CamaroRS91x

hey guys...


alright well I have a 12" MTX 6000, Pyle MP3/CD player, and a 400w Power Acoustik 2 channel amp. I just bought the sub recently, and the amp is pretty old.

So recently, when I start my car and my CD player turns on, you can hear the sub kinda vibrating.....and it continues throughout the songs....and even when I pause it, it like vibrates a lil bit and sounds kinda like a distant helicopter :/

So when this happens, I wiggle the cd deck and I take out the RCA wires from the amp and put them back. This works almost every single time, and the noice goes away til the next time I start my car.

Well I was on my way home from hockey a couple days ago, and it started making the noice so I wiggled the CD deck and the sub just stopped making noice all together. I thought maybe I blew the fuse to my amp, but it looked fine.

So after I got home, I checked all my connections...sanded my ground clean, and checked all my fuses. Everything looked fine...

My friend ended up comin over and we hooked up his amp to my car and it didn't work either. So after we took his out, I checked my big red 50A fuse on my wiring kit battery cable. It was blown so I assumed this is what was wrong.

Today I replaced it with a 60A (because they didn't have 50A at autozone). Nothing changed. So maybe when I hooked his amp up, it blew the fuse? hmm

But anyways, I am very stumped because I hooked up my sub to my friends home audio system thing, and it played perfectly fine. I replaced the RCA wires too. Also, my power bulb to the amp goes on everytime I turn the CD player on, like it should.

Sorry for this being so long but I'm really stumped so if anyone has any idea's, I'd really appreciate it

Thanks

JayBoCC2

i'd try the sub if the amp still works in your home system... or the wiring from the amp to sub...

CamaroRS91x

no no, the sub worked on the home system.....I don't even know how to check and see if the amp works. And I put new wires from the amp to the sub and nothing, so I dono :-/

birdboy86

Your sub worked when hooked up to your friends home unit. The other person's amp that you tried in your car didn't work. If I were you I would look at my head unit and check my wire's again. Good luck....

CamaroRS91x

well I'm not 100% positive his works...he just got the amp the other day and we haven't tried it in his car yet.

anyways I just went out there and checked all my wiring to the headunit.....I re-spliced the remote wire and made sure everything was taped securely with electrical tape.......still nothing. Both fuses (1Amp and 8Amp) connected to the deck look fine. I'm seriously so stumped....I don't even know what else to try. I would think the amp was dead but the light still goes on?? hmm..is there any way to check the amp?

Thanks guys.

ThraxXx

The amp could be powering up but to me it sounds like the signal is not making it to the amp from the head unit. Did anything happend to this amp...was it moved, bumped, dropped? Maybe the RCA female connectors on the amp are busted...also could be the speaker leads on the amp?

CamaroRS91x

Thanks for the reply ThraxXx,

no the amp has always been bolted down since this happened.... I REALLY hope it's not my amp that's dead.....but isn't there a way to test it with a multimeter or something? and if so, could you explain how? Thanks a lot

onebadwagon

what i'd do is get a multimeter and check for voltage coming from your RCAs.

if you have any sort of voltage there, then you are probably looking at an internal problem with the amp, but wiggling your head unit shouldn't change anything about the amp, so i'd bet you have a wiring problem.



adam

NEEDAZ

OK, this is your FIRST problem. It sounds to me like you are experiencing "motor boating". This is the helicopter sound you hear. It's caused by a bad ground at the amp. Double and triple check you ground at the amp and the chassis. And it sounds like you did that.
So, next you put your fiends amp in the mix. Was the fuse bad first or did his amp blow the fuse? Ether is possible, not all the info to know at the moment. Did you damage the HU by having a bag ground at the amp? It's VARY possible but we can't tell at the moment. Did you realize that a bad ground at the amp CAN damage the HU? That you had good luck by wiggling the HU make me wonder if you have some bad connections IN the HU at the RCA output ground? Or if there are connection problems behind the HU? How are you making your connections? Is this a "twist-and-tape" job? Are you using crimp connectors, solder and heat shrink?
If the light on the amp is coming on with the HU that tells you that the amp has "some" ground, "some" power, and the remote signal. I say "some" because you amp doesn't pull a lot of power till there a good load on it, small current draw means low voltage drop, pull more current, get more voltage drop, amp stops working. It also doesn't mean the amps internal power supply is running.
I can see that we are going to need to walk you though some step-by-step troubleshooting procedures, so lets start with some hints. A good one is get your hands on a set of 50' or longer RCAs. Something long so you can get them to a known good audio source. Like your garage stereo, through a window to your home stereo, into your friends car to his/her stereo, something like that. BUT DON'T DO THIS till you have the amp install straight. You can also use this to check the signal from you HU. Take the signal from you HU to a working amp in another friends car. If you haven't noticed by now having good friends into car audio and with systems is a great tool to. Can you get your hands your friends amp again? You could see if the fuse pops again. You'd be checking the amp for you friend. If the fuse doesn't pop you could use that amp as a substitute in your troubleshooting. I have a small 20WX2 amp I use for just this purpose. This would check the signal from the HU. It sounds like the sub is OK.

Anyway, did any of this get you started?

NEEDAZ

Only way to test it is give it good power (jumped over to the rem. terminal to get it turned on), good ground, and a good audio source. Then a speaker to listen to. That's how you test an amp.