Well, in all honesty, this was in a ritzy suburb area where I see A LOT of S2000's around there. I honestly believe that 90% of the S2000's are sold in that area. It's kind of annoying driving my car there to see my father on the weekends because I don't feel as special as I do when I'm in the city.

 

Ok, so I went in today and I get the exact same crap... "These amps are resilient... They just don't overheat. Maybe if you were in Arizona for a few hours in the middle of the sun... MAYBE". Look, the other day the thermastat in my dads car read 105 after it was sitting in a parking lot. This is the same day my amp was shutting off a lot. Today there is an overcast and it's been raining so it's only like in the lower 80's. Guess what, my amp is shutting off! It has a piece of that insulation sitting on top of it too to keep the tray from rattling when the bass hits. Come on... If you wrap something up in a blanket and sit it in an enclosed area and push 105 degree's at it, I don't care how resilient a mechanical item is, it's going to overheat.

So, what this guy did was turned the gain down on my amp a little more. He said that it was a "Hair too high". Well, now my system sounds like ass. You can barely hear the sub when the top is up and I don't even have to tell you how bad it sounds with the top down.

The guys are Tweeter are smart guys and I trust their advice and it's why I go there with every single one of my cars... but this time I just feel like they have this idea that this amp is god and can't be harmed and are giving me the run around. They keep blaiming it on my amp "going bad".

I would personally move the amp out into my trunk area and just be done with all of this, but that would mean I would have to go out and buy a whole new thing of Monster cable because they trimmed my cables to the exact length of where the amp is now so I have no room to move it around.

I'm just a little pissed...

 

Ok, today I was just frustrated as hell about all of this crap and decided to take out the convertible tray and just see what that was like. Holy crap... That makes a nice difference. Basically, there is NO more rattling. The bass sounds clean and tight and loud. Plus, my amp has all the breathing room in the world now. However, I noticed when I brought the top down that the glass area was very close to the amp / spare tire. I'm going to see about cutting some 6x9 like port holes into the convertible tray and then line the thing with dynamat and put it back in. If I hear any more rattles when I put it back in, it's coming out for good and I'll just find some other way to deal with the top coming down and not hitting the spare tire or amp.

 

they wrapped it in insulation and are telling you it isn't overheating?

jeez...

 

No, they're telling me it IS overheating. However, they're telling me that JL Audio amps Don't overheat this much so there is something malfunctioning with my amp.

 

I have now confirmed it's not really overheating and shutting off. While the amp was getting hot due to it being in that squeezed in area, I took the convertible tray out yesterday and was playing my music today and the amp shut off. I felt the amp and it wasn't hot at all. So, I knocked down the gain on the amp and it quit shutting off. I'm a big bass head so I'm just going to sell this setup and get a 10w6v2 and a 500/1 amp.

If anyone wants a JL Audio 250/1 amp and a JL Audio 10w3v2 with stealthbox, check in the for sale section!

 

hrm.

before you sell it -- do you have a multi-meter?

 

No... I can get one though. Why, what's up?

 

The damn thing shut down AGAIN this morning. I had to turn my entire car off for 1 hour to get it to come back on. This sucks... The system isn't worth the money at this point. I have to turn the gain WAY down to the point you can't hear the bass much less feel it.

The guys at Tweeter said that the sub was just fine and not blown. They tested it with a multi-meter and then tuned the system appropriately. Which to me sounds like crap because it's so low! They said if this continues to happen, the amp is going bad.

Do amps do this when they go bad? Do they just shut off for no damn reason and stay off for a long period of time? I mean, I was playing it pretty loud this morning but I didn't think my sub was anywhere near distorting. As a matter of fact I was sitting there thinking "I bet I could bump the gain up another notch" because it was still too damn quiet.

Edit:
Actually, the damn thing never came back on until I got home. Then it went out again. I swear I'm not playing this thing all that loud. It was MUCH louder in my old Prelude than in this car and I've been taking it easy cause the amp keeps cutting off. I'm just going to order a new 250/1 and see if that helps at all. If it does, I'll just trash this one. It's not worth the time/money to send it in to be fixed when it's out of warranty and I'd have to pay. I can get a brand new one on ebay for $200.

Anyone have any objections to that?

 

Two of the better places to mount your amp to get good vetilation are:
Under driver seat, close to the cross bar so that you still can move your seat if needed.
Behind either seat, passenger seat if you are more than 6ft and that seat is rarely occupied.

Moving your amp to either location above will also save your current amp kit, but you may need to get longer speaker wire.

I had my Bostom Acoustic GT-24 installed behind driver seat, the dimension of GT-24 is: 18" L x 8.87" W x 2.25" H, compares with your JL 250/1: 10.25" L x 9.25" W x 2.35" H

Whenever you need to turn on the fan (with or without air conditioning), direct part of the air flow to your feet to cool the amp.