This is the problem. I have a 500 watt punch amp on my lows, and a 400 sony xplod on my highs in the rear. I'm not trying to win any comps or anything, just enjoy my music a lil louder than the average cat. Now sometimes my punch shuts off when I have it (volume) cranked up. Then like 5 mins later it comes back on. Then I may have the car off for a while when the punch amp was shut off from protection I guess, and the amp still wouldn't turn on when I got the car started the next time until I went above 3000 rpms or so. Also when I come out of gear and the rpms drop the highs dim a little for a quick second and rise back up when the idle regulates itself. 800-1000 rpms. I do have a 1.1 farad cap with volt meter and I'm getting readings of 14.2-4 whenever the radio or punch amp is shut off. My battery is in the trunk along with the system, so my power is like 4' or shorter going to the cap, and power from the cap to a fused distributor block for the 2 amps. Ground wire is a lil longer than I like, maybe 2' or less. More than the rec. 18" for sure, to a distributor block for the 2 amps. Please help with suggestions or any experience with this and diagnosis, as it get frustrating when your sounds cut off while in traffic next to a hot chick. lol

 

anyone??

 

your problem probably lies in your wiring your getting big voltage drops and that is what is shutting your amps off. Don't go by the voltage reading on the cap those things average the voltage they are not real time. And the fraction of a second that you cause a dip you still probably wont even see it on a DMM.

What guage wire are you running?
Are you sure you have clean grounds both at the battery and the amp?
What is you alternator capable of? Do you have under drive pulleys on it?

You should at the very least have wire capable of running 80 amps 20 feet.

 

you could try a bigger capacitor?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by patrick4588 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">you could try a bigger capacitor?</TD></TR></TABLE>
No that's not the problem.

 

Perhaps a wire upgrade and larger alternator are in order...And by wire upgrade I mean the stock power and ground wires....

 

What guage wire are you currently running?
Have you upgraded the vehicles gound wire and positive wires? Not just the wires going to the amps. The wires going from the battery to the chassis and the battery to the alternator.

Second I would look at why the problem goes away at higher rpm. Sounds to me like your alternator isn't really kicking in until higher rpm. Is this a modified alternator? Really only one way to fix this change the pulleys so the alternator spins faster. Don't really know if they make overdrive pulleys for your application. Its probably a better idea to get a bigger main pulley then a smaller alternator pulley.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by nsxxtreme &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">your problem probably lies in your wiring your getting big voltage drops and that is what is shutting your amps off. Don't go by the voltage reading on the cap those things average the voltage they are not real time. And the fraction of a second that you cause a dip you still probably wont even see it on a DMM.

What guage wire are you running?
Are you sure you have clean grounds both at the battery and the amp?
What is you alternator capable of? Do you have under drive pulleys on it?

You should at the very least have wire capable of running 80 amps 20 feet.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I'm using the shock tower in the trunk as my grounding point for my battery and system. It looks clean. i'll double check to make sure no paint resides. As for the wire, I have 1 guage for the battery coming from the front since the battery is in the trunk. 4 gauge for the power wire from bat. to cap, and 4 gau. from cap to distributor, and 8 gau. from dist. to amps. Both with 60 amp fuses in dist. 80 amp between bat and cap.

 

It's supposed to be a high output alt. I'm not exactly sure of the amps at this time. I have to find paper work on it. It's about 2-3 years old and maybe 1000 miles on from driving and dyno.

 

So what size wire do you have comming from the alternator? Also what size ground wire goes from the engine to the chassis?

Not sure why all you guys try an mount the battery in the trunk. What's the purpose. Your best bet is to have it as close to the alternator as possible.

Did you put under drive pulleys on it to try to get more HP out of your motor? If you did that then it would require the rpms to be higher in order for the alternator to work properly.

 

I have questions along the same lines

1- What gauge is the cable running from the front of the car, [starter motor] to the batt. in the rear?

2- What size and type of fuse is on that cable?

3- As asked, what gauge is the batt. to chassis and chassis to engine grounds?
I would add, what gauge is the, alt. to starter/starter to engine bay fuse box
leads?

4- How are the terminals connected to any/all of the above cables?

Your power "supply" system, [the above cables, fused and unfused splitter blocks and the fuses in them, connections into and out of a stiffening cap and the connections into the amp] has way too many connections.

The cap is not being used properly.

First thing, get rid of the splitter blocks, you should be running a fused, [100A ANL] 8ga power lead from the batt. directly to the Sony amp the amp should also have an 8ga ground lead, [grounded to the cars chassis not the batt.]

You could use 8ga for the sub amp also, [assuming it is making 500W RMS] but it is a sub amp so I would use at least 6ga if not 4 gauge, also fused with an ANL fuse, [150A max but if your R/F amp does not have it's own fuse use a 100A fuse].
Run that fused power cable to the pos.(+) terminal of the cap and then, with the same gauge cable, from the cap to the amps pos.(+) input terminal run a ground from the amp and the caps neg.(-) terminal to the same chassis ground point, it is best to keep all grounds as short as possible and grounding everything to the same point, there are exceptions to the rule, although you should always ground a cap and the amp the cap is "stiffening" to the same ground point, it is not necessary to ground amps to the same ground point and not recommended that the batt. is grounded to the cars chassis with anything other then maybe a relay or ventilation fan or such.
Grounding should always be made to the floor pan of the car.

The above method of wiring amps caps and a relocated batt. will guarantee to have the least number of connections and deliver the most avalable current to the amps power supplies and get the most appropriate use of the caps capability at the amp that needs it.
It may or may not solve the problem, of the amp cutting out, that sounds to me more like a protection circuit on it's way west, but a poor wiring job that limits current to an amp to the point that it is going into protection mode over and over could be the cause of the protection mode being damaged.
The protection mode/circuit was not meant to constantly be triggered, it's like a fuse that you can blow more then once but it has a limit. 94

 

gotcha. I will upgrade the wiring if necessary. I just checked and seen that there is only 8 gua. going to the starter, and 8 gua. coming off the alt. into the car distributed to the fuse box, msd box, to the starter and coming out to 1 gua. going to bat. So the dist. block is backwards with the theory, making the distributor block the center power box for the whole car. I'm going to upgrade the smaller 8 gua. to 4 gua. and try to fit 1 gua. onto the alt. and see if that will help. As for the cap and all, i have the ground points in the pass. rear shock tower where the strut bar bolts to. I can bolt the amp and cap grounds to the floor in the trunk where the back seat was. Will that help? Is the tower ok for the bat. Both pos. and neg. from bat. are 1gua. wires. thanks for the help.