remote reading 4 volts?

your battery should be ok if the power wires are still reading 12 volts when your car is turned on try hooking it up to the red wire instead of the blue and white wire since your radio is still turning on it will work

Ok, having a stronger electrical background than i do specific car audio experience, im gonna through out a concept that might help with a solution.  TY, you said something about drawing a voltage.  You can't acctually draw a voltage but you draw current.  A dead battery can very easily read 12 volts.  Its not until you put a load on it and start drawing a current that you will read decreased voltage due to internal battery resistance.  That being said, if you have a high resistance ground or a dying batt., you wont see it on a volt meter until to system is drawing current.  I didnt read all the posts carfully enough, but i would try 2 things.  First test your battery.  Really, incomparison to a starter, a typical amp doesnt draw that much current and should run on a battery thats not quite "up to par".  But to test the battery, either check to see if your DMM has a spesific 12V batery tester -or- turn the key on and as many electrical systems as possible, lights, radio, vent fans, ect (dont acctually start the car) and THEN read the voltage on the batery.  if the batt is in good shape, move to the trunk.  If i understand correctly, you spliced into a wire (acsesory at the ignition?) that read 12V at the splice but 4V at the amp.  So somewhere you are droping 8V across a resistance somewhere.  If it was a  short, you'd most likely blow a fuse or your battery would be dead.  My guess is a bad connection.  If you have a single length of wire with no other splices all the way to the trunk, a good place to look is ground.  You said you thought your ground was good but you'll want to be sure.  Connecting an ohm meter all the way from the neg. batt. to the amp ground is the best way.  Use speaker wire or whatever, but you shouldnt have more than a few ohms.  OR ifyou can get your amp to turn on at all, from B+ to grd on the amp itself should drop the full 12V,  if your not droping 12 between those 2 terminals then there is a resistance in series some where in that circuit.

Whew!  sorry if that was too long and drawn out, but i kinda believe in good electrical concepts so people can start to understand what possible things could be going on before they rip their car apart.  Anyway, Good luck and feel free to ask any other questions 

Hey Ty,

Read my post labled " proper setup to boost audio performance", this kind of sounds like what my problem was. I currently am in the process of fixing the problem, via a thourough diagnostic check from a certified car stereo installer. If this sounds like your problem, then let me know and ill let you know what they did to solve the issue.

-Coyoteboy18

thanks for the insight jaydawg, I know now it is not the battery had kragen check my whole electrical system and everything is up to par.  So now I am moving onto my grounds, this is really weird because I have had the same grounds ever since I hooked up my system last year and no problems until recently.  I checked when I hooked up the grounds to make sure was a good connection no paint or anything that I can remember, but tomorrow I will check and make sure.  Oh well live and learn.

Yep, no problem..Let me know how tings turn out for ya

well jaydog you were right, it was the ground.  I cannot believe I hooked up my amps with that ground, it was painted and there was all kinds of crap there I can't believe it ever made a good enough connection in the first place.  Wow, what was I thinking, oh well never make that mistake again, must have been smoking way too much.  Anyway thanks again for the insight, peace.

Cody