BURNING RCAs and frying headunits! Major help needed.....

[av8ter 10+ year member]

My friends blazer started doing the engine noise through the subs deal so I decided to do the grounding of the RCAs deal. Fixed the problem for like 5 minutes until we turned the car off then back on again. Engine noise came threw the subs once more and the RCAs running from his Pioneer 5100UB to his Powerbass Monoblock began to burn and smoke. We shut the car off.

We figured it was a fried headunit so we replaced it with a newer Alpine in hopes of it being a Pioneer specific problem.

We wire up the Alpine. Test it out. Plug in RCAs, and the RCAs began to heat up at the back of the headunit.

WTF did we do? Problem is scaring the shyte out of both of us.

Any Ideas?

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[gunz4me 10+ year member]

Uh, did you check the ground at your amplifiers? Normally hot or melting RCA cables is a sign that your amplifier is grounding through them.

ETA: In other words, redo your amplifier grounds before you roast another HU!

 

[Haunz 10+ year member]

The amplifier is likley damaged, it should not ground out through the RCA's bad ground or not.

 

[Grinder1989 5,000+ posts]

The amp has a broken ground trace. It is trying to use the rca's as ground.

 

[bigaudiofanati2 10+ year member]

I 4x the ground problem probably a broken amp.

 

[av8ter 10+ year member]

I understand all of the advice but It still seems sketch that I can hook my ipod directly up to the Powerbass and RCAs to not get warm/hot/whatever...... Obviously because it can not ground through my ipod. But amp is completely functional with the ipod so i have to figure that the ground circuitry on the amp is ok as well as the amp's ground on the chassis.

I connected the Headunit's remote wire up to another amp that is not currently hooked up to the cars power because we were getting ready to amp the speakers. Could this possibly be causing the problems?

Any ideas?

Kevin

 

[gunz4me 10+ year member]

How did you ground the RCAs?

 

[av8ter 10+ year member]

They are not grounded on the new headunit but on the pioneer i sanded the outer casing of each rca and the soldered a wire to each, and connected all to the backing plate of the radio.

Kevin

 

[av8ter 10+ year member]

Amp is NOT in protect mode btw...........

 

[Haunz 10+ year member]

But amp is completely functional with the ipod so i have to figure that the ground circuitry on the amp is ok as well as the amp's ground on the chassis.

Clearly there is something wrong with the input section of the amplifier. TAKE IT TO A REPAIR SHOP.

 

[av8ter 10+ year member]

Amp is one of the old XA3000D beastly mofos by the way. Hopefully it wont be too much to fix. I am going to pull it a part in the morning and take some pics so you guys can determine if something is obviously incorrect......

Thanks for the quick responses.

Kevin

 

[ThatChevyGuy 5,000+ posts]

You probably grounded the rca's wrong.

Or its the amp, like grinder said

 

[av8ter 10+ year member]

It is pretty hard to fcuk up when youre grounding the rcas. I am sure that I did it properly but doing so might have lead to the failure and i realize that.......

I am going to pull the amp apart and post pics in a couple of minutes......

Kevin