Hi all. I have a fairly large sounds system, running two 300 watt amps and one 600 watt. Total of 15 spakers + two subs on the 600 watt. They are all wired into a relay berfore the battery. I am also running two deep cycle marine batteries, with a 145 amp alternator. NOW it all works great, even at high levels for a while, eventually(15 20 mins or so) the subs start cutting out at higher levels, then start at lower and lower levels. Eventually it pops the relay and they stop all together, and i cant seem to figure out why!!!!

check your ground use 4 gauge wires

at that point use 0 gauge, and have u done ur big 3 upgrade?

How do you have all 3 batteries hooked up?
Do you have an isolator? Or just all 3 hooked up in parallel?

If you just have all 3 batteries hooked up to the alternator, all being charged at the same time, I bet you're just putting too much of a load on your system.

Take a look at this
http://www.bcae1.com/battiso.htm

the ground wire used is huge, and it welded to the cars frame. im only running two batteries total for the car, hooked up to an isolator so both be charged equally but the setreo only pulls from one and the car draws from the other.

I just realized you said it pops the circuit breaker to your amps.

What type of amp do you have for your subs?
Will it still pop the circuit breaker if the sub amp is unhooked?

It sort of sounds like there might be something wrong with that sub amp, if it runs great for awhile, but after it starts to heat up it cuts out and blow the circuit breaker.

What type of amp is it?

its a harmon/kardon amp. i check the temp of the amp whenever it does this and it is still very cool as far as where the heatsinks are and are coming out from the fan.

i imagine it wont do this without the sub amp hooked up as the other amps run highs and are turned down and dont draw as much power.

would a capacitor possibly help this at all?

The point of a capacitor from what Ive heard is to keep the power from surging. So yes I believe a capacitor will help your problem. Make sure its a big one, be ready to spend a couple hundred. You are lucky that you havnt blown your amps yet.

how big of a cap would you suggest?

i wish there was one that lit up red, but i stilll have nowhere to put one! ugh

A cap will help nothing. Replace the "relay" assuming you mean circuit breaker with a fuse holder and fuse. What amps are you running? Do they have on board fuses? If so how many and what kind?

i would get a 5 farad cap...

ill get some pictures of the full wiring set up tomorrow or better description of it. HOWEVER there are two main wires that split at the rear, one splits and goes tot he speaker amps, the other splits, two go to the sub amp(yes it has two power and two ground wires) and the other two run out of the amp rack into the side of the car???

needless to say, ill be tearing into this whole mess tomorrow and taking a closer look!

i really dont want to have to add a cap as its never had one before and theres really no place for it without eliminating a component or two.... or a back seat

Would any of you care to show some proof that a capacitor actually does anything to help a car stereo's voltage? And no advertisements don't count. I challenge all of you to research the subject, you'll be surprised what you find.

Bring on the pics and let's see if we can't figure out what's going on. It may be as simple as your sub amp is being taxed to hard, or it could be losing connection somewhere.

Forget the cap, it's not going to make a difference.

It sounds like there might be something wrong with the sub amp (unless something isn't wired correctly)

How do you have your subs wired? Are they bridged?
What subs do you have?

Verify that the load your amp is seeing (depending on how the subs are wired) is OK for that amp.

This should have been the 1st question asked.

Are you sure your amps can handle the OHM load your putting on them.
How are they wired.


being you said the amp isnt hot. Im guess its not shutting down for thermal reasons. or overloading the and because your running it at to low of an ohm.

Im gonna guess your just running to small of a circuit breaker for what your amp is pulling.
What size circuit breaker are you running.

what model # amp do you have so specs can be looked up.
to many variable left out. Im 90% sure your circuit breaker is to small for the load your trying to pull thru it for everything.

ok, 145amp altenator to a Pheonix Gold isolator, 20amp relay, to two harmon/kardon tc-300 and one tc-600 amps. 600 being the sub amp pushing two w3 jl audio 12 inch subs wired at a total of a single 4ohm load.

the amps are older amps, and if i remember right they are made to recieve a 2volt signal via the rca cables and i believe my newer headunit may put out 4volts? not totally sure on this, can anyone confirm?

When I first started to reply I was going to say replace the circuit breaker also, but after re-reading his description.

It sounds like both amps are being run off this wire (it goes into a dist. block later on), so if the breaker is blowing his other amp would shut off too, but it sounds like he's saying only the sub amp is shutting off.

IROCK ZZ can you clarify for us?

They subs will cut out first, then after a couple minutes they all cut out all together (all the amps), the speaker cones move in unison, no sound emittance. i check the breaker and sure enough it is poped every time. reset it and good to go for a few

So let me get this straight. ALL the speakers are still moving to the music when the breaker pops? That makes no scene.

If your pulling EVERYTHING thru that little 20a breaker thats WAY to small.

Go from the Alt. to your isolator to split the charge to both batteries.
off your batt. for the system you need to run
battery-----> the circuit breaker ------> distribution blocks----> amps---------> speakers

heres a simple diagram
http://www.stardi.com/wp-content/upl...ng_diagram.gif



Just sounds like your breaker is WAY TO SMALL. id have to look up those amps to see what they are pulling but Im 110% sure if all your doing is running both amps off that single 20a breaker thats the problem.

