Amp flickering on and off

[hatedonmostly 5,000+ posts]

Whenever I turn my volume full tilt, the amp cuts out and the power light flickers on and off repeatedly. The subs make a thumping that goes along with it, like turn on/off pop.

This happened out of the blue yesterday, I wasn't even pushing my **** as hard as I have before. I'm guessing my amp gave up on me?

-Connections on the amp are fine. Nothing has been changed in the entire setup for weeks now.

-Subs feel fine and coils on the four wired up read 1.0.

-Other amp plays fine after this happens.

-Plays up to full volume on certain songs no problem, has this issue on others.

wat do //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/crap.gif.7f4dd41e3e9b23fbd170a1ee6f65cecc.gif

30 Minutes Later Edit: Turns out the wingnut on the battery for the ground of the battery came undone, and was just hanging over the battery terminal. I don't know why this would cause an issue since it was still touching, even if slightly. We'll see if that fixes the problem.

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[The HACKER 10+ year member]

If it doesnt fix the problem, then where is your amp mounted?

 

[Bobby322 10+ year member]

That was most likely the problem, because it sounds like a ground issue. Or it could be your remote wire

 

[The HACKER 10+ year member]

That was most likely the problem, because it sounds like a ground issue. Or it could be your remote wire

Or a loose internal on the amp //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/fyi.gif.9f1f679348da7204ce960cfc74bca8e0.gif//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

 

[hatedonmostly 5,000+ posts]

Can't be remote wire, because the lead from the HU goes to the sub amp, and lead from the sub amp goes to the front stage amp. The front stage amp still works fine.

Pretty sure that bolt on the battery is ****ed, because I believe it came off moments later driving down the road. Checked voltage at the amp with the car running and it was reading 12.4, as if the rear batteries aren't charging. Makes perfect sense.

 

[hatedonmostly 5,000+ posts]

updatez

Amp has been giving me problems still, a few days ago I got the bright idea to check the voltage at the amp with a DMM when it was flickering. Read 8.20v. I figured, I've saw something similar to this problem before, when the inline fuse blew on the power wire going to my Hifonics. The LEDs on the amp lit up dimly, but it wouldn't turn on. Although the fuse looked fine, it was actually blown, and that was the root of my problems.

So I replaced the 100A fuse with another 100A. The 4 gauge Knu KLMX cable is only rated at 100A, although my AQ1200D is fused at 120A. Amps never pull their max fused rating, so I thought this wouldn't be a problem, and it never was. Until recently, of course. That 100A fuse blew in a day.

The 4 gauge KLMX is rated at 100A in a 20 ft. run, so I figured that the fuse was my limiting factor in the install. I have a very short run of the 4 gauge going to the amp, so I figured that it wouldn't be an issue if I put a bigger fuse in; if anything, it would blow the fuses in the amp first. Put in a 150A fuse, worked for a week until the amp starts doing it again.

So tonight, I pull out the DMM and start checking things. Everything checks out except for the voltage on the sub amp, which is reading 8.2 again. Even the other amp, which is connected to the same distro is fine. So I check the fused distro, which is a 1/0 in, 4 and 8 gauge out. Everything is fine before the power is distributed, at the 8 gauge out it's fine, and at the 4 gauge out it's 8.2 again. Sounds like a fuse problem again, but by accident I touch my hand to the metal of the distro that the 4 gauge goes to, and it's so hot it burns my hand.

So what's the virdict? Can you burn up a distro block, or can they go bad? Or could it be a poor connection? I realize now that the connection between the 4 gauge wire and the distro wasn't great, and it makes sense that the amp could have tried to pull too much current because it wasn't getting enough to output it's rated power like it should, and when it pulled that extra power it blew the fuse; even with the bigger 150 amp fuse, it may have tried to pull that much power to do it's rated power.

Holy **** that is long. tl;dr edit: Fused distro is getting hot as balls, could it be that the distro went bad or burned up, or is it just a poor connection? I've heard that poor connections on amps or fuse blocks can cause them to melt, so I'm leaning toward the second one...