Well, the saga continues. My buddy and I have been working on hooking my car up with new speaks and my Pio. Premier amp on and off for about 3 weeks now. We can get my amp to work in his car...no problem....he's an Elec. Engineering major and an avid car audio enthusiast...so his work is in no doubt. The problem we seem to be having is that the amp will turn (light wise) but no power will come out. We have narrowed down the problems to; what we think is:

1. The Ground Wire: Has anyone had any problem gettting the ground to efficiently work....we've hooked it up to a bolt near the passenger taillight and "touch and go'd" it a number of places to see if it'd work...but to no avail.

2. Fucking Clueless.

I'd appreciate any input if you guys have any. I've got too much money invested in the speaks to say "fuck it" and give up. Thanks fellas. I appreciate it.

 

I have my ground wire from the stock bolt in the trunk. It seems to work just find there. I have a big phat 4 gauge.

 

Try grounding it back to the battery.

 

Only in a last ditch attempt would I go with the "back to the battery". I don't want to have to run all that cable back through the car again. But thanks for the input. Anymore?
By the way, I don't think my 97 has the same little "ground" outlet that's near the backseat as is in the 98+'s.
--Dan--

 

I have my amp grounded to a stock bolt that's located in the bottom of the trunk. Just make sure that there is no paint between the wire and the grounding bolt.

 

You don't wanna permanently ground it to the battery... unless the battery is in the trunk! The ground wire should be as short as you can get it. If the amp's light is on, then it's getting power. If it's not putting out any sound, then either the source is bad or there's something wrong with the amp. Oftentimes the soldered connections inside the amp break from bouncing around in the trunk.

 

get a voltometer and test the ground, you should get at least 12 volts.

 

Yes, I tested with a voltmeter...got the requisite 12V. Amp works fine in my buddy's camaro. Like I said...Buddy is an EE major....so we're just baffled. Thanks for the input though.
--Dan--

 

Hey bro.......u said u've got a voltmeter??.....turn on your system, set the VM to tha AC setting and then check the speaker leads comin out of the amp.......if you're getting voltage there then check the output ends (the ones going into the amp) of the rcas.........no signal still means its a problem with your radio

 

i was having a similar problem the other day, and turned out the remote power from the headunit was poorly connected...may wanna check that! LATER, and good luck!

 

IS YOUR REMOTE TURN ON WIRE FROM THE RADIO WORKING??? CHECK IT OUT

 

Remeber that the ground wire needs to be on bare metal. I just scraped the paint off the bottom of my trunk and put about 3 screws threw the ring on the end. Worked for me.

 

This is his EE buddy he was referring to.

I have tried just about ever conceivable combination of things I could think of to eliminate variables that could be causing the problems. Originally he had a problem with his amp where it wouldn't turn on. I went in there and it turned out one of the power supply rails had developed an apparent cold solder joint so I just heated the solder up a little and redid the connection. I powered the amp up on a bench top unregulated power supply I made. At full load it will do 12V @ 8A. With no load it floats up to around 19V. When I hook his amp up and am playing music through it, it drops down to about 16V. Notice I said when it is hooked up it has output on the speaker leads. Well we tried everything in his car. The amp powers up but we can't get any kind of output from it. I have tried running RCAs from my car to his car and it won't play. Ultimately I was able to hook it up to my battery and my RCAs and get output on it. We tried so many different combinations I am not sure which ones I haven't tried yet. I don't think I tried my amp in his system yet to see what is up with that. Some of you are saying remoted lead, keep in mind the amp powers up. Also, the last time he was here I wasn't even using the remote lead from the radio to power it but rather I just hooked the turn on straight to the battery while we were testing. I am pretty stumped at this point.