New Subwoofer not turning on, very stumped

I recently bought a new Rockville 10" 800 watt sub for my taco to give the system a bit more kick. I am adding it to my Pioneer FH-X700BT double din head unit. When I first put in the head unit, after buying the truck, I used a Metra JBL amplifier harness to be able to still use stock sub. Everything worked great. But now that I am trying to install the aftermarket Rockville sub I am running into issues. I bought a Boss RCA wire kit and ran the cable from the battery to the amp, grounded the amp to the truck, plugged in the RCA cable, and I ran the turn on remote wire from the blue/white wire from the back of the HU to the amp. Plugged in the juice and nothing is happening. I don't know why the amp/sub is powering on. Am I missing the something with turn on wire? Is the Metra JBL harness screwing everything up? Should I just rip all that out along with the stock JBL sub? If I do that do I need to get a different harness? Hope that all makes sense, this is my first aftermarket sub install. Thanks!

 

Do you have any pictures of all of your connections? Amp in protect mode? I could possibly troubleshoot

 

I could take a few, do you want the ones at the sub or HU? The protect mode was flashing red earlier but now nothing is on.

 

Do you have a DVOM? If not they're pretty cheap if you live near a Harbor Freight or similar store. I would verify that you have 12+ on the power wire and the remote wire and also check that the ground is a solid connection. Depending where you ground it, you may need to scrape paint off and get it down to bare metal.

 

Does the amp have an auto input sensing power-on feature? I had a JBL amp that used either a remote turn on lead, or auto sensed a signal through the low level RCAs and powered on/off the amp that way. Had to flip a switch to select which one to use.

Try sending a signal through the head unit and see if the amp fires up.

 

x2 on the ground. happened to me in a previous vehicle. had to grind the paint down for proper metal to metal contact

 

Is there any indicator on the sub/amp that would show if it's on like an LED? If so (and it's not on) you likely have an issue with the connections somewhere. Use a digital multi meter to test if you have 12V at the turn on wire and also at the power cable going into the amp. Sometimes you'll forget to actually put the fuse in the fuse holder and that will stop the power right there....done it before

 

Plug everything in. If the amp comes on the use a multi meter make sure you are getting power out of the + & - speaker terminals on the amp. If you are getting power out of the amp then you maybe running the wrong ohm speaker for your amp.

Also does the amp have an auto turn on button. I looked at it on ebay and saw a button on a rockville 10 sub/amp combo that said "auto turn on"...

 

Check your grounds first then disconnect the remote wire coming from the Deck and connect a small wire from the remote to the 12v+ on the Amp this will simulate a remote signal from the head unit. This should help determine whether you have a bad remote signal from your deck.
If you still have issues, turn the amp gain wayy down then turn back on to see if you get anything coming out of the sub. If you get something slowly crank the gain up, if the amp shuts off that means it's overloaded.

if still nothing probably an issue with the RCA cable or connection on the deck.

 

I checked and the head unit remote puts out 300ma (milliamps) which is .3 volts, Rockville says that the remote power must be at lease 5v which is weird cause that is high. Since it says "at least" 5v I would go with Pablo's suggestion and just use a jumper to go from the 12v power to the remote and see if that turns it on. If that does work I would use the auto turn on and go without the remote wire. If you wanted to stay with the remote wire then you would need a relay that would put out the required 5v but this is not a solution for the novice.

 

Wait....what? I think you're mixing up some numbers and or conversions here. 300ma at 1volt is 0.3 WATTS (not volts). The amperage of the turn on lead shouldn't really matter much as long as it's between about 5V and 15V (it should be ~12).

Again, you should get ~12V out of the remote wire (amperage being irrelevant) and you should also have the same (or similar) voltage coming out of the red wire coming from your battery that powers your amp. Amperage on the main amp wire obviously being MUCH higher.

 

300 milliamps
.3 watt/volt

Since I don't deal with this often this is what a conversion calculator via google search gave me.

 

Yes, that's accurate. It read, 300milliamps = 0.3watts @ 1 Volt. It could also read 0.3 Volts at 1 watt. The difference in the equation is we know the volts should be constant at 12 (though they should be verified).

 

Checking back today - got it fixed?

 

Sorry for the delayed response, I'm finally got time to work on it again today. I ordered a Metra wire harness to take out my old one for the stock sub, and it doesn't have the right connector.. What wire harness do I need first of all? Get that sorted out then I can try to answer some of your all questions.

 

Are you using any of the wiring from the stock sub? I would make sure to bypass all of that since you have a good head unit and a powered sub, no need for it.

 

Ya thats why I bought this regular wire harness . I guess I didn't look close enough at the connetor, so I guess I gotta find the right one

 

Can someone tell me exactly how the new sub/amp should be wired from the HU? I think I'm getting myself mixed up. I am currently running the RCA cable and the turn on cable from the HU to the sub/amp. To run the speakers I thought I needed that wire harness.
Heres a pic of the sub I'm using

 

Ok so your power (+12v) comes from the battery and should be fused no more than a 12 to 18 inches from the battery.
The ground cable should not be longer than 18 inches, use on one of your factory bolts.
Run the RCA and remote wire together from behind the head unit, if you run them with the power there is a chance of engine noise.
Those are the only connections needed to hook this up correctly. Nothing should be hooked up to any of your factory wiring.
With the auto turn on in the off position the remote wire will turn the amp on and with it in the "on" position the amp will turn on when it receives a signal through the rca cable. I don't think it would hurt to have the remote wire hooked up even if you're not using it.

 

Ok thanks. And then for the speakers I just need the jbl bypass wire harness right to run out the HU? Here's the harness I bought, should be here Wednesday