the other day i drove my car to the gym and back, turned it off when i got home, took a shower and went to get back in to go to work, and i turn the key and the car barley starts cuz the battery was low. then out of nowwhere smoke comes form my hood. I pop the hood and its the power cable that goes from my + on the battery to the + on my 600 watt amp. The wire had melted from the battery all the way into my car. why would it do that? And after i took the cable out and had to jump my car to get it running again. it continued to run after i unhooked the jumper cables, then i turned the car off and it started again. Then the next morning, nothing, not even the clock came on, completely dead. Any ideas or suggestions.
get yourself a multimeter. check the voltage on the battery. It should be 12 volts. If its borderline then borrow a battery from a friends car or something just to see if that makes a difference. If the battery is dead try charging it, if that doesn’t work then you need a new one. Also, check the alternator. You can do this by turning the car on and measuring the voltage across the battery. It should be 14volts (make sure to check it at idle, and a little higher rpm… it might not be putting out full power at idle). If there is no difference between the battery voltage when the car is off and when its on (12v vs 14v) then the alternator is not working. And sometimes they will only work a little bit. thus only giving out 13volts or 12.5volts…
your stereo wire problem could have fried the battery. But hopefully the wire won’t fry again. Do you have a fuse or circuit breaker installed?
Sounds like your amp power feed shorted out somewhere and assumming that you dont have a fuse or breaker. More then likely your battery is dead and not holding a charge nomore because of your short. Your lucky your car didnt catch on fire and next time if you dont have one now, get a fuse block or breaker to prevent it from happening again and to protect your car and equipment.
check for any bad ground connections and take your car to a mechanic to see if yoru car is drawing power with the tester
no fuse
yeah, i had ran just a straight wire to the battery with out a fuse. I was meaning to get one but i didnt know that it was such a big deal. Honestly, I thought my car was gunna catch fire. Thanks for the help, ill give it a try and see what happens.
Re: no fuse
Originally posted by heavypork
yeah, i had ran just a straight wire to the battery with out a fuse. I was meaning to get one but i didnt know that it was such a big deal. Honestly, I thought my car was gunna catch fire. Thanks for the help, ill give it a try and see what happens.
yeah, running no fuse or breaker is a bad idea, especially when running as much power as you are. Make sure to place the fuse close to the battery, that way you fry less wire, and risk less of a chance of a fire.
battery
i understand it could be battery or altenator, but what gets me, is that when i jump started it, i could drive it all around, but as soon as i turned it off for a decent amount of time like 3 hours, then it wouldnt start. It seems like something is just robbing the battery power when the car is off, even though the Amp is completely unhooked.
When you jump start your car the alternator is putting out enough juice to run the car but the battery is bad and not accepting a charge.
Wire Connections
Why would anynbody run a wire directly from the battery?? Whenever i installed a stereo, id run the power feed directly to my fusebox using one of the open terminals in the box. That way you have the option of using switched,or unswitched power. Id never run a stereo wire without a fuse,especially if it was to the battery. The voltage regulator could **** the bed and ,well,burn your car that way. Insurance may not even cover it if they found out why.
Rob