So I removed that little metal rod I was talking about in the 6th pic, and realized something.

If we remove the same rod on the passenger's side, you are able to move the navigation drive up a few inches! I know that has been a pet peeve of many TSX owners, including myself. The only functionality lost it the ability to fold down the rear seat from inside the cabin using the key. You are still able to fold it down using the yellow pull tab. I am seriously considering doing this and gaining a few more inches of useful space in my trunk.

 

As far as my current status, now I have both doors off, tweeters off, rear deck grilles off, and thanks to Jay's help I am going to complete my amplifier power wire later tonight.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to drive to Circuit City/Best Buy and pick up some speaker wire adapters, 6x9 to 6.5" adapters, and a power distribution block.

 

Max, I’m not a fan of subwoofers or class D amps. I never did a serious listing comparison with a class D sub amp and an AB sub amp. I have listened to a few class D amps and for the most part do not like the sound. For a car application and at the lower frequency range that the sub works at, I don’t think the class D’s short comings will be noticed. You do get a lot of bang for the buck and a small foot print, both good things in a car environment.

Just remember the most important thing is to get differential inputs on your amps. Otherwise, it won’t mater what class the amp is.

jeff

 

Well I've had a fun day. I got all of the stuff, it all looks great, but nothing is working right now.

When I turn on the radio, the light on the amp turns on, stays on for about 20 seconds, then goes out. Anybody know what is causing this?

The manual has like 20 pages in Italian, and 4 pages in english, and no troubleshooting section

 

Here's a few pics from today:

Here's the currently-non-functioning amp




For some reason the distribution block had fuse holders in it. I already have a fuse underhood, so I just shorted these


And here are the drivers




If anybody can help me figure out what is going wrong with the amp that is causing it to turn off after 10-20 seconds that would be great!

 

Mercman, can you please PM me or write me an email@lensam69@yahoo.com regarding the 14Pin Harness? I would PM, but the forum won't let me since this is my first post...

 

Hey Max, Does it turn off if you unhook all connections other than the +V, GND, and remote turn on lead? Some amps have protection circuitry that will shut them down if there's a problem.

 

And not being a total thread hijacker, there could be a couple of things i would check for.

First of all get a voltage meter, and check that the remote turn on (the red wire) is still supplying current to the amp. If it's not, then check to see where you connected that wire. It should supply current as long as the car is on. Another way to test, if you don't have a meter, is to just connect a short wire from the power cable to the turn-on. (Don't forget to disconnect it or yo will eventually drain your battery).

If that's not the problem, double check the impedances of the speakers. I haven't read through the whole thread, but make sure that the amp is rated for the impedance of the speakers. (It does look kinda small for a 5 channel amp)

 

Do you get any sound? Or just the light for 20 seconds then off?

Try disconnecting all the speaker wires at the amp, check for any stray strands of wire that might be touch the terminals. Turn the system back on and see if the amp stays on. If it does, check your speaker connections. If it doesn’t check the power and ground leads, a poor connection will cause a low voltage condition and shut the amp down. If you have a voltmeter (DVM) check for voltage between the power and ground terminals at the amp, have someone turn on the system while you monitor the voltage. If it drops you have a bad power or ground connection. If the amp shuts down and the voltage stays constraint (12 volts), check for voltage between the ground and remote turn on lead. It will be 12 volts with the HU on. If the voltage tests check out and the amp still shuts down with no speaker wires connected then the amp is bad.

One last thing, the distribution block has in line fuses to protect the smaller wire that you used to feed your amps. Always use a fuse sized for the cable you are using. I assume that you used the fuse that came with your 4ga kit at the battery. At the dist block you have to fuse each line for the cable size coming off the block.

jeff

 

Jay I will try unplugging everything but the power when I get home. If I unhook everything and I still have the same problem does that mean the amp is a dud?

Lensam, I know the amp works with those speakers, the manufacturer of the speakers has been using those amps for years. It could be the remote wire, although no other people with Jeff's harness have had that problem that I know of.

Jeff, the amp makes no sound at all, it turns on for 10-20 seconds, makes no sound during that, then turns off. I do not have a voltmeter unfortunately, but I will try to borrow one for tonight.

Also, you say to put a fuse in on the distribution block? I am a bit confused. I thought that the fuses on the distribution block were only for if I did not have one under my hood that was equivalent for both amps, and wanted to use an individual one for each amp. The one underhood is a 60A I believe. I am only using one amp at the moment so the distribution block is essentialy just an extention. Also, I went to radio shack to buy fuses for the distribution block and they didn't have anything anywhere near large enough to fit.

The amp is supposedly a 4x90 + 1x240 for RMS at my impedance. I don't really know what kind of fuses I should be using.

 

Sorry, I meant to post these pics over the weekne dand just never got around to it. Just snapped them in the garage here at work. I mounted my amps this way because trunk space and useability. Also had to still be able to fold down the seats when needed. Both of my sons play hockey, one on a travel level. Therefore, it's not odd to have a hockey bag, laptop back, cooler, and a couple overnight bags in the trunk, with hockey sticks running through the smaller fold down secion of the seat. I was a bit concerned about heat, but JL says they are stackable and I have yet to encounter any problems at all. Ignore the scratches on the sub grill, as I said, trunk gets uses a lot so it get's banged into quite a bit.

