fuse holder under hood by battery melted please help..

ok so this is what happened.. my fuse holder under the hood by the battery was perfectly fine until my brother in law asked me to play a certain song on a cd of his to see how hard it would thump with my system. I did so and then once we were done I shut off my car and went in the gym (this was in the parking lot before our workout) so when we finished I got in my car and turned it on, only to find out that for some reason my subs were'nt hitting anymore.. I took out the multimeter and saw that I was getting power to the amp through the remote wire but not through the power wire, so I looked under the hood only to see that the fuse holder melted where the wires connect to it.

what the hell was that all about?? I did have the bass up a little more than usual but not much...
any ways my wire is 4 guage..
what can I do to prevent this from happening again once I replace the fuse holder and fuse if I want to turn my bass up that high again??? and why did this happen???

Better fuse holder, knukonceptz.com

blue one wrote:

any ways my wire is pretty thick its not a large guage like 16 or 14 its probably more like a 4 or 6 guage..

Seriously?...seriously...?

are you saying it was just the fuse holder that was crap?? so theres no other reason why that would have happened other than the fuse holder is crap??

I'm not really sure, answer me these.

-How many watts does your amp output RMS?
-What is the actual gauge of your wire?
-What size fuse was in the holder?
-Where did you get the holder?

edit: nice picture taking, I can read on the wire it says 4GA. It should have at least a 100A fuse in the holder.

Channels 2 Channel(s)
Output Power 2 x 370W RMS (10Hz to 30kHz) @ 4Ohm 0.02% THD
2 x 440W RMS (10Hz to 30kHz) @ 2Ohm 0.02% THD
880W RMS (10Hz to 30kHz) 0.02% THD - Mono

Maximum Power 1920W

fuse size I dont know,
and It came with this amp wiring kit I bought.

4 gauge should have been enough to cover it. Do you have it wired 2ohm or 4ohm? Either way should have been fine but if you had a surge it might have overloaded it...

sorry that IMO is too thin...i rather be safe than sorry. I always go with 0 gauge on my trucks. Yeah its expensive but you'll never have to rewire it if you want to upgrade. I'm the type that i rather do it right the first time and get the best i can get even if it super expensive. If its too expensive for me then i don't do it.
Hence why i don't have my 22s yet..will do in a week or 2

guys i think your all missing the easiest reason why this happened. the fuse holder is right over the exhaust manifold, it could have just melted it.
it looks like it melted too.
ANL fuse ftw, that type of fuse only comes in like a 50amp fuse at the most anyways, 4 guage is usually good to like 80amps easily (depending on length of cable of course).

ya, that 4g should easily handle that amp

True...true...lol I was thinking in my car the CAI is on the opposite side of the manifold. Looks to be right above his. Yeah relocate that ****. I have a blade fuse on mine Upgrading to 0 gauge and ANL fuse when the new system gets assembled. Also eDead through the ENTIRE car.

If it was caused by the manifold then the mounting flanges would be equally melted. Since they are not then you can rule that out as a cause.

And sure the wire may have been able to handle the current, but was the fuse holder designed to handle that amount of current.

Or better yet, if it was drawing that much why didn't the fuse blow.

He said the subs weren't hitting, I assumed it did blow. If the plastic melted that wouldn't stop the bass...

lbjshaq2345 wrote:

He said the subs weren't hitting, I assumed it did blow. If the plastic melted that wouldn't stop the bass...

The fuse doesn't blow from just sitting in a parking lot, fuses blow because the current being passed through them is too much for the filament rating to handle. If anything, the melt could have caused some sort of short or something in the circuit, looks like a fair amount of open metal is now visible so a slew of things could have happened.

On this note, the power wire fuse is designed with basically just one purpose, to keep your power wire from catching fire and everything on your 4 wheels from turning into ashes. If the fuse went, it was because your power wire was shorting, not because your bass was hitting too hard.

corvettecrazy wrote:

If it was caused by the manifold then the mounting flanges would be equally melted. Since they are not then you can rule that out as a cause. And sure the wire may have been able to handle the current, but was the fuse holder designed to handle that amount of current. Or better yet, if it was drawing that much why didn't the fuse blow.

The heat of a wire just being drawn from an amp will not cause plastic to melt....some sort of external heat caused this problem. You could probably slide using the same w/e fuse holder you have now, as long as you didn't mount it, and pardon my forwardness, in a retarded fashion (ziptied off your stock RAM air).

Fuse holder should be less then 12" away from your battery...and its often fairly easy just to mount the fuse holder to some part of the battery holder/area. I have mine attached to the top clamp that keeps the battery in place.

And again, as concerned to your question: "what can I do to prevent this from happening again once I replace the fuse holder and fuse if I want to turn my bass up that high again??? and why did this happen???" Simply the place you mounted it, the wire will not get hot enough to melt the plastic of your fuse holder, not matter how much "bass" you got.

Definitely the intake manifold. No way did the amp draw to much power and somehow burn the fuse HOLDER. MOVE IT!!