As stated above, that 20A breaker is way too small.

http://www.harmankardon.com/resource...0,304%20om.pdf

Page 35 has the specs of your amps. The TC600 alone is capable of drawing 90 amps with a full power sine wave @ 2 ohms, 30 amps with a full power music signal @ 2 ohms. The TC300 is half of that. If your amps have fuses in them, it's a good idea to add them up and use that size for a main fuse or breaker. And use power input cable capable of carrying that amount of current, I'd use at least 4 AWG.

it never hurts to go bigger on wire. Ive always ran 0 g from the battery back to my fuse blocks.

then from the fuse blocks to the 2 amps.
I also used a 0g wire going right to the chassis and to a distribution block for all grounds also.

back in the day i have a
Alpine CVA1000
ERA-G320
running back to
Soundstream amps.
A soundstream continuum running 4 pair of 6.5 sounds stream components. In the 6x9 locations and in the doors. and 4x6 plates in the dash.

and a 10.0 running 3 JL12's
changed subs a few time. 4 JL10's
2 kicker 15's

Never had a problem. You really cont NEED a circuit breaker if you run a fuse block in the back with multiple fuses. or just size it right as log as your amps have fuses also.

"You really cont NEED a circuit breaker if you run a fuse block in the back with multiple fuses. or just size it right as log as your amps have fuses also. "

This is true so long as you really enjoy car fires, ground that power wire out anywhere and you just made yourself a nice 15 foot long red hot iron.

Get rid of the breaker and install an inline fuse and fuse holder. I would put money on it that the relay is beginning to throw thus voltage starving the sub amp, as the smaller amp continues to draw it finally throws it. BTW I have never heard of a 20 amp breaker, that is TINY. You really should have at least a 100 amp inline fuse and even at that size you may have issues and need to go larger.

I always run a 250amp bar style fuse up front. some times I didnt.

No different then running a trunk mount battery and running 15ft of wire to the front to the starter.

Just don't be stupid and zip tie it close to anything thats gonna beat the hell outa the wire to rub thru the sheathing. I always ran mine in black loom just like the rest of the wires also.

But you are correct it wouldn't hurt.

TPI running the wire through a black loom is a great idea, being a diesel mechanic i see trucks driven like hell and beaten to death and i have seen on a few of occasions, that black loom wearing holes through some decent sized metal, and the loom holds up fine.


well i think i discovered most if not all of the problem. i have alot of the interior apart today installing my sattelite radio and found alot of the proper wiring abandoned and alot of wiring hack work(thanks to some tweaker im sure). so im planning for a good 4 day weekend to tear down the whole interior and spend acouple days properly wiring everytthing. should be simple, hard part is getting all the hacked up crap out!!!

I have a 1500 watt amp and a 630 watt amp running in my trunk and it beats like no other. I used to have problems like you, I upgraded my wires to 2 gauge and made sure the ground was solid. I would suggest having a professional look at your car if you plan on having all of this running at the same time. Are your amps getting hot?

Dude look at what you have and look at what you are using. Take that dang on 20a circuit breaker out of there. For that small amount of watts get some like a 80 amp fuse and run that. Or get like me and get you 2 300amp ANL fuses to power you stuff. But you are asking for it not to work right with that baby circuit breaker. Good luck on the fix.

So... wait a minute here, you're trying to say that the 20 amp relay/breaker, whatever it is, isn't your problem....

It is probably part of the whole problem, but i think most of the hidden hack job on the wiring is the majority of it.

110% its that 20amp breaker dude.

Your pulling over 90amp or more if your cranking the system.

my thinking too. shoot im blowing my 80 amp inline fuse on only 700rms

I know that what it is. I use to be an installer in FL. we did alot of the tampa bay bucks vehicles. Etc..

Deff. upgrade that breaker or do a 250a bar/buss fuse

remove the quote relay and put in a maxi fuse at lest 60 amp then the check the amp it could be bad

Let's use the laws of physics here and realize that when you're trying to run AT LEAST 90 amps through a 20 amp breaker/relay whatever ITS NOT GOING TO WORK. The amp is fine, there is nothing wrong except for the fact that you're trying to run 90 through something that's meant to pass NO MORE THAN 20... 90 > 20. You can make all the excuses you want or look for some other reason but that's the cause of it. The sub amp kicking off before the smaller amp is a function of how a breaker works, they start choking off flow before they finally flip. Also I still don't know where you would get a 20 amp breaker, that is so tiny. Anyways good luck with it and how about some pics of this hack job wiring? This thread needs pictures.

ok, i eliminated the relay since there are two inline fuses, subs still cut out! The subs are two JL Audio 12w3v3-4, there are two channels on the amp (r and l) wired directly to the subs, and the subs only have one connection. this should produce two seperate 4ohm loads, correct? still cant figure out what is causeing it to cut out at high levels, the amp runs two power and two grounds both 4guage into a silge 0 guage, positive runs to a fuse at the front of the car then to a deep cycle marine battery (which is set up on a isolator unit) and the ground is welded to the frame of the car.

seemingly everything is correct, could the subs be too big for the amp? what else can i do?

i checked and the amp puts out 200w x 2 channels at 4ohms, should be right in the optimum zone for these subs according to jl


edit: btw i fixed all the hack job wiring

so you are running ur subs at what seems to sound like 2ohm, and im guessing your amp is only 4 ohm stable? im sorry sir, but u have pos wiring all over the place. take it to a shop, hopefully your car wont burn down by then.

excuse me jorge dont call anything of anybodys a pos when you fail to read the post right!

both subs are ran as 4ohm loads. the amp is 2ohm stable as well, you would know that if you cared to help any anyways, instead of being an *******

from your post it sound like you just hooked them up to the same terminals... again u should really just take it to a shop.... fire is a very real risk

any shop is going to charge me up the *** and then just want me to buy new very expensive equiptment, when what i have is already more top of the line than anyone sells. there is more than enough protection and there is no worry of fires, it would happened already anyways if anything was going to catch fire.

maybe. specially since you say its when u turn up the volume to higher levels