protect mode ?

Had the boat out for the 1st time this year after redoing the stereo again, added a harpoon amp, resused the 800watt amp for the incabins and just cleaning up the wiring mess from the patchwork install from last year.

spent a few hrs in the garage jammin the system and all worked good

anyway, after wakeboarding and surfing for a little over a hour the headunit goes into protect mode. my wife really doesnt like music loud and it was a sunday morning too-its a smaller lake so I had not been jammin it loud

stock 08 kenwood headunit

what is protect mode and how do i get it out of this mode
I did try shutting the headunit off-no luck
tried shutting off the stereo switch on the dash-no luck

Ideas ??

Thanks

I have had the same problem from the same Stock Kenwood Headunit 08', except my stereo will work for a couple weeks just fine and then it will decide to go into protect mode. I'm wondering if it just overheats. I only turn it up at about 75% -80% max volume on the hu. Anyways, I found this:

Kenwood head units show "protect" when there's a problem with the speaker outputs. This might mean a shorted speaker wire, a blown speaker, or an internal defect in the head unit. Once the condition that's causing the "protect" mode is fixed, the CD player should be back in normal mode the next time you turn it on.

If it's staying in "protect", then you'll definitely have to remove the stereo and do some troubleshooting to fix it. Many car audio stores will do system troubleshooting, for a fee. If you want to do it yourself, here's what you need to do:

Pull the Kenwood unit from the dash and disconnect all the speaker wires. Turn it on and see if the "protect" message displays. If it does, the stereo has an internal defect and will need to be serviced. If it doesn't, then turn it off, and re-connect one speaker. Turn it on again and see if it displays "protect".

If it works with a single speaker connected, keep re-connecting the others until you identify the speaker that's causing the problem. There may be a wiring problem or defective speaker in that location.

If it displays "protect" with a single speaker connected, then disconnect that one and try a different one. If all the speakers cause a "protect" mode, then you're probably back to a defective head unit, unless your friend managed to blow all your speakers at once.


Also, I think I had to pull ground and power off to get it to reset. There is a reset button on the hu but I couldn't get it to work for me?

Daze - do you have the deck powering any speakers directly? or are you just going RCA outs?

-Brian
Exile Audio

This also happened on my old Kenwood - no rhyme or reason behind it. To get mine to work I had to push the reset button on the headunit, I think it was either on, or behind the faceplate. When I upgraded the problem went away.

Happened to me once or twice when there was a bunch of stuff in the glove box, I guess it was getting too hot.

Junky, thanks I'll try your trouble shooting there, may be a week before i get to it

Brian, no speakers wired to headunit, all to amps. ideas?

ian, where abouts is that reset button?

bzubke1, was thinking that also as there is some stuff in that glove box-very possible as I was in a turn going back thru the waves.

Thanks

As for the deck going into protect mode, heat will cause it and running the Deck at 75 to 80% is only hard if your using the on board amp. Using the RCAs only does not over work the deck at all.

As for Moombadaze, i know i read you had a bad tower speaker, that would be taxing the Harpoon by having a bad speaker and could put that amp into protect mode, if so it could translate back to the deck. I personally had a couple amps go into Protect mode last summer but never an issue with the deck.

Another thing to think about before you get to crazy into your trouble shooting is you mentioned you had a bad battery also and were running the boat on 1 battery. Was the bad battery your primary stereo battery? Thus when you switched to the house battery to run the boat the deck was still pulling power off the stereo main battery and it finally went all the way dead sending the deck into Protect mode?

I would do this, Fix the bad battery first. Then see if the deck works. If not fix the bad speaker on the tower. Then see if the deck works. If it still doesnt work then start trouble shooting your deck.

No point in spending all your time looking for the Deck issue when you know you have other problems that can all relate to causing the deck to act up on you.

Mike, explain a little more about this if you could "running the Deck at 75 to 80%", what volume on the head unit should I run at, seams I did have it a higher number sunday vrs last year.

is the headunit volume not supposed to have a effect on volume coming out the amps to the speakers?

Battery-when the boat would not start I switched to "both" to start it, then switched back to batt 1 to charge while the boat was in use, I have the amps wired directly to the switch so the amps where also on batt 1 but I was not running the stereo the whole time. never shut the boat off till it went on the trailer

may be my dead bow speakers and the one dead tower speaker sent it to protect mode. i know i have the bow speakers wired incorrectly as they did work prior to the rewire, I do know the tower speaker is a connection in that speaker only, I started off with 2 not working but swapped them with the two working and one came back to life and that same speaker was not working in the new position on the tower so I know the wiring in the tower is not the issue. I do know when i put the harpoon in all the tower speakers where working, wonder if sitting for about 4 months with the speakers sitting off to the sided caused a connection issue. this is humid florida after all and in 22 yrs down here this has been my longest stint at not getting on the water

think I'll open that speaker up and check my connections sometime soon but again, it may be a little while before i get a chance to check stuff but I may call when im going at it to chat about it

