Why doesn't my sub work?

First, I am not a car audio guy. Any really elementary responses welcome.

My 2003 celica gt has an aftermarket Eclipse head unit, a Clarion amp, and 1 JL subwoofer. Everything works except the sub. Amp has power- blue lights flash when car/radio is on. External fuse on the amp is good. This is not a recent install, it came with the car.

I checked and tightened the wires on the amp and sub. What else can I check? Is there a setting on the head unit that turns on the amp and sub? Thanks.

 

Check all your connections inside the sub enclosure.

 

You need to also set the sub to power on with the amp or the amp to power on the sub.

 

As in, take the speaker out of it's box?

 

Would that be a setting in the head unit or the amp?

 

The amp

 

Has the sub ever worked since you have owned it? First thing I would do is meter the sub driver to see if it's open circuit, while checking the amp manual to see what flashing blue light means. Typically a power light is steady, not blinking.

It would be helpful to know if this is a single channel amp, or if it's driving all of the car's speakers.

Also, just because 98% of the time it's this... find where the amplifier is grounded and clean/tighten the ground connection.

 

Not sure if it was working. The rest of the speakers sound good so I never noticed. I was wondering about the blinking, didn't seem normal. Unfortunately no manuals. Will check google. Thanks.

 

I added a couple comments.

 

Will look for ground tomorrow. Appreciate the help. No idea if it's single channel. Here are the connections.

 

Under the dash steering wheel is there a sub volume knob?

 

Went and looked, didn't see one. Going to try and track down the ground in the morning. Thanks!

 

This here is a train wreck. Based on this alone, I wouldn't trust any of the wiring related to this stereo. Definitely get it cleaned up while you're doing the ground connection. Also, verify the Battery and Ground connections are actually connected to Battery and Ground respectively since nothing is labeled or color coded.

 

I checked the connections inside the sub box and they looked good. Decided to pull the fuse under the hood and the plastic fuse holder fell apart.

Think I will take @dolbytone advice and pull it all apart when I get a chance. There's probably several less than ideal connections.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

 

Wow, those connections! Holy fire hazard Batman. It probably isn't your problem, but you really need to get that positive terminal cleaned up at a minimum - like no strands exposed. The ground doesn't matter as much (other than looking awful) as there are grounds all over the place (any spot on the frame or body or anything metal touching it).

On the control side, that frequency range switch should be in the out position if you're using the crossover on the amp (you only want to use one) - if there's one in use on the head unit, the filter setting should be set to 'off'. You probably also want to be in 'ch 1/2 mono' instead of where it is.

Not familiar with this unit, but a flashing LED on an amp, if it's the only LED, probably indicates that it isn't working properly. + 1 to check all the connections, but finding out what that flashing LED means might speed things up for you. If I just had to guess I'd suspect it has gone into a protect condition. Maybe the sub's blown and you're working with, as mentioned above an open circuit (totally burned coil), or approaching zero impedance (damaged coil) - most any amp would go into protect with a super low impedance load. It should not go into protect with no load (open circuit)