non-distributing block?

hellohello

Hello again,
Being the local handyman/knowitall/village idiot I was asked to take a look at a car system that wasnt working. Its a early 90's firebird with 2 amps, a cap and a distro block. He has a wire running from the battery for power to the rear hatch area, he put the fuse there, not in the engine bay, he runs that fused line into a tiny PG distro block, unfused, kinda like this http://www.crutchfield.com/S-E63ksgtR3YF/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?g=715&I=211DB448
and it has 4 taps on that. Each amp has a tap on the distro, as does the cap. The cap is one of those digital jobs with the volt meter that "monitors" the system. Now, with the car turned on, the cap lights up with 14.4 volts or so, but the amps do nothing. This system was running for about 2 weeks. The fuses in the amps are fine, as is the one in the power line before the distro. My question is, can the distro being a block of iron/steel/metal fail?

exalted512

no, it wont unless something happened to it that physically changed the properties which would take a lot more than what you have in a car.

Number one, how is the cap connected?? If he wants the cap on both amps then i would put it directly before the distro block. maybe you could draw something up in paint as to how its wired???

do you have a dmm?
-Cody

hellohello

Ok, i added a perty picture, i tried to be descriptive on the drawing...
I didnt have a dmm on me at the time...
in the manual for the cap e has ...Power acoustik i think it was... shows that u should put it on the distro just like the amps, so he did.
now the grounding is weird, he had alternator noise in the four channel that he uses for his fullrange so he ran the ground from that into the cap and from there to the battery... he said it reduced the noise, but to me it looks like a ground loop <more noise>, and he was using the hi-z inputs, which i told him was where the noise was more likely coming from.
It just seemed odd to me that the amps would cease to function without blown fuses... i guess if i had more time i would have taken the cap out of the circuit, see if that does anything, if not then tied each amp directly to the battery line, if that didnt work, tell him to get it exorcised

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exalted512

first off, i would get a fuse holder and put it before the firewall before i touched anything. what hes doing is a good way to catch your car on fire. Next, i would put the cap before the distro block. Ground the cap and both amps seperately just like he did for the sub amp. Do not run grounds back to the battery. Thats an unnecessary waste of money, time, and effort and it just gives that much more of a chance for noise and/or ground loop.

Is the ground wire the same size as the power wire?

Is the power wire appropiate sized for his amps?

Wiring it like i told you should eliminate all his problems. Make sure you scrape away paint from all your ground sources and dont put your ground on an existing bolt, drill your own. Its also not a bad idea to put 3+ screws on your ground. I put one or two in the actual ring itself, then i put one between the ring and the wire(actually drill a hole through the ring terminal) and usually a couple on the outside of the ring where the screw lips over the ring terminal. By doing that, you know if something goes wrong later that 99% of the time it will not be the ground. I have never had a single problem with my ground wires when i do it this way
-Cody

audiobliss

exalted512 wrote:

I have never had a single problem with my ground wires when i do it this way
-Cody

Man, I should hope not!

hellohello

he has thick wires, not sure of gauges... ill let him know what u said about grounding, i thought it was weird myself... im used to working on guitars and i know that ground loops in that lil unpowered circuit are bad, so we'll see. Oh, and that fuse could cause a fire being where it is?... interesting

exalted512

yea, if you ground something out at the fire wall, it can be shooting off sparks and can ignite something. Thats why you ALWAYS want to have a fuse as close to the battery as possible. If a short happens itll blow the fuse at the battery and no harm done. If you blow the fuse at your amp then all the power will still be going all the way to where the fuse is. So if theres a short before that, it wont stop until you disconnect the power from the battery.
-Cody

hellohello

interesting.... I knew you had to have one 18 inches or so from the battery, now i know why

exalted512

learn something every day:D
-Cody

hellohello

well, he had a friend check it out, and when he went to test the amps, one of the "lil blocks with 3 prongs" went up in smoke. Im guessing it was a power diode because it was before the fuse, at least thats what im told. He also needed an igniton module and his car wont start now... I dunno, i think its the cap thats possessed

PolkThug

Ground the cap to the chassis, not the battery.

hellohello

is that killing the electrical system?

exalted512

was he checking stuff with a test light?
-Cody

hellohello

no a dmm, i think, iwasnt there when the test took place... he has everything disconnected now and is looking for a newer firebird

exalted512

lol, when all else fails, buy a new car:D
-Cody

hellohello

i guess so

audiobliss

exalted512 wrote:

lol, when all else fails, buy a new car:D
-Cody

ROFL, that's right!

My mom had a 1998 (I think) Chrysler Town & Country (minivan), and it got so the dash lights and tail lights didn't work most of the time. So, Dad says he can fix it. We went out and bought a 2001 Chrysler Town & Counry.

Now I know how to fix my Jeep if something goes wrong!!