Did I short out my amps?

[Chris02NeonSXT 10+ year member]

Alright I was wiring and hooking up some of my NEW equipment today, which included an xtant a3001 and a hifonics falcon amp. I ran a 4 gauge power wire this this dist block:

Which had a 4 gauge going into the xtant, and an 8 going into the hifonics. I payed no attention to the material the dist block was made out of and where I was placing it, but when I reconnected my power wire to the battery, it sparked like crazy.

What I think happened is the dist block grounded out the the floor pan where I have it installed because the base of it it made out of some type of metal. After this happened I covered the base in electrical tape and I had no problems when hooking up the power wire.

At the time I had a 120a fuse 8" from the battery.

As you may suspect, neither of my amps' power LEDs are lighting up. The Hifonics had a 30a fuse on the amp itself. The xtant did not have a fuse on the amp itself. I replaced the 30a fuse on the hifonics with a 40a (all that I had laying around) and still no dice. I changed the inline fuse on the main 4 gauge power wire and still no dice.

Did i freakin fry my two brand new amps?

Thanks,

Chris

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[Chris02NeonSXT 10+ year member]

anyone have any input? I really need to know if they are fried or not. I could understand if the xtant is, but I don't understand why the hifonics would be since it was fused.

 

[OLD_SCHOOL 10+ year member]

check for power at the block with a DMM or test light

 

[Chris02NeonSXT 10+ year member]

excuse my newb question, but what setting should I have the dmm on to test? and what should the block look like?

Thanks for the help.

Any idea why the power lights arent lighting it the amps arent fried?

 

[OLD_SCHOOL 10+ year member]

ok set your DMM for no higher than 20V dc no lower than 12 V dc and ground the black line on the ground (inside the car the grou you used for your amp will work fine if it will reach) and place the red one on the power distrobution block and see if it reads 12 v than place the red line on each of the amps terminals and see if they read 12 V

Ps the block would be that thing that you bolted to the floor pan

clarify something did the distrobution block spark or the power cable connection under the hood spark ... if under the hood are you sure you put the power and ground conection correct on the amp

 

[Chris02NeonSXT 10+ year member]

Well I already unhooked the xtant amp, so I'll try in the morning with the DMM. However, based on how the wires are left sitting, I may have had the power and the ground swapped. I can't believe I did that, if that was the case. But yes it did spark under the hood. The distro block wasn't in sight, so I'm not sure if it sparked there too. If I did have the wires crossed, does that mean the amp is fried? How about the hifonics? would it have fried that one too?

Ps the block would be that thing that you bolted to the floor pan

Stupid me..lol...for whatever reason i thought you were talking about some kind of electrical component in the amp, and totally ignored the fact that you could be referring to the dist block //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wacky.gif.cf4a48f9e6dfe9504ffd2c946fd2f340.gif

 

[OLD_SCHOOL 10+ year member]

yeah when you said it sparked like crazy under the hood i had feeling you had hooked the amps up backwards. if that is the case you may have just poped the internal fuses in the amps and may get away with just replacing those internal fuses.... however i have rarely seen that sucsessfu.l when you put 12 volts on the amps ground circut it usualy does alot of damage. let me guess your power and ground wire are the same color ?

mat

if under the hood are you sure you put the power and ground conection correct on the amp

picked that one up real quick didn't i //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[Chris02NeonSXT 10+ year member]

Actually they're not the same color. I don't know how the heck i mixed that up though. I guess I just wasn't paying attention. Anyway here's a little update:

I did what you said with the DMM and there's power going into xtant, but like you just said, it's fried.

I replaced the fuse in the hifonics and hooked it straight up to the power wire and it's working fine. I think the only reason that wasn't working when I replaced the fuse with the 40a one is because I had forgotten to hook up the remote turn on wire. Now it's working great though.

Well that's 150 bucks down the drain. Oh well, I know better to double check all of my connections next time. It just sucks I had to learn the hard way.

Thanks for the help.

Chris

 

[OLD_SCHOOL 10+ year member]

don't sweat it dude you live you learn.... try and see if you can replace the xtant internal fuses it may work ... it may not

luckly you had the hifonics hooked up right so at least you saved that one

let me tell you what i do after a big instal right before i am ready to put the neg terminal back on the batery i stop and go have a smoke or something... take like 5 or 10 min then i go back and check every one of my conections, then i pull the fuses out of all the amp and start powering them up one by one.

try and replace those internal fuses hey what do you got to loose assuming they have internal fuses i manot familar with that amp

 

[Chris02NeonSXT 10+ year member]

the xtant doesnt have an intenal fuse..It says in the manual to add a fuse inline right before the amp. Unfortunately I did not read that first. heh.

Oh well I just ordered a hifonics merlin to replace it from the zeb. Should be here tomorrow.

 

[LBX2G 10+ year member]

it sounds like u had it wired it backwards.......that is what I think

 

[OLD_SCHOOL 10+ year member]

the xtant doesnt have an intenal fuse..It says in the manual to add a fuse inline right before the amp. Unfortunately I did not read that first. heh.
Oh well I just ordered a hifonics merlin to replace it from the zeb. Should be here tomorrow.

no i ment the fuses inside the amp on the board they should have some kind of fuse on the board it's self why don't ya send me that amp for helping ya out //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif seeing as how you already ordered ya anew one

Mat

 

[sumone 10+ year member]

it sparked when you connected the power wire to the battery? was your battery disconnected? I thought the process was

1. unhook negative terminal

2. unhook positive terminal

3. add the power wire

4. hookup positive terminal

5. hookup negative terminal

6. put in system's power wire fuse

...also, check your remote wire too when you try out the dmm procedure.

1. with the battery disconnected (and distro block fuses installed), measure resistance of:

- main input on distro block to the amps' positive terminals, and you should get around 0 point something (the closer to zero, the better).

2. resistance from amps' ground terminal to a ground spot next to your grounding location. same thing, should get around 0 for resistance.

If that's fine, then, with the battery connected:

1. measure voltage at amp's positive & ground terminals. If you don't get at least 12V, then something's wrong with the connection at the battery, or, with the amp.

 

[DBfan187 5,000+ posts]

Doesn't really matter which terminal you disconnect first. Aslong as one is off, electrons don't have a home.