Suprised my car didn't burn down

[SteveDX89]

I was driving along Saturday night and my amp shut off by itself. I thought, "What the hell?" At first I figured my box fell over and pulled the power cords out of the amp. How wrong I was? The amp came back on after about 10 seconds accompanied by the smell of something burning. I knew it had to be in the trunk so I popped it while driving to let air in, the smell was god awful. I pulled over and the box never moved. I tipped it forward and got a nice spark from the wires so I unhooked the amp. I let it go without much investigation since today. I went in to hook it back up and my remote wire was melted. I checked inside the car and the whole length of wire was melted. I about shit. I had a 200 watt amp wiring kit hooked up to a 280 watt amp but it's been fine for the past month and half. Any ideas what could have happened? By the way, none of the fuses anywhere in the car blew.

[Bobs89LXi]

What size fuses are you using? I would suggest that you ditch the fuses and install a circuit breaker in it's place. CBs are much faster acting and can be reset once you find out why it tripped. It sounds to me like you have a serious internal power supply problem in your amp. That would explain why both the power and remote wires turned to briquettes. I would take the amp out, and measure between both the remote and positive terminals to ground. You may have a major short.

[SteveDX89]

The inline fuse is a 30 amp. The fuse on the amp is 25. I really hope nothing happened to the amp. I was borrowing it because mine took a shit. I gave it back to the guy with the assumption it works. I hope so because it's 280 watt Kenwood 4 channel. Not exactly cheap.

[NOAHS88accord]

alright first thing you were running too small of power wire, the amp was starving for juice man. so when the bass was hittin it wasnt drawing enough power causing it to heat up well im guessing the song had lots of bass in it, and the answer is: the amp cooked itself, got too hot melted the remote wire, take the amp and smell it, if it smells like burnt solder then you burned up your capacitors inside the amp. AN amp has small capacitors inside that store power for when the music gets to the amp, these capacitors werent getting enough power because of the small gauge power cable. therefore causing them to heat up and start to actually melt the solder inside the amp that is why it smelt so bad. the moral of the story is EVERYONE LISTEN ALWAYS PAY THE EXTRA PRICE TO GET BIGGER CABLE THEN YOU REALLY NEED, now your probably saying well isnt that dangerous, no if you use the correct fuse. most amps use 8 gauge wire, i run 4 gauge to the trunk then a distribution block then 8 to the amp.

NOah

[NOAHS88accord]

i just reread your thread, why in the fuck were you running too different fuse sizes (sorry for the language) that right there is just asking for trouble. that along with the small cable caused too much power flow to get through to the amp overheating it and causing (like i said) the solder to melt =bad smell and burnt wire

ALWAYS USE LARGER CABLE AND THE CORRECT FUSES

NOah

[SteveDX89]

I bought the amp kit for a smaller amp that pooped out on me. The 30 amp inline fuse came with the kit. The 25 amp fuse was in the amp when I put in the car. The amp didn't actually have a burnt smell. It smelled like melting plastic and the covering on the wire was what was melted.

[86LX-ihatch]

If the remote wire was melted Im guessing the amp is ok. I bet it stopped working because it stopped getting the power to turn it on. If anything is screwed I would guess the deck doesn't have any remote output any more. I bet your power wire size is 10 awg and that is plenty big for that amplifier. If that amplifier contiuously pulled 25 amps you would only need to bump up to 8 gauge if you were running 30 foot of wire. Now.....The fuse under your hood is there for protecting your car more than it is to protect your equipment. I ALWAYS run a larger fuse in my power wire than what is in my amplifier. Your amplifier can draw more current than its fuse rating under stress and it will pop that under hood fuse because your fuse is closer to the power source and the amperage is greater there than at the amplifier. Any way the real reason for underhood fuses is to protect your car so if something does short out you won't have 12 feet of live wire burning under your carpet.