275g4 orion help

[swangin68 10+ year member]

i have a 275g4 orion amp and 2 12" xtr pro dual 4 ohm voice coil subs. i have them wired parallel to the amp bridged to see a 1ohm load. amp is rated at 1200x1 at 1ohm. but it just dosent seem to be putting out that power. it dosent seem to be pulling as much current as possible either. i have 10 gauge power and ground to the amp.i know i need bigger but i didnt think it would matter for testing purposes?? and i got a volt meter on the amp and when the bass hits its between 8 and 9 volts at the amp. is this normal. what is the problem???? help

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[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

The 10 ga is the problem. That amp is a Class A/B and needs in the neighborhood of 150A to even approach its output rating. When you try to pull that much current through that small a wire you lose a ton of voltage and the wire gets really hot as well. In all honesty, you're lucky that you haven't blown it up trying to run it with that tiny wire. 4ga is the min you should be using. Even if it's just to "test it out."

 

[tristan20 10+ year member]

Yeah 10 gauge is way to small, maybe you should use them as the speaker wire and get some goof 4 gauge wire

 

[swangin68 10+ year member]

thats what i figured, im gonna get 1/0 from battery to the amp. i was told that, it should still pull the current and volts even through that small wire.?? it would just get hot or just melt. it took about 5 minutes or so of a bass check for the ground to get decently hot. so changing to the big wire i will see that much of a difference in power??so basically the amp is resricted. should the 1/0 cable ever get hot or just warm....??

 

[frzninvt 10+ year member]

Using bigger wire will not make a difference unless your battery, caps and charging system can supply the voltage and current needed for it to make the rated power. It takes power to make power. If you are running a 70 amp alternator remember that it has to support all the vehicle functions in addition to the amp. You are gonna need a stout alternator, possibly an additional battery and some level of capacitance to run that monster at full tilt. It will whallop if you feed it properly, I am suprised the fuses did not blow from current starvation.

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

Using bigger wire will not make a difference unless your battery, caps and charging system can supply the voltage and current needed for it to make the rated power. It takes power to make power.

You clearly don't understand the relationship between current, wire and voltage drops. When the wire is WAY to small, as it is in this case, it is the weak link. The 10ga wire is only rated for 30A (the amount of current that will give a half volt drop across length of the wire). Pretty much any car's stock electrical system can quite easily run an amp that requires only 10ga wire and most can actually handle a good bit more. If the voltage at the amp drops below 12V, though, and the battery is good, the wiring is not up to par. That he was getting a drop down to 9V indicates that his wiring is totally strangling the amp, not the alt or the battery.

The alternator and battery are moot because the voltage is going to drop a tremendous amount from the resistance of the power and ground wire. As the current that the amp tries to draw increases, the voltage drops even more. In all honesty, if you can deal with the headlight dimming and the likely eventual death of your alt and/or battery there is no reason to upgrade either. The battery, when charged, can provide plenty of current at 12V by itself to power the amp; it does start the car after all. Of course you have to recharge it which is where the alt comes in and ideally the battery doesn't do much of anything with the car running as the alt should power everything.

If you are running a 70 amp alternator remember that it has to support all the vehicle functions in addition to the amp. You are gonna need a stout alternator, possibly an additional battery and some level of capacitance to run that monster at full tilt. It will whallop if you feed it properly, I am suprised the fuses did not blow from current starvation.

A good battery will probably have enough internal capacitance that adding more won't make that much difference. As far as fuses go I'm going to guess that if he's gonna try to run one of the most power hungry amps ever made with 10ga power wire, he probably didn't have it properly fused either. Most likely fused for the amp, not the wire. The amp has an unregulated power supply IIRC and draws less current when the voltage drops which might have saved it. He's lucky he didn't start a fire.

 

[Johnny Drama 5,000+ posts]

He's lucky he didn't start a fire.

I am in shock that the amp didnt fry. The 275 I had hated any kind of voltage drop. Anything under 11v and mine would blow a fuse. It even blew a few diaods one time. This was years ago when HO alts werent too commonly sold.

Even more supprising is that the wire itself didnt burst into flames.

 

[swangin68 10+ year member]

i understand all this, ok will the amp see 12v even 13v under load at the amp. with the supplied big wire and good alt and battery?. also this is all when the car is running. my brother told me it should of melted the wire in under a minute, if i was pulling the current.? he said he had 2 2100 hcca's in his suburban years back and said he melted a 4 gauge ground after full tilt for about 20 minutes...but i was watching mine the whole time and it gradually got hotter but no where near a fire or melting. so this brings me to this? is the wire preventing it from seeing the max volts and amps possible supplied from the alt. and why wouldnt it melt or catch fire. like i have heard should of happened.?? and do u think it was drawing the current its supposed to since it didnt fry the wires???also the amp has 6 30 amp fuses, and i have a 50 amp inline to the battery. do i need a bigger one inline the power cable, since i already have 180 amps fused on the amp? as u can see im new to big amps. so i need some direction,,u guys have been a big help so far,,thanks