CrAiZ3 10+ year member
Member
Overview:
My current setup is an Audioque HDC318 Copper Coil in a 7.4 cu ft. box. I'm running a Jensen 7" LCD single din head unit (irrelevent to this thread) with the stock 2004 Saturn Vue speakers. My car? You guessed it. 2004 Saturn Vue 5spd. I have a second battery, a Kinetik KHC2400, on a PAC-500 isolator. And last and most likely least, the amp is an old Digital Audio DHC2154 rated at 1000rms. 4 guage wire ran and 12 guage for the sub.
What Happened?
I've owned the system for a while now, however it has only been run for a week or two. I had bought the amp used off of a friend, and the battery also used off of here. I know a good bit about car audio, but I wanted to get everything professionally installed because I didn't have the time and didn't want to accidentally screw something up, expecially with the second battery and isolator, which i'm not extremely familiar with.
I took my car with my sub, amp, isolator, cd player, fuse blocks (150amp). The man I talked with seemed fairly knowledgeable, however some things I felt he was unsure on. I took my car in at 2:00pm this past Saturday, and spent until 9:00 helping out with the install, but I only did what I was told and didn't connect anything. It was mainly just holding things and helping put the box it.
After the install went fairly well, however we ran into the problem of the sub not moving. He told me it was probably bad rca's on my cd player after we tried replacing the current rca's. Turns out he was right. We hooked up (forget what its called) a device that turned the speaker wires from the head unit to rca's. It worked! I hit 141db my first try.
I paid the man approx $250 and listened to the system the whole half hour trip home. It sounded great, but I kept the volume relatively low because of the cold temperatures. I got home and flipped off my toggle switch. When I came back out, I started my car, flipped the toggle, and nothing. No sound. I tried flipping it off and then back on again. On about the third attempt, I heard a crack and seconds later smoke poured from the back of the car. I flipped the switch off. I was not happy.
After pulling over and evacuating, I flipped the switch on and check to see if the amp would turn on. Sure enough, but on protect mode. I made an appointment to go see the guy again and for him to fix the problem, as installs are covered by a warrenty. After testing the voltage of the batteries he told me it was likely that the amp fried because of its "low quality" and that it was probably "the amps last run." He offered to sell me one of his amps in the store. No thanks. After getting home I hooked up a spare amp, an Audiobahn 18001d. Worked fine while I rode around for a while, and I even checked to see if it was hot before I got out. It didn't seem hot at all. I flipped off the toggle switch and turned off my car.
I heard the crackling sound again. I flipped the toggle switch back on when I came back and the amp was fried. Same thing as the last one. I highly doubt that its a coincidence that these amps both died the same way because they were just old and ready to die.
What I need from you:
Below is exactly how the stereo is installed. If anyone could please check everything and see where he went wrong I would greatly appreciate it. I'm hoping to get this problem fixed and get a new amp out of it. I think it seems fair. After all, his install blew two of my amps. If not, I will definately be writing reviews on his audio store. That's why I haven't mentioned the name yet.
Anyways, I left a message and am hoping to hear from him tomorrow.
Thanks in advance for the help, and sorry for the long read. I just want the information to be as accurate as possible.
The install:
Car battery to isolator. Isolator to Kinetik. Fused from car battery to isolator. Also fused from isolator to Kinetik.
Ground and remote wire both hooked up to isolator.
Kinetik is grounded
RCA's ran from converter in head unit (See above) to amp.
Kinetik positive to amp positive. (No fuse. He said the only way anything could happen is if my wire fell out of the amp and got stuck on a metal ground in the car, and not to worry about it.)
Kinetik negative to amp negative.
Remote wire from head unit to toggle, and then toggle back to remote wire and remote wire to amp. The wire that goes into the amp is spliced and comes out of the amp to the isolator. There is no fuse for the toggle.
Sub is wired correctly.
