So - what did I do? Blow a circuit?

[SlappyMcHappy]

I have a Moon and Tunes package (6 ( 4-6.5's and 2 satelitie tweeters w/amp under front passenger seat). Yesterday, I was going to upgrade all four 6.5's with Infinity 6002si's. I got the front ones in no problem.On my first rear speaker that I went to install, I heard and saw a loud crackle and spark when I was screwing the speaker to the door frame. After that, there was only sound in the front door speakers. I lost all sound to the rear and satelite speakers. In addition, I have an Infinity Basslink (subwoofer) in my car and it is only getting signals from the front speakers, no rear signal is being detected. Obviously it is all tied together...I would think if I blew a fuse I would have lost all speakers, but the front still work...anyone have any idea what is going on? I know there is a fuse in the engine compartment for the radio...does anyone know if there is an inline fuse on the amplifier as well?Do you think I blew the amp? Wouldn't all speakers be out if that was the case? As it is now, the front door speakers work, rear and satelite tweeters dont.

[joatmon]

i would think that any external fuse would take out power to the entire amp or head unit, and not leave you with the front speakers still working.I don't know if there are fuses/circuit breakers inside the amp itself. There's also a fuse block under the dash, more or less behinig the storage compartment in the dash under the mirror/dome light controls, accessible (barely) from under the dash. The owners manual lists the fuses and their function, I can't remember if there is one for the amp or not, but I doubt a fuse in one of the car's fuse blocks is the problem.Since the front speakers work, then you're getting power to the head unit and the amp. Sounds like something definitely shorted out when you were screwing in the speaker. First step would probably be to make sure that it isn't still shorting out. After that, then you can see if the problem goes away or not, and if not, then maybe the output circuit for the rear speakers in the amp got damaged. I don't remember ever seeing any diagram of the internal workings of the M&T amp, so I can't guess how related the rear speakers and the tweeters are. In the M&T setup, all 6 speakers have their own wires from the amp.

[SlappyMcHappy]

Quote, originally posted by joatmon »i would think that any external fuse would take out power to the entire amp or head unit, and not leave you with the front speakers still working.I don't know if there are fuses/circuit breakers inside the amp itself. There's also a fuse block under the dash, more or less behinig the storage compartment in the dash under the mirror/dome light controls, accessible (barely) from under the dash. The owners manual lists the fuses and their function, I can't remember if there is one for the amp or not, but I doubt a fuse in one of the car's fuse blocks is the problem.Since the front speakers work, then you're getting power to the head unit and the amp. Sounds like something definitely shorted out when you were screwing in the speaker. First step would probably be to make sure that it isn't still shorting out. After that, then you can see if the problem goes away or not, and if not, then maybe the output circuit for the rear speakers in the amp got damaged. I don't remember ever seeing any diagram of the internal workings of the M&T amp, so I can't guess how related the rear speakers and the tweeters are. In the M&T setup, all 6 speakers have their own wires from the amp.I read your response and I agree with you that if a fuse blew then it would take out all speakers. But, after looking at this http://www.crutchfield.com/S-f...L#Tab I thought differently. See how there are two fuses in this amplifier? That means that seperate channels would have to be fused...I am thinking front and back. Also, you say above that in M&T each speaker has it's own wire coming from the amp. I don't think that could be correct. You either have a 2-channel, or a 4-channel amp. If each speaker had it's own line, then it would be a 6-channel amp, correct?Either way, it looks like I will be taking the front right seat out, having a look at the amp, and then most likely buying a new amp.Hopefully someone will come along here who knows exactly what happened.

[joatmon]

There's a wiring diagram for the amp at http://forums.genvibe.com/zero...o.gif, shows separate wires coming out of the amp for each of the six speakers. I don't know if the tweeters arre tied to the front or rear channel inside the amp, but the wires to the tweeters are separate. Since you lost both the rear speakers and the tweeters, then I'd guess the tweeters run off the rear speaker circuit, but I never messed with the fade/balance in mine enough to notice.edit - just checked my car and the tweeter volume is controlled with the front speaker volume. I was saying that that I do not think that a blown fuse in either the underhood fuse block or the underdash fuse block would cause your problems. Hopefully there are fuses inside the amp, and that replacing one will fix the problem, but I do not know if there are fuses in the amp or not.You could probably get to the amp easy enough by sliding the passenger seat forward all the way, without having to remove the seat altogether.Good luck, and if you take the amp apart and find fuses in there, be sure to post a pic of where they are, and what kind/rating the fuses are.

[Jahntassa]

Many aftermarket amplifiers have multiple fuses on them. I've never known exactly how they're wired, but I don't think it's a fuse per channel, because I have a monoblock amplifier that has three 15 amp fuses giving me a total of 45 amps worth of fuse. If one goes out, the whole amplifier dies.The M&T amplifier is a six channel amplifier. To answer that question..Now, were you installing these speakers with the radio on? Or was the radio/car off? If it was on, most likely the speaker wiring touched the metal of the car, and shorted out part of the internals of the amplifier. The factory amplifier is NOTHING like the aftermarket amps.If the radio was off, and this happened, then I have no idea what could've happened.You'd be right that if the amplifier fuse blew, it'd take out the whole amplifier. Try unplugging the amp under the seat a few minutes, then plugging it back in. If no change, then it's shorted.Putting in an aftermarket amplifier will require new wiring. You'll have to interface it with the existing radio, if you don't get a new one, run new power wire to the battery, and integrate into the harnesses under the seat for the speaker outputs.There're probably a few people in the forums that have a M&T amp they aren't using sitting around, try posting up in the For Sale/Wanted forum and see if anyone's got a spare.

