NFB: System Gurus - Alpine Amp Error

[Christopherrr]

Wow...I'm glad I'm not in Atlanta right now. ...hey guys, I'm in Dallas right now and one of my buddies is having a problem with his Alpine Amp. It's throwing a E-3 code and shutting itself down. E-3 seems to mean excessive current after doing some research. We checked all the connections and everything seems fine. Wires are good and everything is connected clean and solidly.

I know some of y'all live, eat, and breathe car audio...so if anyone can help out, it'll be sweetness. Preciate in advance...

[MN6WS6]

Could be that a voice coil on one of his speakers is locked up and shorting the two leads out (can be checked with a multimeter).

Otherwise, I'd have to say a grounded speaker wire (once again, need a multimeter).

[Christopherrr]

it still spits out the error even without the speaker hooked up. The sub isn't hooked up at all...

Unplugged it and gave it awhile to reset...still spitting E-3 after the speaker being unhooked.

[ConElite]

ouch!

Then the only thing i can think of that you Burned out one of the channels in the amp. This was most likly done by the speaker wire grounding out or touching eachother. I had The Kicker KX700.5 and the same thing happened to me. The problem was that the connection that connects the wire to the speaker terminal was bad and fell off and the speaker wies touched and burned out the channel. Thats most likly the problem. All i have to say is hello NEW AMP.

[ws6drbob]

My only suggestion would be checking all connections and check the amp's fuse one last time. Your culprit could very well be your ground... When i sold car audio we would see this in Alpine amps and if i remember correctly it is either that your ground wire is too long (yes that can cause problems) or not making a good ground... Or... if when he was installing he touched his power wire to his ground and fried the amp (usually the fuse can save this)... Or... like someone said you blew a channel. Its been two years since i worked with em hands on so if my knowledge is outdated i apologize. BTW MN6WS6 you can usually determine a "locked" or "fried" voice coil by the fact that the voice coil is just that... "locked" which means you can not manipulate the woofer... and you would use an ohm meter to check it( not quite sure what a multi meter is ). Well good luck and i hope it works out for ya LimTeng.

[ws6drbob]

Ohhh forgot to ask... Is this amp brand new???? Has it ever worked before???? If its new it could be bad outta the box. You would be surprised how many times i had to write up service tickets on brand new amps.

[MN6WS6]

ws6drbob, when I was saying locked, I mean that in the terms of an internal problem where the wiring in the sub itself crosses over causing a direct short, i.e. zero ohm load showing (well actually it would show more like .01 or .02)

A multimeter is the tool you use to check that, like a Fluke meter, checks voltage, ohm loads, and a lot of other stuff.

Anyway, with the new information, I would have to say a bad amp. Go over to ikesound.com and get a new one, or a factory refurbished one. Their prices are lower than what some dealers pay cost for.

[Christopherrr]

Ohhh forgot to ask... Is this amp brand new???? Has it ever worked before???? If its new it could be bad outta the box. You would be surprised how many times i had to write up service tickets on brand new amps.

it's been running for 6 months up until Saturday...it just stopped working. Which makes it even more wierd.

We're gonna probably take it back to Curcuit City...4 year replacment plan.