ya you did I think, but my chief concern is the health of my alternator and other sub systems in my car. I have grave warnings about my ECU and engine timings that depend on the electrical system directly...

God damn it, and today I notice a odd *** rattle coming from the trunk and I spent an hour climbing all over the thing looking for where it is.. jesus, its like on the bumper level, seems like its just inside... grrrrrrrrrrr
this isn;'t my week. I swear it wasn't doing that sound last month

 

On the worries part, mostly I'd just relax on it. there's ALOT of ppl who've been running pro's with well over 1kw. For a couple years without any problems whatsoever. Battereies are reported to be a weak link, but mine's still kicking strong 7months after throwing a 100a drain on it from my amps alone. Thatsaid, I'll have a redtop going in soon. Have you done the groundwire thing, though? Seriously either do it, or lookinto it...

As for your rattle, I can help you there. I'd give it an 80% chance that it's your muffler heat-shield. It sits between your spare-tire well, and your trunk/hatch area and your muffler. The guy I know who pushes over 2kw actually cracked his with a portedbox 18 that he had to partially build into his trunk. And then removal required a sledgehammer.

There's also some inner-bumper rattles that are hard to get to, I think I know of some ppl who've done it, can't seem to find anything showing where, though.

 

Ya, thats it right there, what the hell is that.. I hear it mostly on the left(driver) bumber side
sounds like a really really bad rattle. something internal, I climbed all over underneath and can't find it.. if i can't find it, then my subs are going inside my car under the seats then.

But ya bro, you hit it on the nose..

anyone here anything about what it is?

 

It's inside the bumper, hence it requires pulling your bumper cover, I think I recall expanding foam being used. could be wrong.

 

Im a audio tech. for what you have a 1 farad cap will be good.
I have four 10" jl on a rockford 801 in my 02 mp5 with one cap and no problems

 

funniest thing, I took it to futureshop to look at it,

well this was after the Pioneer died...

they thru in a MTX 250watt amp..

the next day, (wreaked it) blew the fuse and it never came back.... R.I.P.

we were running another same MTX, and found after about 20 minutes of running respectible volume and base... that it was red hot.. (unable to keep your hand on the amp for 2 seconds)

the thought is the Stock deck maybe out putting somethign that the amps don't like

 

what year and kind of pro do u have???
stock decks are not usually the greatest thing to be running with a system. also i had a 1 farad cap in my car when i was running a rf800a2 and a rf100x4. i also added a OPTIMA Yellow top battery, never had power problems at all with that setup

 

Mazda 2001

 

so you guys r sayin that a bad ground could be the cause of the lights dimmin. Cause i got the yellow optima and a 1f cap. and lights still dim. 03 p5

 

no no no has nothing to do about my dimming lights, thats normal, the electical systems in audio systems do that..

its the overheating and poor performance problem on the amps thats the problem..

actually the install guy at future shop even tried a different wiring method for the Stock Deck/ Hi Lo Converter I think its called a butterfly config or something..
in short all the grounds wiring is not shared..

I have not clue what that means.. but I think I understand a little.. but it still had no effect and the amp started to fail after about 30 minutes of playing

 

it could be a crappy converter thats giving it a crappy ground.... when i did install i always convinced the customer to just buy a new deck because a lot of these new stock decks have a lot of hookups in them that u never know with.

 

its gotta be the deck, we tried a brand new convert different brand also..

same problem...

Grrrrrrrr god damn stock deck sucks, skipping CDs and ****

 

well as you can see i got a pretty big system in my car and i get the dimming lights but thats it no problems performence wise but ill take some of your guyses advice and upgrade to a better ground and such but besides that my stereo does some serious pounding!!!!lol

 

not only ground, FULL groundwire kit.. Trust me. BIG difference... there's a couple how-tos on it, or you can just buy a pre-made setup. this one is made for protege's by a previous pro-owner. http://protege5.com/vbb225/showthrea...ght=ground+kit


As far as a deck causing an overheating amp... that's just bullshit. THe only thing aside form a bad amp that'd cause the problem is a bad ground which is entirely possible. I'd check to see if they sanded down to bare metal wherever they took the ground from. My bet is they didn't. If you realyl want a new deck, by all means go ahead, but you don't NEED one for this. However, LOC's are a good idea (convert your speaker-level outputs to RCA's)