[SlappyMcHappy]

Quote, originally posted by Jahntassa »Many aftermarket amplifiers have multiple fuses on them. I've never known exactly how they're wired, but I don't think it's a fuse per channel, because I have a monoblock amplifier that has three 15 amp fuses giving me a total of 45 amps worth of fuse. If one goes out, the whole amplifier dies.The M&T amplifier is a six channel amplifier. To answer that question..Now, were you installing these speakers with the radio on? Or was the radio/car off? If it was on, most likely the speaker wiring touched the metal of the car, and shorted out part of the internals of the amplifier. The factory amplifier is NOTHING like the aftermarket amps.If the radio was off, and this happened, then I have no idea what could've happened.You'd be right that if the amplifier fuse blew, it'd take out the whole amplifier. Try unplugging the amp under the seat a few minutes, then plugging it back in. If no change, then it's shorted.Putting in an aftermarket amplifier will require new wiring. You'll have to interface it with the existing radio, if you don't get a new one, run new power wire to the battery, and integrate into the harnesses under the seat for the speaker outputs.There're probably a few people in the forums that have a M&T amp they aren't using sitting around, try posting up in the For Sale/Wanted forum and see if anyone's got a spare.Ok...now we're getting somewhere. And yes, I am an idiot and did have the radio on and the wires did hit the metal door frame and that is when the sparks flew and then the tweeters and speakers died.I will check the fuse in the angine compartment (sure it will be fine)...and I don't know if there are any fuses on the M&T amp. If there is, I will check them. Once those are confirmed good, I will then unplug amp and let it sit a few. Upon plugging it back in, if it doesn't work, then I am getting a new one. With a new amp, is it conceivable that I could just take the exisitng wires running into the M&T amp and modify them to run into a newly purchased amp? Also, you are saying that this M&T amp is a 6-channel amp. Would that be the new one I would have to purchase in order to correctly hook the existing wires into it? Seems a little crazy to have two dedicated channels to the little front satelite tweeters.I see that they don't even really sell 6-channel amps here http://www.crutchfield.com/S-0...avf=N so...to do this correctly, what would you do. Just run the door speakers in the car off a 4 channel amp, and then run the front tweeters off of the head unit? Can you even do that?

[Jahntassa]

Yeah, having the radio off would prevent things. But..that's okay! It's possible that something just happened to be touching anyway, and it would've been worse for it to happen when you turned the radio on for the first time with the speaker shorting out...From what I saw of Ragingfish's amplifier (he sent me one he had to mess with), there're only two connectors on the amplifier, and no fuses.. There's probably an amplifier fuse somewhere in one of the fuse boxes, but I don't have M&T, so I can't identify it.It's conceivable that you could simply rewire everything at the original M&T amp location, but you'll still need new power wires. You should be looking for a four channel amplifier. The four channel should have no problem powering the front speakers and tweeters on the same channels. Depending on the "size" of the 4 channel, the power rating, will determine your power cable. I'd suggest at least 8 ga cable, if not 4 depending on the size of the amplifier power. Also, I assume you're keeping the factory headunit? You may have issues there, too. I'm not sure if you can wire the factory headunit into the amplifier directly, as far as input/output goes.Most four channel amps will have both Low level (RCA style) and hi-level inputs. The highlevel inputs take speaker level from the radio and amplify that. Unfortunately, you're amplifying an amplified signal (in simple terms, there's more to it than that), so you won't get the best sound out of it.If you have an aftermarket radio, use the RCA outputs it provides, and get some good quality car-rated RCA cables. The stuff from Radio Shack is NOT good in this application.If you go by Circuit City, you can get an Audiobahn A4004T which will do the trick, and fits under the passenger seat with no problems.To answer the last question, you probably could run the tweeters off the headunit with some creative wiring under the seat, but, you could just as well wire it so they connect into the front channels of the new amplifier along with the front door speakers.

[ragingfish]

I got an extra m&T amp lying around if you wanna buy it...

[joatmon]

Did you ever take the cover off the amp to see if there any fuses inside?

[ragingfish]

I just popped off the cover on mine, no fuses.

[SlappyMcHappy]

Quote, originally posted by joatmon »Did you ever take the cover off the amp to see if there any fuses inside?I did...no fuses. Amp is blown.

[cdFxer]

lol, is that what became of my old amp I traded ya for?

[ragingfish]

Quote, originally posted by cdFxer »lol, is that what became of my old amp I traded ya for?Yeah, it's been collecting dust. It didn't fix the problem I'd hoped it would...

[cdFxer]

Bummer although I dont miss it...I think my hearing is being hurt worse now than the 10+ years of factory work...lololol

[SlappyMcHappy]

Hey cdfxer - Thanks for the offer to take a look at the amp free and help out if you could. If I was going the route of installing a new amp, which I know would in turn lead to a new head unit, I would definetely take you up on your offer. But, I am lazy and low on the funds (moving from Michigan to NY in 2 weeks) and have too much on my plate to mess around right now. I'm going to just buy a used amp off of a member here and pick it up from him this Saturday at the mini-Michigan meet.But - your attempt at a good deed didn't go un-noticed and good karma has been floated your way.