Need Help with My New Audio Set Up

[ian ashton]

It's an Allen wrench, small. There should be one in the box the amp shipped in.

[North Woods Mobius]

It's an Allen wrench, small. There should be one in the box the amp shipped in.

The Good News: I figured out it was a 2mm Allen Wrench and got everything hooked up, including the RCA Y splitters (I actually figured this out abut 5 min after I hit the panic button and posted my question!)

The Better News: After completing the re-wiring and re-configuration on the Exile 15.4, everything worked great!

The Bad News: After skiing and surfing for 45 min, I lost all 6 cabin speakers again (although the light on the back of the Exile amp stayed blue and never went red). So I'm almost back to Square One ... my last effort will be to ensure that the Dealer actually ran 4 gauge power & ground wires to the Exile amp (I think they're actually 8 gauge). I'll double check the power & ground wires tomorrow to figure out my next steps.... In the meantime, I'll just keep pounding music through my tower speakers!

[ian ashton]

Also I think the way it's wired now is how you want it.

[ian ashton]

So, in the interest of helping, I'm gonna probably hurt your feelings, and I don't want to seem like a dick- the install is kind of a bummer; take it back, don't ask them to fix it, just get your money back. You can use these to highlight your case;

-That wire sucks, and running it through that main distro is weird. Those fuses are gross. It needs a 4awg or 1/0 ran to a battery (or battery switch), and a dedicated fused distribution block. Same for ground (less fused)

-The gains on the 15.4 are probably set a bit high, and they shouldn't be the same (assuming you want the same level across the front and rear pairs)

-I'd also the Crossover switch to Full, can't tell if they are pegged at 250 (which would probably sound aweful) or 90s but they should both be the same, which they appear not to be.

-What's the deal with the small ground wire coming off the 15.4? Is it connected to the 300.2? Either way, that's hackery.

-Invest in some zip ties to clean the wiring up, I can't believe they let this leave the shop looking like this.

[jfox8807]

Ok so I'm gonna try and help. 8 ga is good for 60-80 amps at that short of a run and that a constant flow which is not what an amp does at all. So the 8 gauge is not a major problem. The amp being in 2 channel mode is fine that has to do with input more than anything else. The cabin speakers being wired at 2 ohms is fine as long as they are not bridging two channels together. Best I can tell from the pic they are not. Hard to tell which tho lot of wires there I would not of done it like that. The fuse holders are ugly but that's not a measure of performance. As long as each fuse is less than the max load the wire can handle. Using the stock distribution block is ok as long as it is supplied with an appropriate size wire or the block is fused at less than the max amperage of the supply wire.

Now what I am little worried about is they mounted the amp directly to the carpet. I would of like to seen a spacer same as the kicker to allow max air flow. Cause thermal protection could be the cause. The rcas that they installed look to be rather cheap which could also be an issue. The gain setting could also be an issue and cause an increased risk of going into thermal protection mode.

Also I have a 2011 xlv and my cabin speakers had a factory quick disconnect for the speaker leads which cause me to have intermittent issues due to lack of connectivity.

I also have some question?
are your batteries in good working order.
Will the amp stop working while your playing with engine off

[ian ashton]

It's unlikely it's a thermal issue. I've pushed my 15.4 for upwards of 4 hours at nearly full volume without it going into protect, and mine is mounted on a flat surface without spacers

[jfox8807]

Well each amp and install are different. I don't know any of your set up ,but thermal protect mode would cause a full cut out of audio and with the price of 4 rubber spacers being so cheap. It's well worth a try and will not hurt at all.

[North Woods Mobius]

Well each amp and install are different. I don't know any of your set up ,but thermal protect mode would cause a full cut out of audio and with the price of 4 rubber spacers being so cheap. It's well worth a try and will not hurt at all.

Thanks fellas, I really appreciate the help with this. And jfox, thanks for your PM - I'll ping you when I'm back in the country at the end of the week (I'm in London all week). I am generally a pretty handy DIY kinda guy, but the bulk of my DIY work is related to engines and mechanicals on our cars and snowmobiles. My audio capabilities are definitely at the "Pay the Experts To Do It" end of the spectrum, so the fact that my Moomba dealer managed to hack this up so badly is incredibly frustrating to me (not to mention that fact that he's an hour drive away from our lake home, and our lake home is 5 hours away from our actual home ... ).

Let me ask you guys this very basic question: I assume that any thermal-related cut out would normally be accompanied by the light on the amp going red, indicating that it's flipped into safety mode. But the odd thing about my Exile cut-out is not only that it consistently drops within 5 minutes of starting up, but that every time it happens the light stays blue, indicating (at least to my simple mind) that the amp still thinks everything is OK. This was the case all weekend, and I checked periodically to make sure that the Exile light never went red. Is that correct thinking, or would a blue light not necessarily imply that all is well with my Exile 15.4?

And on the speaker wiring, I followed the Exile wiring diagram by checking each speaker wire in each slot to make sure that I mapped each speaker to the right speaker wire input slot (touching the speaker wire to each slot to confirm the location of each speaker). I labeled them to make sure that I knew what was what. Here's a pic of how I rewired it which should be as Exile and you guys suggested:

IMG_0678.jpg

IMG_0679.jpg

So according to my following Exile's suggested wiring, and having now installed the RCA splitters as everyone has suggested, the last major item that's been suggested is the 8 gauge versus 4 gauge wiring for the power and ground to the Exile amp. Is there anything else here that I'm missing? Sorry for the cries for help on this, my ego is taking a beating for not being able to figure this out by myself already!

[jfox8807]

I'm gonna go with the 8 verses 4 gauge isn't the issue, but there are test you can do to check. First if the wire was under sized for the amp draw from the amp there will be heat. Play it till it cuts off if it only takes 5 min. fill the power wire if it's hot or hotter than the kicker power wire then there's a problem. 2 if you have a volt meter disconnect the power wire from amp and the factory distorbution block and ohm it out. Should read next to nuthing. Also befor you disconnect power from the amp take the voltage reading from the pos and neg on the amp make sure it's seeing full voltage. You can also conect to the pos and neg power on the amp turn it on let it play see if you have voltage drop. I doubt that's what it is tho.

On the blue indicator light subject. I have all Rockford amps on my boat. They do blue and purple ( blue working, purple fault mode) on my 1200.1 the light hardly ever comes on at all and if it does sometimes it's blue sometimes it's purple. The amps working fine all the time. It's just not soldered well or somthin. Point is it may or may not be working correctly.

The redo on wiring looks fine to me very well done looks much cleaner.

But with it happening at a consistent 5 mins almost makes it a thermal issue. There are simple test to figure out why. Just take me up on that pm and will talk thru it. It'll be lots easier that way.

[BigOrange]

I'm curious if you hear from Exile on this....I'm having similar issue with my Javelin, although mine has just cut out completely, not repeatedly doing it after 5 mins of playing. I've talked to them and they want me to try direct input from a phone to the amp inputs, which I'm ready to do next opportunity at the lake, but not for another 2 weeks. I'm pretty confident my configuration and power wiring is correct (i.e. I have 4 AWG wiring fused correctly and shouldn't be overheating) and my light stays blue as well. Just all output to cabins and sub stopped last time during use. I had a previous post about two weeks ago in audio thread.