Car Amp Blew and I have no idea why.. Help

[Fosgate24565]

I have a Skar DDX 12 D2 with a hifonics brx1100.1d. Everything was hitting great for about a month no problems or anything and out of no where I was driving down the road and my sub just sputtered out. I pulled over and went to my trunk and my amp was smoking. Everything was wired correctly I'm positive but have no idea what went wrong. The green power light is on and no protection came on. My fuse also never blew and I have no idea what went wrong. Haven't had time to pull the amp off and take a look but anyone have any ideas what happened? I'm clueless..

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[dmuney]

How good is your electrical insufficient power is not good for amplifiers

05 2500 4WD swb AFE intake Edge Attitude 4"ex down 1/2 cylinder White on Black

 

[LosIsATool 5,000+ posts]

Hifonics.

 

[inferno1985 10+ year member]

clipped it to death

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

Pay now or pay later. Any user (or install) error aside, Hifonics makes a pretty poor product so it could be just the amp failed due to poor design/build quality.

Likely your fuse was WAY too big to ever protect the amp from that sort of thing, so might want to consider correctly fusing in the future.

 

[El-Camino]

How is the sub? Does it have a burned voice coil? That can blow the amp you also may have been overdriving the amp with a dirty signal, I. e amp gain too high, especially if it was set with the volume of the head unit passed it's clean power level and making the pre- amp (gain knob) push out more output than clean input (too much gain), driving it very hard. It gets hot and fries. If it's not any of those things mentioned then, just a product failure.

 

[Boomin_tahoe 5,000+ posts]

Square waves? Unless the OP has an ocsilloscope, doubt he's gonna see that.

 

[El-Camino]

You would hope he could hear it though.

 

[Papermaker85 5,000+ posts]

Chances are you blew the output fets. Over current under voltage..

 

[El-Camino]

Can u please expand on that for the ignorant here? Does that mean not enough power supplied to the amp, for example by usage of inadequate gauge power cable or poor ground?

 

[Papermaker85 5,000+ posts]

Sometimes its just poor parts used. The power supply output exceeds the limits of the output supply and it fails.

In short in most cases you can get it fixed but its gonna cost more than its worth by the time you add shipping etc..

 

[El-Camino]

I've been on this forum a few hours only & I think I have read three threads already involving a certain brand of amplifier relating to failures. I have had a couple of those amps around 2006 - 2007 with nil issues albeit not the best sound quality but ok for the money at the time. I drove them for long periods in high temperatures no A/C. all good. I was certain they were installed correctly and adjusted optimally with a digital oscilloscope as I did it myself. I wonder if some of these problems are due to incorrect installs or the quality & durability of the product?

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

I've been on this forum a few hours only & I think I have read three threads already involving a certain brand of amplifier relating to failures. I have had a couple of those amps around 2006 - 2007 with nil issues albeit not the best sound quality but ok for the money at the time. I drove them for long periods in high temperatures no A/C. all good. I was certain they were installed correctly and adjusted optimally with a digital oscilloscope as I did it myself. I wonder if some of these problems are due to incorrect installs or the quality & durability of the product?

Both, I suspect. I've owned 1 post-Zed Hifonics amp and it blew up running 4 ohms at very low listening levels after about 40 minutes of play. They put their brand name on a handful of decent boards but also a lot of crap and quality control from that sort of brand is dubious at best.

Bear in mind whatever user error might be causing these failures may well have not killed a better quality product.

 

[Boomin_tahoe 5,000+ posts]

People pushing the HiFonics amps beyond their "limits" thus creating chaos.

Which is funny because some people have good luck with them and well others not so much.