.. so there's no possibility of overheating in a cold garage.

So yeah, I bought a Rockford Fosgate 450.4-channel amp. A few months ago, so I guess the warranty's up if this amp is defective ..

I installed my system, consisting of 6.5's, 6x9's, amp, and a headunit. Headunit's ready to go and reads everything correctly. However, when I power the car, the amp reads a Thermal light, which the manual says indicates overheating, low battery voltage, power too high for amp to handle, or faulty amp.

All connections seem good, I have it set for 4 channels, each channel going to their own speaker. No chance of overheating, as I said, as the amp is cold to the touch. I checked the voltage of the battery, 11.97 when key's in Accessory position, and 13.66 when the engine's on. As for high power, I turned the frequencies down, as well as the gains. Still Thermal light.

Anything else that could trigger a Thermal indicator? Dirty ground? I bolted the ground wire to the trunk access, as the pic says or .. Do I have a damned faulty amp and now have to endure the headache of sending it back and waiting to get a new one?

Pics are here so if you see anything wrong at all with wires or whatever, please tell me. I would like to get this powered up within the next 5 hours.

Amp and all its damned wires.


Ground wire.


Head unit wiring ..


And the four wires I tapped into.

 

Dammit .. Replugged the wires and cleaned up a little bit, moved the ground wire .. no luck, still Thermal light. Guess it's a faulty amp .. $220 down the drain ..

 

Ground looks ok, but it could be its own / bigger bolt. Wiring looks ok outside of the 4 wires you cut into. Make sure to check / resolder them and wrap them up tight. Also I don't know why you cut them, a T-Tap would have done the trick too.

See if you can borrow / try an amp from a friend, or buy one from a big box store that you can return after testing it with to check it all out.

 

Something may be burned inside the amp.

I've had it happen before.

 

That is definately NOT a good ground. It is common for high current contacts to SPARK. Which is an excellent reason to not use the screw that holds your gas tank access plate down!

But then again I could point out 7 other reasons why your amp would fail in the current position. That wiring is horrid.

That's an expensive bon fire!

 

Yeah, he's right. For my amp (just a 250!) I drilled a new hole in my spare tire well and matched it with a 3/8" bolt and hooked 0 gauge wire.

 

Disconnect all the speakers output wires and audio input jack. Put all gain controls to minimum. Does the protection LED is still on? If positive your amp need to be repaired.

Protection LED also indicate a failure to the output stage transistors not only overheat.

 

Haha looking at it all, I'll agree with you. This is my first time installing a sound system, so I apologize if my wiring isn't as clean as a professional's.

When I get more time, I'll try to clean it up a lot more .. it's a mess in my car with all the wiring, so I guess I can shorten it all.

Lastly I'll move the ground again as you and someone else suggested.

TSXQuebec, the Protection light's not on .. Protection and Thermal indicators are two different things. And I put the gains to minimum as well before the second test.

So .. major wire clean-up, better ground positioning and maybe it'll spring to life?

 

OMFG YESSSSS I GOT THE FUCKER WORKING to the 262,635th power !!!

I just moved the ground wire to the actual chassis and Dremel'd the paint away, found a bigger bolt and yesssss. I couldn't be happier right now, even with a nagging knee injury from work I suffered today and my bronchitis attack.

I wanna thank Acurazine, for it couldn't be possible without you guys and that wonderful FAQ. I think I'm gonna go cry happy tears .. then cry shitty tears because now I have to find a way to ninja-ize the 4gauge power wire to the back.