 75Wx2 @2ohms, meaning each channel produces 75 watts which unerpowers your sub big time. As a result, you will blow the sub. If you want the most power out of your subs, wire them in series and run them in bridge mode. Your amp will produce 150W because your subs are running under 4 ohms. 4+4ohm=8ohms, when wired in bridge mode, it cuts it down to 4 ohms. amp produces 150W@4 ohms. This is your best bet, not only you fix the problem, but your amp and sub are in harmony and will be running at optimum level.