My kenwood 8105D amp quit working, the red power light comes on and goes out after about .5 seconds, I can hear the amp powering up thru the sub for the half second that it is on and then nothing. I checked the fuses on the amp and the fuse in the power cable. I have a dedicated 8ga power and ground cable from streetwires just for the amp and a second power and ground cables for the other amp. I'm thinking something internal in the amp went out. If the amp is toast, then I'm not buying another kenwood amp, this will be the second kenwood sub amp I've lost in three years.

 

Try re-doing the ground, clean the old one off and remount it and make sure its secure. Otherwise it's the amp, kenwoods are pretty low quality and they're really prone to overheating and frying something internally.

 

I can check the ground but it ran fine for over a year, and the previous amp (8104D) also ran fine for about nine months before it died and the ground setup never changed.

Any reccomendations on a good amp that put out ~500w rms @ 2 ohms. I've dumped approx 300 on the 2 kenwoods that died so I'd like to keep the price at about 3 bills or less for the replacement.

 

Sounds like you need to change something about the install of the amp. I am not sure about kenwoods having problems, but seems rather strange to me that two of them died.

 

Kenwood's are very low quality, the overheat easily and are highly underated at both rms and max power. Which means it's very easy to blow them, because when you want it loud it get's turned up, the only problem is the amp doesn't actually have the rms it says so it starts to clip and then overheats.

Here's some decent brands to look for this time: Alpine, Rockford, Hifonics, MB Quart, Massive, RE, MMats, etc. The list goes on, but all of those will do rated, over, or just a little under and are all good quality brands.

When you install a new amp though it's never a bad idea to go back and clean off the old ground, overtime it begins to oxidize and looses some of its connection.