what could cause this? it happens within the first minute or two of driving. im going to go test and see if it happens when the subs are not hooked up in a bit. let me know if you got any ideas

 

Could be anything. Does the "smoke" smell like electrical or burning plastic/rubber?

First I would check to see if your fuse is properly sized and working correctly. If your amp is shorting, the fuse/breaker should trip. If the fuse/breaker is in order, I would look into the easy fix areas of the amp such as a cooling fan malfunction or excessive dust build up.

Report back with your findings and we can go deeper if need be. I am sure others will post other avenues to look at.

 

smells electrical from what i can tell but i cant rule out non electrical problems. i drove around for about 15-20 min with the subs unplugged and everything was ok. i have a 150 amp fuse on 0 gauge just after the battery. that runs back to a distro block where i have an 80 amp and a 100 amp fuse splitting the 0 into 4 gauge. im doubting its the fuses since they arent blown (1500w rms amp).

one suggestion was that maybe the amp is overpowering my subs. the amp is 2500w rms @ 2ohm and 1500 @4ohm. i have two subs that are 8 ohm wired in parallel (4 ohm load) that are 150w rms. i have the gain way way down and the subs arent blown, but it was suggested that if the subs are being overpowered than the ohm load might drop too much. i dont know anything about this...does it make sense to anyone?

 

It sounds like you just have a fried amp. To my knowledge if you were overloading the amp it should just cut off, as in you are running the amp too hard, it over heats and just shuts itself off. If you amp was over powering your subs you would just blow the fuses. The fuses are there to keep everything in tact. My suggestion is send the amp back to be tested for something wrong internally.

 

be careful that thing can go on fire and burn your truck

 

your amp wouldnt smoke if it was too big for your subs you would just blow the crap out of your subs....the ohm load will change little if any when the subs are playing usually not enough to make it bad (with the exception of the infinity kappa line)....i am with the other guys it is probably just a bad amp, or you have some speaker wire grounded out somewhere along the line (ran a screw through my speaker wire and didnt notice for bout 10 min. and my amps where so hot i couldnt touch them so i could see how this would have made it smoke after 15-20 min.)......

 

the amp does not smoke if i simply disconnect the subs though. i am going to go use an ohm meter and see what its reading from the subs. im thinking if the ohm load is dropping a ton, it might cause this, and i dont think it would blow the fuses. ill go test and report back

 

if the ohm load dropped a ton then the amp would overheat and go into protect mode, if the amp is smoking it must be for a reason it doesnt have a protect mode for (like grounding speaker wire). an amp will blow fuses for grounded power, will go into protect for overheating, but doesnt have any protection for the speaker terminals....

 

my amp does have a protect mode which also confused me. i re-hooked up everything to test the ohm load and what do you know....now the amp isnt putting power to the subs. it is kind of weird though because the amp has display LED's that light up so im guessing/hoping that there is a fuse in the amp that blew. i guess ill open up the amp and have a look. its an expensive amp...hope its not trash.

bowtie, so what are you saying you think happened?

 

i think somewhere the positive and negative speaker wire are touching, could be insinde the box or where the speaker wire hooks to the box terminal or where the speaker wire hooks to the amp, but thats the only thing i can think of that would make it run hot enough to smoke and not blow a fuse....weird that it doesnt have protect mode though what kind of amp is it? i have a feeling that if it doesnt play the subs anymore it might be gone......