Extremely frustrated, need help please.

[lilmaniac2 5,000+ posts]

when you say the wires were in a pile did you

1) tape up the bare ends of all the wires, including the rca's and remote wire?

2) since i dont think you did you prorbably shorted out the rca when you broke the end off causeing the preouts in your hu to fry,

get a multimeter, set it to acv put it on the rca near the back, put the positive in the middle pointy part and then the negative on the outside grounding ring.

have a friend turn on the hu and turn it up quite a bit and see if you get a reading, my guess is you wont and you need a new hu, or switch to another set of preouts, you can switch from subwoofer to the front or rear preouts you just loose some adjustability

 

[Nevalite 10+ year member]

I'll give this a try later. What kind of readings should I be seeing from the multimeter?

 

[lilmaniac2 5,000+ posts]

depends on the hu, toward max volume i would expect to see more than 1v, if you have a 4v preout deck you should be closer to that, basically any reading is better than none

you should probably use a test tone too so you have a more consistant reading

you can download testtones @ http://www.realmofexcursion.com

 

[shehateme]

gotta be the amp.... get some 4 gauge in that amp!

 

[Nevalite 10+ year member]

What I'm gonna do first is plug my ipod directly to the amp using a RCA to mini jack (whatever its called 3.5mm) and see if that works...

If that doesnt work then I can assume it's probably a problem with the amp right? Or does an ipod not give enough power?

 

[Nevalite 10+ year member]

Ok so I have an update.

I plugged the ipod directly to the amp and it started working right away, after about 1 minute tho it stopped working completely, same symptoms as usual. I can assume that its not a problem with the HU or else this wouldn't have happened with the ipod also, right?

I'm getting a feeling its maybe an electrical problem or something internally in the amp? Any ideas?

 

[Nevalite 10+ year member]

Ok well I took lilmaniacs advice and I checked the RCAs with a DMM...

I was only getting 0.1 AC volts from the HU. I tried running the ipod and it gives me like 0.2-0.4 ACV on the red RCA...

I thought maybe the RCA wire was bad so I attached the DMM straight to the back of the HU but it was still only giving me 0.1V AC

I'm guessing 0.1V AC is really not enough from my HU? I was using a 50Hz tone and I had it at like 20/35 volume.

I'm going to try installing my old HU to see if it works after.

Well it was reading 00.1 on the 200 scale (lowest I had) of the AC, I'm assuming that means .1 V

 

[lilmaniac2 5,000+ posts]

hmm pretty complex issue there, could be a couple different things, sounds like the hu is f'd for sure now possibly the rca is bad too?

 

[Nevalite 10+ year member]

No I think the RCA is fine, it just seems the HU is not giving enough volts...

I am confused because it should work just off the ipod (its a different RCA) but even using the ipod I get nothing from the amp...

Eurgh this is getting aggravating, I'm gonna install my old HU and see where that leaves me, if it works then Ill know it was the HU. If it doesnt work then maybe its the amp...