So I put my first amp in my truck in high school. Used a Scoche kit from walmart because it was cheap and I didn't want to pay someone to put it in. It served me well for about a year when I had to upgrade from a 200 to a 600 watt amp. Because I didn't have any problems with the first one, I went back to walmart and got a scoche 650w amp install kit.

When I got my new subs, I also got a kicker 500w amp to go with it. Since it was a 500w amp, and the kit was a 650w kit, and it was still working fine, I kept the kit and swapped out the amp.

I decided today to move the location of my amp. I read the amp manual and it says to use 4 gauge wire with a 50 amp fuse. So I went buy a 50 amp fuse for the holder (because it came with an 80 amp) and went down to my local car audio shop and spent around $80 on 4 gauge 100% pure copper marine grade wire (18' of power, 3' of ground). I thought that was expensive compared to what walmart had, and now I see why.....



THAT is the fuse holder that came with the 650w amp install kit. You can see that it got hot enough to melt the plastic, melt the 8 gauge wire that came with it, AND weld the fuse into the holder, all while never popping the fuse.

Bottom line is that the one place you DO NOT want to go cheap on is the power wire or fuse/holder. This could have ended way worse than it did. Well, now I know why my amp's low voltage light was coming on constantly....

 

What kind of wire did you get for $80 for 21 feet??? That's almost 4 dollars a foot! You could've got quality 1/0 wire for that price.

The reason the fuse holder melted is because you had a fuse in there way to big for the wire and too big for the amp, so it never popped because the amp could pull more than what the wire was rated for but not more than the fuse was rated for.

 

When I'm not on researve duty marine corp which im not now due to a shoulder injury at my current job as a paramedic I help my brother in law at his shop. He does lifts and lowering and stereo etc nothing fancy i was certified years ago but only install or biuld occasionally now. Pizza man is right, fuse was too big. Also the amp kits at Walmart are generally peak watts not rms watts. The kicker amp you got may be 500rms which will be way over the 8ga wire you got in the kit . you must live in a rural area if it cost you that much for 4 gauge wire. But thats a good choice and its the biggest gauge the kicker amp you got will hold in the connectors.

 

Yeah, I do live in a very rural area. And now that I've replaced it all with good ****, it sounds awesome. Like I kicked it in the ***. This is more of a thread showing why these kits are no good.

 

You gotta be careful with those amp kits at Wal*mart and read EXACTLY how big the wire is. Scoche used to advertise a 4awg kit, which actually had 5awg wiring. I installed an Alpine MRP-M500 amplifier in my buddy's Saturn VUE several years ago with the "4awg" wiring kit from Wally World and sure enough, it still works like a charm.

Also, keep in mind that when you install a fuse in the power wire near the battery, you're not fusing the amplifier, you're fusing the wire. Generally, amplifiers have their own means of fused protection. But if they don't, then you install another inline fuse near the amp in the power wire.

 

Installing these kits really might prove to be a very tricky business..you need to be careful with that..because the circuitry is quite complex./