melted cables

misfitsfiend · Post by **misfitsfiend** » July 30th, 2007, 11:19 am

i dont know much about this electrical stuff but i definately did something wrong on this hook up... the cables on my amplifier/subwoofer set up started to melt around the nodes on my capacitor, anyone have any ideas why it might be doing that?

chew* · Post by chew* » July 30th, 2007, 12:19 pm

Bad connections. I would check all your power and ground connections over, You could have a poor ground.

xboxlivemonkey · Post by **xboxlivemonkey** » July 31st, 2007, 12:36 am

[quote="chew*"]Bad connections. I would check all your power and ground connections over, You could have a poor ground.[/quote]

whats poor ground

PATDIESEL · Post by **PATDIESEL** » July 31st, 2007, 2:28 am

You have a ground and a power wire in any electrical circuit. If the ground is too long or is not touching a large piece of metal then, there is not enough or no ground. A circuit with a poor ground will create an enormous amount of heat and is probably what is melting his wires. Some welding machines work on this exact principle and use the electrical arc to create a very hot reaction which melts the metal, or welds the two metals together.

Nd4SpdSe · Post by **Nd4SpdSe** » July 31st, 2007, 6:56 am

Maybe the guage of wire he's using is too small for the system he has?

lakersfan1 · Post by **lakersfan1** » July 31st, 2007, 9:34 am

xboxlivemonkey wrote:
whats poor ground

God help us.

misfitsfiend · Post by **misfitsfiend** » July 31st, 2007, 9:51 am

umm all my connections look fine pretty much, for my capacitor i have the ground going to the actual body of the car, and for the amp the ground goes to the strut... unless one of those was a bad choice im not sure :/

Mazdaspeed96743 · Post by **Mazdaspeed96743** » July 31st, 2007, 1:52 pm

What gauge size number is your power wires?

Nd4SpdSe · Post by **Nd4SpdSe** » July 31st, 2007, 2:00 pm

misfitsfiend wrote:umm all my connections look fine pretty much, for my capacitor i have the ground going to the actual body of the car, and for the amp the ground goes to the strut... unless one of those was a bad choice im not sure :/

Depends, kinda off, but as long at they are touching bare metal. If it's paint, you'll need to scrape/grind it away to make a clean connection

lakersfan1 · Post by **lakersfan1** » August 3rd, 2007, 3:20 pm

misfitsfiend wrote:umm all my connections look fine pretty much, for my capacitor i have the ground going to the actual body of the car, and for the amp the ground goes to the strut... unless one of those was a bad choice im not sure :/

I assume you mean a strut MOUNT ...... which is entirely coated with rubber ............. an electrical insulator.

chew* · Post by chew* » August 3rd, 2007, 4:12 pm

lakersfan1 wrote:
misfitsfiend wrote:umm all my connections look fine pretty much, for my capacitor i have the ground going to the actual body of the car, and for the amp the ground goes to the strut... unless one of those was a bad choice im not sure :/
I assume you mean a strut MOUNT ...... which is entirely coated with rubber ............. an electrical insulator.

This location is fine if he is using what i think he is using, once paint is scraped its the best ground according to my multimeter, Likely due to the thickness of metal used for added support. As you can see both of my battery banks are grounded there.

misfitsfiend · Post by **misfitsfiend** » August 3rd, 2007, 9:57 pm

yea not the strut mount, its the bolts that come up from the struts or whatever, the ones youd be bolting a strut bar to.. anyways i think i fixed the problem, it seemd that i needed a bigger guage ground wire from the amp, thnx guys

lakersfan1 · Post by **lakersfan1** » August 4th, 2007, 12:01 pm

misfitsfiend wrote:yea not the strut mount, its the bolts that come up from the struts or whatever, the ones youd be bolting a strut bar to..

Yes. That would be the strut MOUNT. That's what those four bolts go to. As said, if you didn't scrape paint off underneath the bolt, then it'd be useless and just grounding to the isolated strut mount. At least on some other bolts in the car, if you don't scrape paint, then at least the bolt would be going into something electrically coupled to the chassis.

misfitsfiend · Post by **misfitsfiend** » August 5th, 2007, 3:54 pm

oh, heh *shrug* i fixed the problem anyways no more melting cables.. thanx for that tidbit of info tho....

SuperK · Post by **SuperK** » August 10th, 2007, 9:26 pm

xboxlivemonkey wrote:

whats poor ground

A good example of poor ground would be Georgia Red Clay. Very poor ground. Hard to work, pathetic to grow anything in.

If you want very good ground, usually a high quality grass, such as zoysia, or anywhere where there is dense foliage would render good ground.
Usually called topsoil, however.

Moral of the story: If your wires are burning, put top soil in your car.