 

Hmm...interesting setup Bully. I didn't realize that the JLs were stackable. If I can't get the amp I have right now to work, I am considering getting a 450/4 for my sub and rear deck speakers and a 300/2 for my front tweets and mids. The sub is dual voice coil though, but I think that shoud be okay with a bridged 450/4

 

Before you do that, read up on the power rating on the JL 4 channels. JL amps run into multiple impedences and put out rated power, but the 4 channels are tricky in that they want all 4 channels to be into the same impedence. Below is a screen cap from the 300/4 owner's manual. I am sure the 450/4 is the same situation: (ignore my god awful highlighting, it's from a protected .PDF file so I couldn't easily just capture the text)

 

Interesting find, however I believe that only affects the 300/4. The 300/4 is rated is 75x4, whereas the 450/4 is rated in terms of Ch 1&2 and Ch 3&4 in bridged and/or stereo modes. http://mobile.jlaudio.com/products_amps.php?amp_id=438

I could be wrong, so let me know if you think differently

Hopefully I'll get my Next working though...

 

Hey Jeff, if I get the Next working, what's the easiest way to tell if it's balanced differential or not? Will there just be a lot of fuzziness and crackling? Will there be no sound at all?

 

You may be right, as it looks like they are handled differently on the 450/4/ See page 11.

http://mobile.jlaudio.com/pdfs/13258.pdf

 

So does anybody know if and what fuses I should put in the distribution block even though I'm only using one amp at the moment?

 

What type of fuses does it take?
AGU takes the least amount of heat, mine blew because it got too hot, ended up switching to anl D-Block and havn't experianced a single problem yet. Selling my digital-anl block fused block actually since I need more outputs if you need that

AGU - 80amp (it only goes up to 60, but you can find 80's, i actually have a few here you can have for free just pay for shipping)
Maxi - 80
ANL / mini-ANL (Would be more ideal) - 100

 

I'm so eager to get home from work and test all of this shit out. I'm starting to feel like I'm using the wrong amp though.

Wong are you saying that I should be using a fuse in the distribution block even though there's only one thing connected to it at the moment? Could the problem be that I only have one side connected? Should I bridge the two sides together so that I don't have a "loose end" on one side of the distribution block?

 

Max,
Not having the fuse in and using a jumper won’t cause the amp to shut down.
You do need to fuse the distribution block with the correct size fuse for the smaller wire coming off the block. This is a safety requirement to prevent the smaller wire from burning if the current draw exceeds the wires capability. A 4ga wire can carry more current then an 8ga. So in a fault condition the fuse in the 4ga circuit might not blow before the 8ga (or smaller) wire melts.

The rule is, always fuse a wire below its safe current handling capacity.
When tapping a circuit with a smaller wire then the wire you are tapping, fuse the new wire at the tap.
In your case you tapped a large 4ga circuit with a smaller 8ga wire, You have to fuse each of the 8ga circuits with its own fuse sized for an 8ga.

jeff

 

Alright guys, got the amp to turn on and stay on with a test wire running back to the battery ground. I guess I just had a bad ground connection yesterday!

Where is the best grounding point in/near the trunk???

 

Look for a spot where the metal is thick and it is spot wielded to the chassis. The corner braces behind the rear seat are bad because they are bolted to the chassis.



jeff

 

Congratulations on getting your amp to work!

To recap what has already been said about the fuses, The main fuse near the battery will protect against high current draw up to the distribution block. From there on, you have two separate circuits, (one for each amp) with different current draws, which need to be fused independently depending on each amps maximum current draw. If you're asking, I'm guessing you already tried looking for it in the manual. As a quick rule of thumb, assuming it's a class AB amp with about 60% efficiency (or 0.6):

(Power output / Efficiency) / Voltage = Amperage required

I don't know what your amp's rms rating is, but that will be on the manual. Add up all the chanels. Say it adds up to 500W RMS then you have:

(500 / 0.6) / 12 = 69.444 Amps. So in this case, you'd want to get yourself a 69A or smaller fuse.

For a class D amp efficiency is about 80% or 0.8. Do your research, and plug ion the numbers.


Also you can see if the amp has a fuse sticking out of it. Just read the amp rating on that fuse and you're good to go :P

Mercman, please PM me here or in the 8thCivic.com forums... Same user name. Thanks.

 

Wait Jeff I'm confused, you're saying the spot you're pointing to in the photo is NOT a good place to do it? or did you mistype?

I actually encountered a weird problem. Basically we plugged everything into the amp, with the amp and all the speakers just lying in the trunk and it sounded great. It was playing fairly loudly at half volume, no distortion, gains at about 1/3 for a whole 7 minute song.

