Initially I had it wired wrong. It's a dual voice coil Image Dynamics IDQ 12 D2 V.2 .. i only had 1 coil connected. My amp was overheating and bass was very distorted.

Last week I finally connected it right.. it works excellent, but a few days ago, i took a 1.5 hour trip during which the car stereo was on all of the time. After about that time, my bass got very distorted and did not punch anymore but was more of a rattle-like static noise, didn't hit anymore. The amp (Crossfire VR402 2 channel, bridged) got VERY hot during this time.

I am a car stereo newbie but I am confident that it is wired properly.
I was told that a poor electrical system may be at fault and I may need a better battery and a Capacitor may help? Perhaps the Battery/alternator not being able to charge at the rate power is being used up? This is why I only have problems after long trips..
for the record, my battery is not very good.. I'm going to switch it but I wanted to see if these problems are actually related to it?
This sub is not very powerful, I only have about 400W going to it, and don't even have an amp to my interior speakers yet.


thanks in advance.

 

is the speaker back to normal now? if not then it is probaly blown. You could have either overpowered it or underpowered it (i don't know the watts of that sub or amp so i dunno) if the sub is working now then it sounds like the amp is overheating and powering down. I'm not an expert but i know those situations from previous experience.

 

the sub is not blown.. i tested it out.. it works

i haven't put the speaker back in but after giving it time without turning it back on.. it works fine again..



the amp is 200W x 2.... bridged..

sub is 375rms/700 peak or something like that...

should be fine.

 

I don't know anything about Crossfire amps, but your problem is exactly what was happening to me when i was powering a RF HE2 with a 200watt kenwood amp. After about an hour the amp with get too hot and just fizzle off. I had to hook it up to a switch and shut it off after like an hour, let it cool, then fire er back up again. Had to do that till i got a new amp. Any pro installers here that could shed more light on this?

 

that sucks.

I bought the equipment used from a trustworthy person who had it running briefly and it worked fine together. I hope someone can help me out here too

 

Could be too low of an ohm load, your probably runnign the amp at its lowest load like 2ohms, it'll run at that rate..but who knows how stable it is. 1 1/2' hours just might have been too long. As amps heat up, they lose effiecncy, as they lose effiecncy they build up heat..hotter and hotter untill *poof*

 

i dont think its bad equipment and obviously its not so much power that its blowing either inline fuse or amp fuse if the crossfire has one. it just seems like the amp is struggling for juice. what ga. pwr and grnd you might want to consider upgrading.

 

If your running it for that long, and that hot, it's gonna shut off and/or be distorted...electronics do not like heat, that have breaking points, if it's not properly ventilated, it will shut itself off.

 

1st off it's hard to determine what your problem is with out knowing numbers for you equipment.

You have a Dual Voice Coil Sub, How many Ohms is each Coil and do you have them wired in a series or parallel wiring configuration?

Also how stable is your amp? 1 ohm, 2 ohm ? The higher the resistance the amp see's the more power it tries to put out, the more power it tries to put out the hotter it gets.

 

does your subs have the air hole in the magnet...also is your amp at a spot where it gets ventilation....because if you play it for long and its played at a high volume it needs to get air to keep it cool..and if you got those amps that shut off if it gets too hot then you know its not getting enough air..or it probably push too much into your subs so they are over pushed after runing for a while.

 

what are you running for power wires to the amp? if the power wires are too small, the amp will struggle to do it's job. Anything less than 8ga power wire and your amp is probably choking. Also, the impedence(also called resistance) is very important. The total impedence of the speakers should never go lower than the stable amount for the amp. Anything lower will act like a short to the amp and cause a lot of heat and maybe damage.

 

Even when wired correctly, your amp can still overheat after extended periods of play. If you find this to be a regularly occuring problem, then install a fan or two to help cool the amp.
I've even overheated my head unit on long road trips in hot weather.

 

sorry,

The amp is 2 ohm stereo stable. 200W x 2..
or 400X1 bridged 4 ohm ? <--- i am running it bridged

each coil of the sub is 2 ohm

it is wired in a series
therefore making 4 ohm? and this is what i get measuring with the multimeter.









the problem has become permanent now. The sub rattles and does not hit clean anymore, regardless of the time it has been used for.

 

the wire is 4 gauge from the battery to the dist. block and 8 gauge from there to each amp (although i only have this one amp connected right now).

 

So for a while you had the amp bridged and hooked up to only one voice coil? You probably fried the amp; it just took time for it to become apparent in it's performance.

 

Extended periods of play? I don't think 1 or 2 hours is that long. I've run my Infinity Beta Digitals for like 8 hours with out overheating or shutting off. Even the punch 800 I had which got hot at low volumes ran for at least 5 hours before shutting off for being overheated.

 

yes, I had it wired to one coil only. This is when the overheating and shutting off problem was really apparent. Sub hit very hard and loud but quite distorted as well.. I connected it the right way after that and the sub worked flawlessly for about a week, however after one long trip, it's performance began to decrease. Now it is just poor at all times.

Is there a way I can measure whether or not the amp is fried?


thank you

 

Okay, sounds to me its blown. using 1 voice coil isnt a good thing. Distortion can steadily damadge a voice coil. So the easiest thing i would do is hook the sub up temporarily in a friends car. Play it, if its all garbled. Blown sub.

 

thanks

any other ways for me to test the sub and amp myself?

the sub shows resistance according to specs.. seems fine to me.

 

were u playing your system LOUD when for those 1-2 hours? b/c i see that happen all the time, people come into the store and ask y thier subs and amps are fried.... it's b/c they have lower end stuff (not saying that u do, cross fire is very decent for the money), and not much of it, but wanna play like they have huge systems so for the hours that they play it, they push it as hard as it can go and what do u expect? it fries.... u kno, if u wanna hit hard like 2 12's buy them, don't get 1 12' and expect to knock really hard, yea there are high end subs and boxes that will make your stuff louder but if u want the sound of more, get more...

