I have a car stereo question?

Question

I own a '97 Mazda MPV, and I put all new 6-1/2's (4) in it. They're from Pioneer (50w nominal, 260w max.), and I wanted to put my JVC head unit (20w X 4 ch.) - in it, I went to crank the volume on it, and it kept cutting out. What would cause that, because I'd really like to have that head unit in the MPV,..The factory one worked good, cranked up, and no cut-out. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Answer 1

You need a more powerful head unit, something atleast 50x4

Answer 2

Your 50w speakers have some big magnets on them no doubt, and you're pushing 4 of them, when your HU is only capable of 20w per channel nominal. You may be over-stressing the internal amp in the JVC, is it MOSFET? what was the original HU in the MPV? An aftermarket amp sounds like your best choice, unless the JVC is defective.

Answer 3

The size of your magnets and the number of them really have nothing to do with anything.  The reason your head unit is shutting down could be caused by a few different things.  You need to check your power wiring and make sure you have a good power source and a good ground.  Bad grounds are a common problem, so make sure yours is good.  Do you know if your vehicle had a factory amplifier other then the head unit?  If it did, that is probably causing problems and will need to be bypassed, or you'll have to get some adapters to modify your signal coming from your head unit to work with the factory amplifier.  If you do not have a factory amplifier and your power and grounds are all good, you may want to double check your wiring.  Make sure you don't have anything grounding out.  If all you did was drop in new speakers, it's not likely, but still possible that while you were yanking on wires and stuff you may have caused something to ground out.

If you have nothing grounding out, you don't have a factory amplifier and you know for sure your wiring behind your head unit is solid, then I'd say it's time for a new head unit.

Answer 4

Dont buy an Amp until you get the radio working correctly.

Air Force is Right on in every Point he made.

Also, in my experience, when you put in replacement speakers, you have to make double sure that the speaker terminal clips do not touch or go near the metal surrounding the mounting area.  Its the most common cause of grounding speakers.

Answer 5

Okay let's troubleshoot. I have to go with airforce and the next guy. First, do you have matched impedances? For instance, is the output impedance drive of you JVC unit the same as your speakers? So that is one thing to check.

Next, do you have some speakers other than the Pioneer to check operation of everything with? What would be nice is to remove the Pioneers from the picture and then check operation with an alternate set of speakers.

So then we have ground to contend with. Are you getting good ground? It is possible that the JVC head unit output amplifier is going into overdrive and shutting down for one of two reasons: One, it is overheating. Two, there is a safety check in the output amplifier that is seeing the ouput stage overdrive, and shutting it down.

Can you just toss your old set of speakers in on your seat and connect them up and see if they work?

Do you have a DVM (volt-ohm meter)? If you don't consider getting one. A cheapee would be okay for $10 or less from Harbor Freight tools. Of course H.F. tools is in the U.S. so I don't know where you are from.