THEN we took one woofer out to test it in the front door (for fitment only) and then replugged it into the amplifier. We turned everything on again, and had horrible distortion. We realized we had accidentally reversed the speaker wires!! So we took fixed the wires, yet the amp still continued to play distorted sound through every speaker!

I am hoping that the solution is something simple, such as an internal fuse gone bad, although I'm interested in suggestions of other things it could be.

 

lensam thanks for the fuse info. I had no idea what to use! So since I will only be running one amp for the time being I need not worry about a fuse on the distribution block? Is it possible to have to many fuses?

My two biggest issues at the moment are finding a place to ground the amps and custom mounting each speaker because none of them will fit without modification.

Also, I should mention that I have not removed my trunk liner. Would that be useful? Is it difficult?

 

The red arrow is pointing to the best spot to ground.

^he's refering to the back of the seats, if you peel back the velcro yeeti at the bottom of the seat, you can see a bolt there, he's saying don't ground there

sorry if i'm wrong

 

Oh and Jeff, my post 2 posts up, is there any chance that it was just pretending to be balanced-differential for the first 7 minutes and that it isn't actually compatible?

 

No problem
And yes, you can have as many fuses as you want. Fuses are basically safety devices. If something happens in your circuit causing it to draw more current than intended, the fuse will melt almost immediately, protecting everything down the path.

If you're only going to have one amp, it's ok to keep one fuse for now. Just make sure it matches the current draw for the amp.

Also on a misc note, the reason that the fuse should be close to the battery is that resistance along the wire will cause it to heat up downstream from the (+) terminal. In order to avoid long stretches of hot melting wire, the fuse is placed as close to the terminal as possible.

Gotta love car audio...


Oh btw, recheck your gains / crossover setting on the amp... Might be the cause of the distorsion. Reset them from scratch.

 

When I get home tonight I will turn all of the gains down and see if that's the problem. I hope that the amp is differential-balanced!

Also it seems as though removing the trunk liner would be in my best interest at this point. I have the Helms manual but it is not particularly clear. Does anybody have tips on taking it out?

 

Also, does anybody have experience with a manufacturer or type of 6x9" to 6.5" converter that they know fits in the rear deck of the TSX??

I got some MDF ones but they seem to be too thick. They don't even clear the carpet to fit into the hole. I'd like to pick up some metal or quality plastic ones before I start to butcher the MDF ones.

 

MDF spacers would be better

 

I tried turning down the gains and I was still getting a bunch of distortion, I had the gains at about 1/4 turn. Something must still be wired incorrectly or the amp isn't balanced or maybe I blew an internal fuse. I really don't know. I only had about 10 minutes to look at it last night so I hope to take a more thorough look today.

 

Later tonight I will post up some pictures of my tweeters. I need to figure out if and how I can fit them in the stock location.

 

Hot Glue worked well for me (Tweeters were a few cm smaller than stock ones, so it couldnt just snap into place on the tweeter holder cover thing, everything still looks stock tho, and sounds great.
Not sure what you'd do if its too big!, maybe exacto knife and trim away some of outside hole

 

Do you have any reason to believe that Next amp has differential-balanced inputs? Unless you have documentation that says it DOES, it DOESN'T -- most amps don't.

If you want to avoid buying a new amp you can use one of these as a balun, between mercman's harness and your amp.

http://www.woofersetc.com/index.cfm?...roduct_ID=1270

 

That will work but it is only two channels

jeff

 

Yeah that's exactly my problem, they are too big, and they are oval, so I have to trim them down to be circular and then trim off part of the ring on the stock grill and find a good way to mount them

-or-

Cut them down to circles and modify the grill they came with to fit in the hole so I don't mess up the stock one

-or-

Keep them as ovals and surface mount them to the sail panels on the door in their own housing. But hopefully it wont come to this!

These are them: http://renaudio.com/carstereo/CR103.htm

 

I'm assuming that it is because it is extremely high end equipment, it is built by Fiamm and commissioned by Audison using all Audison parts. I just assumed that it must be balanced! But who knows maybe it isnt. I hope to find out in the next couple hours

 

Max, a quick a dirty test for balanced inputs is to use an ohm meter between the RCA rings (outside of the RCA jack). If you get a reading between the L/R inputs of fewer than 5000 ohms then they are not balanced. Generally balanced inputs will read in the meg ohm (million) range. The other test is to disconnect all the amp inputs, turn on your system and play so music at a hi volume setting. Next take one of the RCA plugs and touch the pin to one of the amps RCA input jack rings. A balanced amp will produce sound when you do this. A normal amp will not. Start with the gains low and then bring them up to see if you hear something.

As far as the tweeter, post the dimensions. If I remember the dash cut out is about 1.6 inches. I used the grills and the surface mount HW that came with my tweeters. I had to trim the slag off the under side of the hole.

jeff

 

Jeff that sounds like a good test, my friend was busy today so I didn't get to test out the amp. It's still technically his so I want to make sure I'm not the one to break it! Tomorrow I'll definitely bust out the multimeter and see what's up.

I'll post up pics in an hour or so of the tweeters and the other speakers, although I'm having serious doubts about fitting these tweeters in.