Amp Troubleshooting

Sorry in advance, I know this question gets asked a billion times, but I know if anyones gonna help me, it'll be in from this forum.

Anyways, I have an Eclipse PA5422 4-channel amp that keeps shutting itself off (protection mode?) and on and off again. It just started recently, and seems to have progressively gotten worse (to the point where it starts up when I turn on the car, but 5 minutes later it turns off, and rarely comes back on for the rest of my drive). The fuses on the amp are all good. the power from the battery seems to be good. the connections to the amp seem to be clean and secure. I havent checked the ground yet, cuz it's bolted under my rear seats. I havent disconnected all the speaker wires yet either. What would be the possible problems? I have the next two days off so I'm gonna spend some time troubleshooting. Someone told me there could be a short internally in the amp. If that's the case is it even worth fixing? Or should I spend another 250-300 on a new one? I bought this eclipse amp from an internet dealer so i dont think it qualifies for warranty through eclipse. thanks in advance!

What is the amp driving?  Did you set your gains properly?  The most common causes are input gain too high and/or speaker impedence too low.

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And or bad ground or speaker wire / rca cable going to ground. I have never had one single problem with one of these amplifiers. If it is going into protection there is a reason for it. Dyohn gave you some recommended things to check, do it and then post up the rest of the info.

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Top Secret, I can tell you but then my wife will kill me.

 I had a Kenwood mono amp that did the same thing one time. I kept trying to find it until the amp actually fried something inside that I couldn't get parts for. Then I went throught the system with a fine tooth comb- turned out to be a bad ground on the headunit! It was getting enough continuity to run, but it was slowly killing the amp the whole time I had it. (my first system...ahhh the good old days)

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You'd better get me out of this lord... or else you'll have me to deal with. -- Hunter S. Thompson "F.A.L.I.L.V."

how is the amp mounted? flat horizontal, vertical or inverted?   ( i know it seems like a wierd question)   ( and no i havent been smoking anything wierd)

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Kevin Gerry
Certified Electronics Technician
MECP First Class Installer

Owner/Installer
Classic Car Audio
since 1979

ok, the amp is running a set of a/d/s/ components in the front and infinity 2-ways in the rear.
the gain is actually set pretty low, im not familiar with impedence settings. can you explain that? im running monster rca's, like i mentioned in the first post, i havent had much time to examine the wires/cables, plan to do it tomorrow when i have time, but looking at the wires/cables going into the amp, it looks fine. i did the install myself and it's been running good for months until the past 2 weeks.
chevyman26 how would i know if it's a bad ground? this is actually my first full system install. ive done basic speaker/headunit installs, but this is my first full setup. im running a eclipse 55090 headunit, 39011 5.1 DTS encoder, pa5422 amp, sony in dash LCD, and the speakers mentioned above. i was gonna add a infinity basslink soon.
anyways, how would i know if it was slowly "killing" my amp?
my amp is mounted vertically. it's mounted to the rear (backrest) of the backseat.
thanks for all the input guys, i really appreciate it.

one more thing i should add...i never blast the sounds. theyre always on a moderate level. there's a couple times when i switched from the tuner to cd, the audio level came on louder than normal...not to the point it was deafening or anything, but it was definitely louder than normal. like if i turned the volume down and back up again, it would return to normal setting id listen to.