Not really complex my friend. You cannot use the factory wiring in most vehicles as they use the ground as a common between the two rear speakers. Run two separate pairs of wires from the amp to the speakers and this should take care of the problem your having. Good Luck
Oh this goes for the front speakers too! And you must also disconnect the original wiring. Now if your running all four speakers on one amp? This could also be a problem, unless the amp has four separate outputs for each speaker. You also may be overloading the impedance of the amp by hooking the front wires with the rear wires.
You can simply add a wire lug to the ground wire and where you bolt the amp to the car, ground the wire there.
Did it fix it ?
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I'm having trouble visualizing exactly how you have it set up. You said that the amps are "grounded through the amp" but I think you meant they're grounded through the cap. I don't think that's the cause of your problem, but the cap and amplifiers really should be grounded separately. There's no reason to run the grounds to the cap instead of directly to the chassis. It seems more likely to me that the problem is related to your speaker wiring. I'm not clear on how your speakers are wired either; I can see that you've kept the speakers on factory wiring, and connected the amp to the factory wires. But I don't understand how that translates to having only one set of wires for both speaker sets. We'll leave the tweeters out of it; if they're wired through a crossover, then they don't have a serious effect on the impedance. However, any way you look at it, you've got two 4-ohm speakers wired together to a bridged amplifier. Most 2-channel amps aren't designed to be connected to load impedance under 4 ohms when they're in bridged mode. If your speakers are wired in parallel, then the load impedance at the amp is 2 ohms. Having too low a load impedance is the most common cause of amplifier overheating. My advice is to re-wire the speakers so that one 5x7 and one tweeter (together with a crossover) is connected to each amplifier channel. Don't run the amp in bridged mode. Even in this configuration, I'd be amazed if your 5x7" speakers are really rated to handle 310 watts RMS, which is the per-channel power rating of your amp in 2-channel, 4-ohm mode. It sounds to me like you've got too big of an amp for the job.
If the tweeters have built-in crossovers, then they're fine; you don't need to add anything external.
If the original factory wiring goes to left and right speakers, then there has to be separate (+) and (-) wires for each side. Each side's tweeter and woofer may be combined into one set of wires, but there's no way they'd have left and right running off the same amp channel.
What kind of vehicle is this?
Ah, the Mustang Mach. Basically the door 6x8" speakers are "bass" speakers in that system, and they were run by a different amplifier than the tweeters. The factory amplifier ran the 6x8" as a mono system, so that's why there's only one set of wires for both speakers. However, if you want to run the speakers full-range and have separate right and left channels, then you'll need to wire them differently. It might very difficult to run new wiring into the doors, but you should be able to catch the wires in the kick panels and run new wires to the amplifier from each speaker. Alternately, you should be able to find the factory tweeter wiring behind the deck. You might find it easier to tap into those wires in the doors than the bass speaker wires.
I still think your overheating problem is being caused by having both speakers wired in parallel to the bridged amplifier, so re-wiring the speakers in stereo mode should fix it.
Should have guessed the car by your screen name. :)
It probably won't make a whole lot of difference, but generally the shortest ground path to the chassis is preferable. There's no reason to go through the cap, and the extra connections at the capacitor can only add resistance. So it's not urgent, but I'd re-wire the grounds separately from the cap.
The only option I can suggest, other than making sure it's mounted in a spot with plenty of ventilation, is that if there are cooling "fins" or ridges on the amp it should be placed so they run vertically.
The fact is that getting hot is just something that all amps do. Amps like yours are generally considered to be about 50-60% efficient. That means that of all the power it draws from the battery/charging system, only about 60% of it turns into power going to your speakers; the rest becomes heat. If it's not shutting down, and you don't smell anything burning, then chances are you don't have to worry about it much.
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The one set of wires comes into play like this: speakers and tweeters are all wired into the existing factory door wires. In the back in the trunk where the factory wires used to run into the factory amps, I only found 2 wires that allowed the front speakers to come back on. So what I did was splice speaker wire on to each of them and run them to the amp...walla speakers came on, didnt think it was a problem until now. Also, the tweeters say they have built in crossovers, so do I still need them for the rewiring job?
Its a 2004 Mustang Mach 1 and came with the Mach 460 stereo system. Have since replaced the factory head unit with a Kenwood flip screen receiver...if I remember correctly the factory wires Im jumping off of right now in the back are green and purple, if that helps any. But all the wires in my doors are different colors...I dont know what they were thinking on the wiring job but its complex as hell.
Ok....Ive taken everyones advice, you both and all the Monday morning quarterbacks at work. Ive ran 2 new speaker wires from each 5x7 to the amp on seperate channels and have tied in the tweeters with new wire(nothing factory)into the wires running to the amp. Everything came on but my L and R were reversed so Ive switched them and hopefully that put the world back upright. So in short the wiring goes something like this: from 2 channels, one to the left and one to the right, at the splice I have the 5x7 and the tweeter wired in...same on both sides. Oh and before you ask, I routed the speaker wires down the opposite side of the power wire to avoid distortion...knew that one ahead of time. Hopefully this solves my delema, thanks for all your great advice. Only thing I havent done yet is ground both amps to the chassis, they are still currently grounded through the cap(yeah I meant cap last time). Does this matter or would it be better if I grounded them to the chassis?
Well guys I rewired the speakers as you suggested and described how above. But the amp still seems to be getting hot, not as hot as it was but too hot for my taste. From reading the manual theres no internal fan. So hopefully to fix the problem, I have ordered 2 small fans that will hopefully cool it down while its running. Any more suggestions?
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