It's lengthy and more of a rant than a background with underlying question, but ive about had it with this system

I've searched already and found a couple things, but not sure if i have all my questions answered..
I've tried 2 different amps and have had no luck with either of them. I have 4 gauge wire from my battery to my amp behind the passenger seat, fused about 6 inches out with a 100amp fuse. I had a mempthis 16-1000D (1100RMS) running 2 500RMS subs. (mono amp, subs wired to 1ohm) I had the gain turned way down, and the frequency filters on the lowest frequency, just to get boost in those areas since the H/K has pretty good bass as it is (to my ears)
that setup has worked anywhere from a day to a week straight, then a song will come on with heavy bass and the volume was still up from the previous song. So it'll quit halfway through. Normally I see the red and green LEDs fight for who's gonna light up when the bass is deep in the low notes, then the red wins and its out until i shut the car off. Even after i start it up, sometimes its still in protect mode, so i disconnect the battery, rewire everything to make sure of solid connections (they usually are) and try again.

Next amp I tried was a powerteknique 300rms per channel. Wired as dual channel, (not sure the wiring of the DVCs in the box) it has a "level" remote, and dials on the amp for gain, bass eq, and filters.
Again, i went with slightly above lowest, and turned the gain **** all the way down to 6v. (12v was at the high end) I turned the bass eq all the way down and played with the deepest song I have at a moderately high volume just to see the max i could go. Not too high. this amp also has a red protect LED, but I dont see it anymore. I tried this amp first, and had red light when i didnt ground properly, but have since found a grounding point, and now when it cuts out, i get no red light at all.

Both amps get hot while running. I heard the class D amps (the memphis) are efficient, but im guessing that doesnt mean cool running?

I've never noticed my headlights do anything even when the subs are loud. When i fiiiiirst had it hooked up finally and working, i cranked it just to hear it, and still never saw the lights dip. Still havent. Wouldnt that tell me its not a power draw issue?

What am I doing wrong? I've had the system for about a month now and havent had one weekend where I havent torn my car apart re-wiring things and trying different approaches. At one point I had a 5 farad cap, but had it tested at a audio shop and they said it was bad (didnt work right, not quality-wise) so i ditched it, and am now fighting protect mode.

one last thing is I blew the 100amp fuse today with the 600rms amp. with the gain at 6v (lowest) and the bass eq at half. then turned the level remote up to where i could slightly hear the subs over the stock h/k bass.

how much of a factor is the box they are in? I custom built one to slightly below sealed specs (about 1 or 2 cubic inches less than recommended) I sealed all gaps with silicone or foam sealant. at first i had a huge ported box, but i wanted the seats to go all the way back to look stock. ( i had to have em at 90degrees for the thing to fit)

 

We gotta see pictures of this.

 

Have you tried this same equipment in another vehicle? Also I think the amp you're using is Performance Teknique, not powerteknique. The gain goes from 6v to 0.2v, not 12v.

 

Big question that is not answer in the OP's post is WHERE he gets the signal from.

If he gets it from after the H/K Amp (i.e. speaker side) then he is severely over driving the input to his Sub amp.

If he takes it from the X9931 connector he is still over driving the amp as the X9931 wires are still Speaker level and can produce voltages up to 18V and the max input to the amp is 6 volts +/- probably about 1 volt.

The OP needs to get a speaker level to low level converter.

 

Take it to a pro shop. At the beginning of all this didn't you have to ask how to disconnect the battery? MINI electronics is not a place to be learning.

 

Yeah I knew it was something teknique.. and I guess it is .2v. And this was all in another vehicle, all the wiring, the amp, the subs, and worked fine, so I was figuring it wasn't the equipment.

I used the connector from the amp in the rear. With a converter from the speaker level to rca. This was also from the other vehicle and it worked fine in that.

haha, yeah. There was something over all the connections of the battery in my last car with no access to the actual terminals without removing the other things first. Since I've never touched anything under the hood of a car, I was just asking if there was a general procedure for getting to the terminals, I guess I could have checked my own battery first and saw it was just pull up on it.

The pro shop checked over all my wiring from battery, rca converter, pos/neg connections, told me it was all in order and they didn't know why it was going into protect mode.. this was a couple weeks ago.



I rewired everything again last night from the battery to the amp, replacing the wire from the battery to the fuse, the fuse block itself, and everything seems to be going fine so far using the memphis amp. I'll post pictures tomorrow

 

But which connector the INPUT or the OUTPUT. The H/K amp will produce over 50V output so if you have connected to that then you are over driving the level converter and causing it to clip and that will cause any amp with protection to go into protection mode.

 

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...607-post7.html

Thats what I used for reference,

I guess that would be a cause of my problem, as i used

for my converter. Would the gains on the converter do anything to help?

I'll try using the

for my converter and see if I have any troubles.

 

what is the final load your amp is seeing, you may be trying to run a 1 ohm load on a 2ohm stable amp etc

 

The amp is stable at 1 ohm, the other amp was 2ohm stable but I ran it for a bit at 1 ohm til i realised. Now im using the 1 ohm amp and the 1ohm wiring

I use the input speaker wires at the amp connector, and it really made a difference in the sound quality of the subs. I did have to turn the gain up afterwards to hear anything from them, but have been able to do so without protection mode for a couple days now.
Thanks schatzy62, I would have never guessed to re-look at the converter.. It makes sense now that the output carries the already-amplified signal that would go to the speakers.

Also, the heat is much reduced.. well at least delayed, and even when it starts heating up, its not as hot as it used to get until about a half hour or so at fairly loud level.

 

wire the subs in series....get yourself a cushion before you burn the car up. you say you just want a tiny bit of bass to fill in, but yet you have dual subs wired to 1 ohm...wire the voice coils in series and then the subs themselves in series to take a load off your electrical system...you should then be able to open up the gain a bit, and raise the XO point and actually have some control over turning the levels.