I had my Kenwood 440 go into protect mode a few weeks back while I was doing some work and listening to the stereo. Kinda freaked out, tried a few different things like, disconnecting the battery, popped the deck head off and pushed the reset button, each time it would play for a second or two and go back into protect mode. Then I relized the battery only had about 9 volts left in it. Charged battery for a few minutes, pushed the reset button again everything was back working. Mandley may be right if you have a battery with a dead cell it could cause an issue with the HU.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by moombadaze

Mike, explain a little more about this if you could "running the Deck at 75 to 80%", what volume on the head unit should I run at, seams I did have it a higher number sunday vrs last year.

is the headunit volume not supposed to have a effect on volume coming out the amps to the speakers?

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What i mean by this is if your using the RCA the decks amp isnt working very hard. Its only pushing a Low Voltage signal but yet it still clips and causes distortion to the amps if you go to 100%.

If you wired Speakers directly to the deck and pushing it at 80% then the amp will heat up as its working because its pushing a lot of power to those speakers. High Voltage signal.

Voltage signals are hgh and low in relation to the decks output not in relations to say a battery LOL. Just figurative speaking.

As for the Harpoon if your left 2 speakers are wired together to drop to a 2ohm load then the Harpoon is going to be fine.
Last year over the winter my Harpoon had a channel go bad over the winter. I had no sound on the left 2 XM7s and when i switched the speakers with the right side, the Left side from the Harpoon still didnt work.

If your moving the suspected bad speaker around and its not working them yea its the issue, as long as you can get a known good speaker to play in the suspected bad speakers original location then the speaker its self is the issue.

Daze - If your deck is only running RCA's out, then this is strange. Usually you see this situation when the deck amplifier is driving some speakers and one of the speakers has cooked, thus shutting down the deck. The same situation can happen to big amplifiers as well.

Heat kills electronics. If your deck is getting overly hot, then either something bad internally, or when the heat reaches a certain point the deck is protecting itself. this could be a situation where the deck is just tired and needs to be replaced.

If I where in your shoes, I'd probably isolate the deck from the amplifiers (i.e. tower/cabin/sub) and turn it on for awhile to see if it heats up and cuts out. Same test could be done with your stuff connected to it. Your only driving line level outputs so it shouldn't take a real long time to reach normal operating temps.

As mike mentioned, if you have battery issues in the scene then that should be addressed first. Feel free to hit me up on phone. I think you got my digits. Can walk you thru a couple of things...

-Brian

Brian, Im betting this battery is my main issue at this point. hopefully I can get some time saturday after work to get back into the boat and do some work to correct that.


Hey, since it looks like I did not wire up my incabins correctly, I had no idea the bow speakers had no volume out of them till I was standing in the bow this weekend, while it was in the garage I never sat in the bow to check them-bad on my part, how should I hook the 6 incabins up to the 800 amp?

gotta say that 800 and the incabins rock now-they sound so much better now with some power getting to them

thanks

The 4 cabins wired to the rear channels of the amp and the bow wired to the front channels.

Check the back of the deck for any exposed wires shorting on themselves or on the head unit itself. That may be the culprit as well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by newty

The 4 cabins wired to the rear channels of the amp and the bow wired to the front channels.

Check the back of the deck for any exposed wires shorting on themselves or on the head unit itself. That may be the culprit as well.

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Second this you will just adjust the gain slightly higher on the channel with the cabins and it will be lower on the channels with the bow but it will sound balanced when walking from front to back of boat

Dazed - haha. oh look, it's like a free upgrade-- 2 more speakers with music.

re hookup: exactly as Mike and Newt said. You will want to adjust the amp gains a bit as the front section will run at 4 ohms and the rear section will run at 2 ohms.

Also do some fine tuning with the crossover and see where the sweet spot is and make sure your running in HP mode to protect (filter out lows) the cabins.

-Brian
Exile Audio

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brianinpdx

Dazed - haha. oh look, it's like a free upgrade-- 2 more speakers with music.

-Brian
Exile Audio

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---I love it

The head unit lives

not sure what I did or if I did anything. checked all the speaker wires from the headunit-no exposed wires, but did notice I had my amp rca's going into the wrong output, swapped outputs, found the reset and hit that and it came back to life.

bow speakers, had to remove both batterys and unbolt the amp board to be able to move the amps to where i could see how I had them wired, bow speakers were wired as Newty said to. Started looking at amp controls and moved the rca inputs from rear to front and switched channels and after hooking a battery back up to test them the bow speakers were cranking. got everthing bolted back in place and had a beer.

next up, gotta figure out why my one tower speaker isnt working--bet my soldering came loose.


thanks for the help guys