 

hmm not really. Volt meter is cool. But its soo much easier to plug that subwoofer into someone elses system. Or grab someone elses sub and plug it into your system.

 

not at all.

I never blast the stereo at full volume, or even 3/4. 1/2 volume at most.

i'm curious of the potential damage that i could have caused by playing it with only 1 voice coil hooked up prior to this. The amp overheated quite a bit during that time. However, I was told that it shouldn't have caused any damage?


i think i'm going to visit a stereo shop somewhere in my area maybe they can single out the problem. Anyone here in NY? Or anyone want to let me use their car to plug my system into?

 

yea, most amps aren't made to play brideged to 1 channel and run at 2 ohms... so that can hurt the amp, plus DVC subs aren't made to run off one voice coil so that can hurt your sub.... but good luck trying to get it to work.... and i dunno if u wanna bring the amp to a shop to check out... most of the ones down here in NO charge u 75 dollars just to open it up and look, even if they don't fix it they charge u..... does your amp have a burnt smell too it, that will be a give away, and smell your subs too, they might havea smell too it letting u kno if u burnt a voice coil.....

 

the amp had a slight burnt smell once when it was hooked up to 1 voice coil and i ran it for a while, i turned it off right away..


the sub seems to be good. both voice coils still show 2 ohm..

like i said, it works but doesn't work well.. every time it hits, it's followed by a longer note of distortion.. before it just hit like a drum without that noise following it.

 

running on 2ohms, you could have damaged either the amp or the sub. When you go lower than the normal impedence rating, you cause the system to work much harder than it should. With this extra current running through the circuit, you could have over-heated(or melted) components in the amp or the coil in the sub. I would find someone that will let you try out your sub in their car and see.

 

thanks,

sorry, well, my amp was giving 4 ohm as it was bridged 400 X 1.. but the sub was at 1 coil, each of which is 2 ohm..
amp really did get abnormally hot at that time.

what puzzles me is that it actually worked fine after that, and after i wired both Voice Coils. And it worked that way for many days. Until I took a long trip and had it working for a while.

It works now but works weird..
I actually found these exact same symptoms as signs of a leaking enclosure. I built the box myself and I must have left some leaks. The wire terminals in the back are slapped on top of the carpeted box, there is possibly a leak there. The sub is actually on top of the carpet as well from the front baffle. I'm going to take it all apart and make sure it's secure. Perhaps it just shook itself apart and left some leaks.. Because all signs point to a well functioning sub and amp...


thanks for all the feedback guys,
I appreciate it.

 

Maybe you dont have the gain right?? turn it down maybe.

 

What points to well functioning sub and amp? The fact that you drove 1 coil of a dvc? The fact that you ran a bridged amp at 2 ohms? The fact that the amp fizzled and smelled like it was burning?!?!? Dude, find someone else with a sub. Plug your box into their amp and see how it sounds. Then plug their sub into your amp and see how that sounds. I guarantee one or both are hosed.

 

thats b/c when u only had one coil connected u fugged up the sub and that being dual 2 ohm version u fugged up ur amp, they are only stable to 4ohm mono u gave it a 2 ohm load when u had only one coil connected thats also the reason it was distorting one coil hooked up to the sub and the heat from the amp being dropped to too low of ohms.

 

u mean ohm meter

 

Hope this helps.... First of all like its been said several times here before, test your equip in a friends car 1st and foremost. look below, I've been thru it all.

1. to test if your box has leaks, just take ur hand and push on your sub, if it has resistance when you press it in, and if it takes a couple of seconds to return to its unpressed state, then ur box is sealed.

2. definitely power might be a problem with amps heating up, listen, i know from experience. lets take it from the top. go to ur battery, make sure both terminals are tite and cant be turned by the hand. if you upgrade your gauge size to the amp setup, it will relieve some stress on your amp. and make sure your ground gauge is the same as your power, or else your efforts will be useless. then make sure you ground your grounds to a clean bare piece of metal, with a nice sized area of transfer (about the size of a nickel or quarter). also I have seen that capacitors can help supposedly "stiffen" the bass, giving you strong /clean/firm/deep/sq bass. but the usage of a capacitor is a debate, and i dont want to be debating of its actual use on this forum, so if it works for u good, if u hear otherwise then dont.

3. Mounting your amp may be an issue. this can also make or break an amp. if it is laying flat, you might want to try mounting it vertically. as per punch on their old school amps, their instructions were to mount the amp vertically so that the air travel can travel with the vertical direction of the fins. believe me this worked for two reasons heat travels up, its the convection method, and if you can make a little amp rack, where only the edges of your amp are secured, and the front/rear side of your amp are open, then it will be cooling from both sides, now if you want to go the additional extra step. i had a punch 200x2, the gangsta ones. and it would get hot and overheat and cut off after 1-2 hrs of extended play, then cut on in a few mins. so i got a big fan fron an old pc power supply which was luckily 12 volts. got my cutting wheel cut out a hole in the back of the amp, and mounted the cooling fan to it, and replaced my amp back on the rack. and walaa, that fixed my problem, amp never overheated again, no matter how long i was playing it for, or how loud. and one other thing about mounting, maybe sometimes if you mount ur amp to metal, then the metal can act as a secondary large heatsink, and help to dissipate some of the heat.

last, as these guys here said dont go to shop. alot of times these shops dont even know the half of what i just said above, which is very informative, all they know how to do, is sell product, screw them in your trunk and tell you your all set. (any shop guys out there, im just venting my opinion)