Amps Over Heating

[dusty2221]

Good deal man. We were in the area this weekend, wish we could have made it out to Belton to ride with you guys.

[rdlangston13]

Harpoon cut off yesterday and when I touched it I think I almost burnt my hand. Charged all the batteries over night and went out again today and it cut off again. Fml

[EarmarkMarine]

With no more than two pair of surf speakers on a Harpoon something else has to be going on here.
If you are trying to drive surf speakers extra hard at wake range then I wouldn't be surprised.
Make sure that the DCR of all four tower speakers are nearly identical. Since you have 'Q's remove just one at a time to see if the amplifier doesn't start running much cooler. This would indicate partial damage in that speaker which can create an inordinate load.

David
Earmark Marine

[rdlangston13]

Can't you just check resistance across the speaker to see if it is damaged? I never run more than 75% volume. I have butt connector in my speaker wire half way up the tower, could those be adding resistance causing the problem? Should I run 12 or 14 gauge wire here instead of 16?

[rdlangston13]

Also the ambient air temp was about 100-104 degrees. The
Volume according to my ws420 was between the half marker and the next marker up. we turn it about right there when we pull someone and then cut it off when the fall. The cabins and sub were doing this before the battery changes but we never really took them past half volume this weekend and we never had a problem

[EarmarkMarine]

Yes, you can check the DCR for consistency (+ or - .1 ohm is fine) between speakers but if there is an issue with a tweeter then it will not show up since it has a series capacitor in the highpass section of the passive crossover network that will not pass DC.
A butt connector absolutely creates resistance which is why we solder and heatshrink everything. In fact if you have a butt connector on a 15 amp halogen light supply harness it will get hot enough to burn you.
For the kind of power you are running 14/4 is par for four surf speakers and 12/4 is the norm for four HLCDs. 16/4 is light although its doubtful that either of these issues are the actual cause for your thermal failure.
The relationship between a volume control and output power is not a linear equation. If a volume attenuator works in 1.5 dB increments then cutting back two clicks is half power. Cutting back six clicks would be one/tenth power. So I'm not sure what you mean by,"75 percent".
You could email me. Maybe we'll set up a phone conversation. We'll start from the beginning. I need to verify a number of conditions. david@earmarkcaraudio.com

David
Earmark Marine

[rdlangston13]

75% just means the knob was turned 75% of it's total travel.

[DOCDRS]

The other night I ran my hlcds at max, was rocking on the way home from dinner, at 37mph ,it was dark , so no one could see my regs # , my bad, for 1 hour on my class D and when I check the voltage on my batts the next morning they were at 12.78 volts.....very happy ,btw the sound was awesome