headunit shuts off when loud

[StereoInstaller1]

im waiting for StereoInstaller to offer his input, to get to the bottom of all this.

Do I have to?

OP, is this stock speakers on an aftermarket deck? I got that you are using the stock ground (excellent, BTW) wires for the deck.

Do you own a DVM?

Luke

[netcsk]

he said he's running some type of kenwood speakers but doesn't know the model or anything else about them.

[StereoInstaller1]

OK, so your first step is to find out what the hell is going on with the wiring.

Pull out the deck. Disconnect all 4 speakers. Grab a spare speaker off of a home stereo, a spare speaker of basically any working description, but NOT one of the speakers in your car, unless you have removed them.

Power up the deck and attach that speaker to one (pair) of the speaker wires. Play it loud...see if you still have the problem.

If so, your deck is fucked. If not, either your speakers or (far far more likely) your wiring is wrong.

LMK, OK?

Luke

[Jean]

Just a little correction, I am sure it was just a typo on your part .

If you wired a + of one coil to - of the other, and then connected the remaining two ends to the map you just wired your DVC sub in Series (4 & 4 for a total of 8ohm)

To wire the DVC Coils in parallel you would connect + to + and - to - and then connect the "connected" +'s and -'s to the amp. (4 and 4 for a total of 2)

Now, if you did wire the coils in parallel but + to - and - to + then you did it wrong . Also, gain is not really a volume knob that shouldn't be all the way up and resistance of any speaker changes given a different frequency but that's a totally different topic. ;)

what i meant by resistance:

for instance when i wired up my new sub about a year ago i wired the two voice coils in parallel (wired positive of the amp to one side of one coil, neg of that coil to pos of the next coil, neg of second coil to neg of amp) this setup put me at 1ohm and my amp can only handle 2 or 4 ohms. at 1 ohm the amp was flowing so much power out that it couldnt keep cool enough so the temp switch shut it off. to fix this i wired the sub in series, this made it a 4ohm setup which my amp handles easily, infact i have the gain all the way up with no distortion (which to me says i need a more powerful amp)

hope that helped some, and i hope it was all accurate

[NC325iC]

my parallel and series get mixed up often, each coil is 2 ohms, either parallel of series cuts the resistance in half while the other doubles it, i just always forget which one does which

also, i do know that gain doesnt equal volume, but i couldnt get the damn thing to distort which to me says it doesnt have enough power to distort it, so i just left it all the way up

and before someone says something i know i dont want distorted sound but thats how you tune the gain

[stilllearning]

Checked tonight, each speaker is 4ohms and each is wired seperatly. Still have no idea what this could be, but it sure seems like it's drawing to much power at these times.

[MikeE30325i]

Checked tonight, each speaker is 4ohms and each is wired seperatly. Still have no idea what this could be, but it sure seems like it's drawing to much power at these times.

you have a bad deck? all my speakers are wired seperately and they all are 4 ohms also. and it dont have a problem.

[stilllearning]

It was just pulled from another car and was working.

[NC325iC]

could you have a short in your wiring anywhere?

[netcsk]

it's either bad wiring or a bad deck (assuming you don't get any funky sounds from your speakers while they play).

Do as Luke suggested. Take one of your speakers and plug it in the deck with a small length of wire (don't use what you have in the car). Turn the sucker up and see if it cuts out. Cutting out = bad head unit. No cutting out = bad wiring in the car.

[StereoInstaller1]

I am only gonna tell him once.

What is this crap about subwoofers running off the deck? I mean, 4 ohms is 4 ohms, no matter if it is a 2" tweeter or 4) 4 ohm 12" subs wired series/paralell, 4 ohms is 4 ohms. Sure, you will only get about 15 watts per channel, but no matter how you slice it, 4 ohms is the correct load.

Luke

[DSchultz325e]

Meh, gain really is a volume knob. Whether you turn the head unit volume up or the amp gain, you'll eventually hit clipping either way. The choice of cranking the gain or not really only gives you the option of more range on the head unit volume before signals start clipping. Hopefully you know what clipping sounds like, because a lot of people don't.

When you get things all sorted out, use this to set your gains:

http://www.resnet.trinity.edu/areynol1/gain.htm

[stilllearning]

Just started working, there was a box on the b+ yellow wire not sure exactly what it does, Think it keeps constant voltage, but that was bad. I hooked it up without that and if works fine. Thanks guys

[DSchultz325e]

Just started working, there was a box on the b+ yellow wire not sure exactly what it does, Think it keeps constant voltage, but that was bad. I hooked it up without that and if works fine. Thanks guys

The box should have been a housing for a 15 amp fuse. It might be wise to grab another from Radio Shack or something similar if you don't have a fuse inline.