Here's my little story. Rewind to saturday when I went on a trip and couldn't figure out why my subwoofer wasn't hitting. I went home, fiddled with it, checked all wires, ground, etc. nothing happened. Two days later my head unit goes into protect mode. I find that my ground cable was disconnected probably from stuffing things in the back. So I reset my head unit and it's out of protect mode, but still no subwoofer? The light on my amp will turn on but very faintly. When I connect a wire from the power inlet on the amp to the remote wire the red light gets brighter and the subwoofer actually fires. So I decide to reconnect the remote wire at the back of the head unit and there's no change.

It must be the remote wire itself, right? or not? I'm so confused by this. If the remote wire is enabling the amp to turn on shouldn't the amp be able to power the woofer. Is there not enough power? bad amp? Any help is much appreciated. I am about to explode.

 

Might not be getting signal from the RCAs. Test that first. Check fuses. If not, your HU is toast. If so, your amp is toast (assuming it turns on and everything is hooked up right and it is set up correctly and no fuses are blown)

 

How would I go about testing the RCA's? The amp would turn on when I wired from the power cable to the remote, so basically an artificial remote signal. The rest of my speakers all work so I think the head unit is good.

 

I bet your power wire+ to amp is corroded or loose connection. Your head unit might be going into protect mode because the sub amp is drawing to many amps through the remote wire because it isnt getting enough through its own large guage power wire+. just a thought, might be backfeeding through remote because power+ is faulty for some reason. Check all crimps and connections on large power wires to amp. Do both - and +.

 

Double check your power connection and fuse holder. I've had the fuse desolder before, inside the end caps. Quite often actually. The fuse looks fine but its toast.

 

Also check your final ohm load with a rms meter. If it is a really low number like .01 your subs arewired wrong and that can make ur amp go haywire.

 

Also, make sure you have a good, clean, bare metal ground ....

 

If it worked before, this is probably not it unless the ground wire came loose.

 

Typical multi-meters don't measure impedance.

 

Try this first. Of all the advice given so far this sounds the most likely. I'm not saying it won't be one of the other ideas but, I'd start here.

 

If the head unit went into protect and the amp isnt turning on, check the remote wire for a short. If you jumped the remote off the batt cable and it worked....

 

Battery cable isn't corroded. When I had the alternator replaced the guy also put new connectors to the battery and recrimped all the wires including the battery power cable.

The ground is also good. I sanded it down to bare metal and put it on the bolt where the stock jack mount is and tightened it down extra tight to make sure.

I HATE ELECTRICS

Could it be the switch inside the amp?

 

Moved to Chat.

 

I am a mobile electronics installer, not saying others are dumb, just that I can help you for sure. If you jump the amp with another wire bypassing remote wire to headunit an amp works fine, subs fire and everything then problem lies within your remote wire or output on headunit for remote wire. Which wire is in connected to in headunit.........12v acc red, blue or blue/white amp turn on, or blue or blue/white power antenna, it does make a difference. Do not use power antenna lead, only other two preferably amp turn on lead, but 12v acc red is ok too.

 

If I may point out, and it's difficult to say for sure because I'm not there testing it, but jumpering his power wire over to the remote input on the amp may have fed power from the radio remote back to the main power. A volt meter is in need here to be sure where the voltage is lacking.
I too suspect the fues is faulty- not blown, just bad. This usually comes from having loose fues holder... the fues giggles around inside the fuse holder sparking and creating heat which then melts the solder holding the fuse together.
But is could be that the remote wires is pinched somewhere- not quite shorting out yet but will be someday. Again, a volt meter is really needed to be sure.