Car Amp connected to Home Receiver

I'm new here, just did a search and ran across this site. Wow, this thing has alot of really great info on it too. Any help you guys can give would be appreciated. Heres the deal:

I have a Kenwood Reciever, with 5.1 Dolby sound. I unfortunately don't have the powered sub that came with it. So I decided to find a way to take the 10" Pioneer sub and amp from my car and hook it up to my home sound system. I bought a AC to DC power convertor from Radioshack (which doesn't work, i'll take care of that later) but my question is about the Remote wire. What should I do with that? I don't think the amp will run without that wire hooked up, so what should I do? Thanks alot guys.

Drew

The remote wire is the power switch for the amp. When the remote wire receives a + 12volt signal it will turn on the amp, and when it looses the + 12 volt it turns the amp off. So if you just (bridge) run a wire from the power input of your amp to the remote connection on your amp it will turn it on and off with the power supplied from your power converter. if you want to be able to leave the power on the converter on at all times, you can install a toggle switch on your remote wire an it will turn the amp on and off with the toggle switch.

I have actually done the same thing. Car speakers and amp in the house, It sounded good for awhile but I burnt 3 ACDC converters up doing it.  Given, non of the converters were very big but they all got very hot, smoked alot, then ended up frying pretty bad and stinky.  I would be careful where you put the setup, as it could easily catch fire to the house if not watched.

good luck

I've said it before and I'll say it again, using auto 12V equipment in the house is a BAD idea.  You can do a lot more than burn out a few power converters, you can burn down your entire house.  DONT DO IT.  Besides the fact that getting an AC/DC converter that can handle the high current of an amp is difficult, you're much better off, it will cost less, and your home will be FAR, FAR safer to use an amp intended for 120v.

There are also many differences in the basic design of a car subwofer speaker and a sub made for use in a room.  Think of the relative size difference between the interior of even the largest auto and the inside of a room.  Car subs are designed to be relatively inefficient and to handle large amounts of power with audio coupling into a small space.  Home theatre subs are exactly the opposite: fairly high efficiency, relatively low power needs and designed to sound right into a far large space.  What I'm trying to say is a car sub may or may not sound right when used indoors.  But again, if you want to try it, use a 120v amp.