voltage drop

[atlninja82 10+ year member]

ok i have a 1993 chevy 1500. i have a cadence 1000d amp. it has blown like 3 times so far and i couldnt figure out why. one of my friends told me it was because of my voltage drop. it drops really low. like sometimes below 9 volts, but it never cuts my car off completely.im only running it at a 2 ohm load(650 watts) so i dont think i need a bigger alternator. i heard something about maybe my positive cable being bad or something? maybe bad grounds on some other wires. i donno any suggestions on what could be causing the horrible voltage drop?

thanks,

-eric

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[IDSkoT 5,000+ posts]

What size wire do you have running back? The size of the ground from your amp to your chassis, also, did you do the Big 3?

 

[atlninja82 10+ year member]

my power wire is 4 awg and my ground is like 8 or somethin. i know you are supposed to make them the same size but will that make that much of a difference? and no i didnt.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

make your ground the same as your power wire

 

[shaneb 10+ year member]

are you sure it is grounded to chassis and not body....

a way to check that is take your leads from your dmm and see if you still have voltage drop if the neg is connected to the neg post on your battery and the pos lead on the pos on your amp...

if the leads wont read that far just run any cheap wire to the back or whatever...like a speaker wire or something...make sure everything is off too...

if your voltage is the samewhen on the ground terminal on the amp or when it is on the post on the battery then you hvae a good ground...if not, find a new grounding spot and try that...or just run another ground wire from the battery to the car body to compensate for it....

 

[forbidden 10+ year member]

GM vehicles have notoriously bad grounds, this coupled with the wrong size ground wire will cause a amp to self destruct for what is seemingly a unknown reason. Upgrade your ground to 4 gauge and ensure the return resistance is under 1/2 ohm.

 

[atlninja82 10+ year member]

ok thanks for all the replies guys. i will try this and hopefully i will find whats wrong

thanks again,

-eric