Thanks for helping me get this mess figured out!//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/crap.gif.7f4dd41e3e9b23fbd170a1ee6f65cecc.gif
My current setup is an Audioque HDC318 Copper Coil in a 7.4 cu ft. box. I'm running a Jensen 7" LCD single din head unit (irrelevent to this thread) with the stock 2004 Saturn Vue speakers. My car? You guessed it. 2004 Saturn Vue 5spd. I have a second battery, a Kinetik KHC2400, on a PAC-500 isolator. And last and most likely least, the amp is an old Digital Audio DHC2154 rated at 1000rms. 4 guage wire ran and 12 guage for the sub.
What Happened?
I've owned the system for a while now, however it has only been run for a week or two. I had bought the amp used off of a friend, and the battery also used off of here. I know a good bit about car audio, but I wanted to get everything professionally installed because I didn't have the time and didn't want to accidentally screw something up, expecially with the second battery and isolator, which i'm not extremely familiar with.
I took my car with my sub, amp, isolator, cd player, fuse blocks (150amp). The man I talked with seemed fairly knowledgeable, however some things I felt he was unsure on. I took my car in at 2:00pm this past Saturday, and spent until 9:00 helping out with the install, but I only did what I was told and didn't connect anything. It was mainly just holding things and helping put the box it.
After the install went fairly well, however we ran into the problem of the sub not moving. He told me it was probably bad rca's on my cd player after we tried replacing the current rca's. Turns out he was right. We hooked up (forget what its called) a device that turned the speaker wires from the head unit to rca's. It worked! I hit 141db my first try.
I paid the man approx $250 and listened to the system the whole half hour trip home. It sounded great, but I kept the volume relatively low because of the cold temperatures. I got home and flipped off my toggle switch. When I came back out, I started my car, flipped the toggle, and nothing. No sound. I tried flipping it off and then back on again. On about the third attempt, I heard a crack and seconds later smoke poured from the back of the car. I flipped the switch off. I was not happy.
After pulling over and evacuating, I flipped the switch on and check to see if the amp would turn on. Sure enough, but on protect mode. I made an appointment to go see the guy again and for him to fix the problem, as installs are covered by a warrenty. After testing the voltage of the batteries he told me it was likely that the amp fried because of its "low quality" and that it was probably "the amps last run." He offered to sell me one of his amps in the store. No thanks. After getting home I hooked up a spare amp, an Audiobahn 18001d. Worked fine while I rode around for a while, and I even checked to see if it was hot before I got out. It didn't seem hot at all. I flipped off the toggle switch and turned off my car.
I heard the crackling sound again. I flipped the toggle switch back on when I came back and the amp was fried. Same thing as the last one. I highly doubt that its a coincidence that these amps both died the same way because they were just old and ready to die.
What I need from you:
Below is exactly how the stereo is installed. If anyone could please check everything and see where he went wrong I would greatly appreciate it. I'm hoping to get this problem fixed and get a new amp out of it. I think it seems fair. After all, his install blew two of my amps. If not, I will definately be writing reviews on his audio store. That's why I haven't mentioned the name yet.
Anyways, I left a message and am hoping to hear from him tomorrow.
Thanks in advance for the help, and sorry for the long read. I just want the information to be as accurate as possible.
The install:
Car battery to isolator. Isolator to Kinetik. Fused from car battery to isolator. Also fused from isolator to Kinetik.
Ground and remote wire both hooked up to isolator.
Kinetik is grounded
RCA's ran from converter in head unit (See above) to amp.
Kinetik positive to amp positive. (No fuse. He said the only way anything could happen is if my wire fell out of the amp and got stuck on a metal ground in the car, and not to worry about it.)
Kinetik negative to amp negative.
Remote wire from head unit to toggle, and then toggle back to remote wire and remote wire to amp. The wire that goes into the amp is spliced and comes out of the amp to the isolator. There is no fuse for the toggle.
Sub is wired correctly.
Thanks for helping me get this mess figured out!//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/crap.gif.7f4dd41e3e9b23fbd170a1ee6f65cecc.gif
