...never buy a Poweracoustik brand cap.

This company is resonsible for blowing up my Phoenix Gold Xenon 200.4 amp. It is now a $900 paper weight.

 

what did the cap do that made the amp blow up?

 

terminals are marked backwards

 

ouch..now thats f'ed up...did you try contacting them and see if they will pay for a new amp?

 

Im working on it...


on the bright side, my entire car is being re-wired to accept my new 1200.1

 

wow that's unbelievable that they'd mark the terminals wrong! that really blows and they should definitely cover the money you lost.

 

we shall see... I plan on ruining there reputation

 

So did the cap blow up ... thats about the only thing that could happen to it.... assuming it is not-bipolar ... then it wouldn't even matter

 

the cap still works and I got my phoenix gold amp back with no charge to me I love phoenix gold

 

the how did the cap damage the amp?

I am really confused.

 

the "ground"(or what was supposed to be) on the cap and the "ground" of the amp are grounded to the same place.

As the Cap was labeled backasswards....the cap sent a **** load of current into the amp through the common ground sending the amp into protection. So my amp had current coming through the power wire and the ground wire...that cant be a good combo.

 

aaahhh, now I get it. thanks for the explanation ... I guess I didn't think about it that way.

glad to hear PG is taking care of you.

 

yes sir, PG kicks *** They have my loyalty forever

 

If you charged the cap before you installed it you should have figured out the terminals were backwards! If you didn't charge it there would be no current in the cap to feed into your amp. If anything, the cap would be damaged, its kinda of strange the amp got messed up. Typically polarized electrolytic caps will explode when hooked up backwards, you got lucky it sounds like.

When I used to work at Circuit City we got a bunch of Monster Cable caps that weren't labeled at all. The one thing to keep in mind is that NO car stereo company possess the knowledge or the tools required to make a cap that big. Most car audio manufactuerers buy thier caps from the same company (that is why all car audio caps have the same size and design). The people at Power Acoustic have probably never even seen one of those caps!!!!

Anyway, its good that they fixed your amp.

 

well dude, I dont have a clue, all I know is now that it is hooked up backasswards it works.

The Phoenix Gold amps (Xenons) do not have fuses to blow when something like this happens. Thus it went into protect.

 

yes you're very fortunate. I'm a retired submarine veteran...One of the ET's (electronics tech) had his plexiglass protective face mask badly burned when a 600 farad cap grenaded in the radar set he was working on....it wasn't pretty. It reaffirms my opinion of PG...built like a bank vault... nice install by the way....death by SPL?...lol..

 

160db....

death by spl. Some people claim that 160db is enough pressure to stop a human heart. To my knowledge only a handful of cars have been built to output more then 160db and no one has ever been confirmed killed by them.

Uselless facts are amazing!

 

what the hell were they using a 600F cap for? I would imagine that that large of a cap would have as much storage capacity of a small automotive battery! Do they even make anything large enough to test that much capacitance? Sorry for the off topic response.

 

Navigational radar....limited space on a sub...we don't test cap that big. Howrever, we had bigger ones that that in the sonar subsystem...which would fry a diver in the water...very high SPL...yes there a more cars thatn you think that can exceed 160 SPL. I believe the USAC and IASCA record currently stands at 182...realizing that an increase of 3 db is doubling of sound pressure. Yes, as you stated, cardiac fiberlation can be induced my high sound pressures. You should see the list of precations we had to go through to go active on sonar on the boat...Regards Bill McMahon FTC(SS) USN

 

Thats really cool. One of my old bosses used to work on submarines in/for the Navy. I don't think I would enjoy working on something that could can go do down but might not make it back up! Thanks for the information, very very insteresting stuff!