okok, i love alpine but this pissed me off. i was bumping some music on my way to school, this guy pulls up next to me, looks at me and turns his system up. it sounded like **** and he was just staring at me like saying show me what you have. i felt stupid complying with him but i put on "what you gon' do" by lil jon. turned the sub all the way up (15 on alpines) and blew him away. my problem is that right before the light switched to green my stereo turned off and on. WTF!!!! it could not be the subwoofer amp because that would have turned off. so what im thinking is that since i was bumping the stereo as loud as it could go the internal amp must have over heated or not gotten enough power. has this happned to you? because this is the first time that it happened to me. and im pissed. hasn't happened since but now im thinking of changing the battery wire that comes with the harness of the HU to a thicker one like 10g. do you think this will solve my problem for next time? i dont really turn it up all the way all the time. i think the max volume on it is 30 and i always have it under 21. im pissed. i mean i know i need an amp to power my door and rear speakers but i was hoping that the internal amp would help me through the hard times till i got the money.

any suggestions will be greatfully appreciated.

I always run a new wire from the battery to the constant power wire (yellow) just to be sure, because those wires are pretty small sometimes, especially my last one (dvd flip out screen) it had a 10 amp fuse on the constant wire, so I ran a wire directly from the battery to that constant power wire and the ground on metal near the HU.

yeah but if you splice it to the yellow wiere. it would be kinda weird because the 10g wire would be pushing all its power into a 12g (i think thats what it is). how would that solve the problem? im just wondering not bashing. but wouldnt you have to open the sucker up and solder the 10g wire into the circuit board of the HU?

The HU has the appropriate size wire, but sometimes the car's factory harness has smaller wire to feed the stock HU, so if you upgrade your HU, the wire from your factory harness might be too small. 12 gauge is enough for a HU, you don't need 10 gauge, but you can run 10 if you want to. I don't remember what gauge my 05 has but I've seen cars that only had 16 gauge for power and ground wires, so that's why I always run a new one from the battery.

another thing that can happen is your cars voltage drops below a point where your deck will shut off. so if your sitting still with your ac on and bumping lil john as loud as can be with no cap or extra bat it can happen.

oh ok. i just took a look at my 01 and it has a 14g on the cars factory harness. do you know about 01's? cuz that looks not to be normal anyways i can disconnect it and run a better wire. i was thinknig a 10g but ill take your word for it and use a 12. anyways thanks for the input. ill post if i have any more questions. i guess i got to run to the store to buy a 12g power wire now. lol

youre right and i was thinking about that, but i've had problems with caps i've spent 200 bucks on. i bought an RF cap for that price and it totaly didnt work like it was supposed to, TWICE! it actually started smoking. now this was on a nissan altima but i dont think it makes a difference. i know you might be thinking that i probably had the wiring wrong but i had it checked by a buddy of mine that owna a stereo shop. anyway i think im going to change the wire and buy a yellow top battery instead of the capacitor


any other ideas anyone....anyone?

thats what i'm thinking. voltage dropped below a certain point after the subs drained too much power and the deck went into protection before the alternator could supply more power.

^^ uh...is that bad? will my HU f up? like will i need a new one or just changing the things mentioned above make a dif.?

well yea its very bad for a hu to operate below its power requirement (or above it). But since your deck turned off, it must have a safely feature. Otherwise your deck wouldn't have turned back on. Get an optima battery and just don't turn the bass up for too long. Our alternators are weak. When you blast the music, it will drain all the alt power and then goto battery and drain that, well the alt won't be able to keep up and your battery keeps draining.

get a new deck i dont care for alpine

whats wrong with alpine

nothing. the same thing thats wrong with toyota to ford owners. its easy to make an argument for alpine making the highest quality hu line. try to get the problem to happen again but this time hook up a voltmeter to the battery and watch it turn off. every aftermarket deck will do this.

are you saying when you hook a voltmeter to the battery the deck turns off?

no...not me...this guy ^

no no no i am saying to check the voltage of the electrical system. put a meter on the battery. i know theres a million places that would be better like say the amps + and - but i went to the lowest common denominator. anyways what i am saying is if he can re create this 2 times once the system drops down low enough then he knows for sure its the lack of power not the deck or amps.

ooooooooooh i get it now. thanks i will surely try that