I've had an old Sony 760W amp and a Shiva 12 inch sub sitting in my garage for a while and decided recently to install it. The install went well however I'm having a problem with my AMP going into overcurrent (i believe) mode. I know it's a SONY amp and have plans to replace it soon, but I am curious if any of you have any input as to why it could be going into this protection mode. The odd thing about this problem is that it happens sporadically. Generally it happens after many minutes of high bass, but sometimes it doesn't even turn on when I start the car.

At first I thought it was the ground. I have it grounded to the body of the car where the spare tire assembly kit connects in the trunk. Then I thought that it might be the amp, but want to be sure before I replace it with something that is actually a quality piece. I never had this problem when it was installed in my old car. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

anyone? :o

 

bump- moved maybe folks here have an idea?

 

The ground return is **** poor in this car, the ground needs to go direct to the battery as it's return resistance is higher than a crack addict. Post the model #'s of the sub and the amp please. Is the sub a svc or dvc version and what impedence is it? Is the amp a mono sub amp or a 2 channel amp running bridged?

 

you need to run a ground return...here is a nice DIY

pics were lost so I uploaded some new ones for yah:
https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-do-yourself-forum-73/diy-best-route-amp-power-16217/

btw drilling through the firewall is a piece of cake, 4gauge good for up to 1000watts if you keep the wire short

 

if its going into overcurrent, the amp may be blown, sony amps are known for this.

the other thing is that you may have the sub wired up incorrectly. what impedance is the sub, ie 2 ohm, 4 ohm, 8 ohm, single voice coil, dual voice coil. it is mandatory to know this when hooking up subs to an amp

the amp, is it 2 channel or 4 channel. please elaborate on these and i will try to give my best advice.

 

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Lately I've been driving another car while mine has sat in the garage and really haven't had a chance to investigate it further.

My initial hunch is that it is not grounded correctly. Initially I grounded it to the spare tire assembly bracket bolt (hard to describe) and found that after a few moments the AMP would go into overcurrent. However, Once I removed the bracket for the spare tire and bolted it to the trunk of the car the uptime of the amp became more reliable, but under heavy load or sometimes on intial start up the amp goes into overcurrent mode. I think the first thing I am going to try is to ground it as suggested above and move forward from there. Unfortunately I don't know all the details of the AMP, but will post those if grounding does not work.

Thanks again!

 

i installed my amp and sub this past weekend. i saw in a few threads that the spare tire assembly bolt was used for the ground and thought about using that. but before i connected everything, i tested the bolt and the metal behind the bolt with a voltometer, and found that it was not a suitable ground. so i started testing other areas and found that there was a nice usable bolt behind the plastic on the trunk where the emergency trunk release switch is. take that off, and the bolt i used was on the driver side, close to where the carpet ends, about tail light level. hope that makes sense.

 

AWESOME! I may even get to it today. Thanks for the insight!