My brother got a used 500/1 and jl10w6 off the internet and we hooked it up last night. Amp works perfect in my car and fires my sub perfectly. Heres the problem:

when hooked into his car, the amp doesn't power on immediately when the car fires up, and the thermal light blinks a few times. we are using a 50amp fuse, btw. If you throw the signal sensing switch either way, then it turns on and begins pushing the sub... poorly. The sub is barely putting out any music at all. His RCAs work, as I tested them against my amp. I'm completely stumped at this point and could use any ideas. I do have a voltmeter btw.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

-Wren

 

The amp works in your car but not his?

I'd guess a bad ground for the amplifier or other power related problem.

 

the thermal light flickering sounds fishy, unless this is normal procedure for JL amps. I've never own one so I don't know. What guage cable are you using for pwr? Is the grounding cable at least equivalant to the power cable gauge, if not larger? I'd measure the voltage drop at the point where the power cable inserts into the amp. Paul correct me if I'm wrong, but Wren will need to leave to pwr cable connect to the amp in order to drop the voltage, correct? One lead on the pwr cable and the other on grnd. Next, I'd measure your amps ground, in reference to the car battery's ground. You might need a long piece of wire attached to the neg terminal of the battery to complete this task, since the DDM leads will not be long enough to reach the battery. Make sure you have a good low ohmage grnd.

 

"the amp doesn't power on immediately when the car fires up"
that's normal for 500/1.

 

Wren, I think you should post your question here....
https://my350z.com/forum/showthread....+wren+anything

 

Semi-figured out the problem. Hooked up a running Lexus LX570 battery to the puny jeep wrangler battery and it worked perfectly. So... its just not getting enough juice I guess. Guess its time to tell the bro to upgrade the battery... I warned him this got expensive quick!

and VO- its answers to all of *your* questions, not mine.

 

What about the alternator? Have you measured the output voltage of your alternator while it's running? It may not be producing enough juice to recharge you battery to max capacity.