Ive been hooking up stereos and equipment for many years. Never have I not been able to get one to work. What is the best ground for an amp in the back of a 99 Camaro?? Right now its on the spare tire bolt that holds the tire in and goes to the metal quarter panel. Im at my whits end with this thing. Any help is appreciated!

 

Surely someone has some sort of car audio system, Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

On my '94 I have an amp grounded under one of the nuts near the drivers tailight... Should be one on the pass side too... Works fine and no problems with noise.

 

EH! Not a good place for a ground...Try to go to the rear seat belt bolt down. It goes right to the frame...Well, where's your amp located?? If it's in the driver's side cubby hole then it might be a better ground to go to the SB bolt down. If it's unde rthe well box or on the bottom of the well, Then the spare tire tie down SEEMS good. Either way the gorund will be WAY shorter than the power supply cable. The ground is supposed to go down anyway....

The taillight ground just goes to the body and has to pass through a bunch of different obsticles before it actually reaches the frame...In theroy, the SB is the best but in our cars....A little difficult....What's the resistance from the QP to an actual ground.....take in account voltage drop over a distance of wire and resistance of a long length of wire...Strap a DVOM on ther and see what you can find...

Try posting in the Car Audio Room, prob get better answers there.

 

It isn't attached to the actual ground for the tailight, it's a bolt/nut near the drivers tailight... It's been grounded at that spot for a year with no problems or noise... I think running a 2 or 3 foot ground wire isn't necessary unless you're getting noise.

 

Well if it's been Ok then, I suppose leave it then, right.... Bumper bolt?? Seems fine as long as it isn't the taillight itself...

Like I said, *IN THEROY* the ground lead is supposed to be shorter than the power and is supposed to be routed downwards from the amp. I guess it helps reduce resistance..

 

I had a ground problem when I hooked my amp up last winter. I also had my amp hooked up to one of those bolts by the rear tail light. What really killed me was that my last amp worked just fine in that spot, but after talking with tech support I guess that spot wasn't good enough anymore for this bigger amp. This amp was going into protection mode on me. What I ended up doing was using a similar grounding point, but I had to sand it down to bare metal and the tech support guy I talked to also recommended using those sharp locking star washers because they tend to cut into the metal and give a better ground. That's what did it for me, and the amp works fine.