amp problems

[chunkotron]

OK, I have some problems. Perhaps you can help me out. The main issue is that my amp is draining my battery. The secondary issue is maybe my right channel isn't working.

Problem 1. When the car is completely off, my amp draws 400 mA. The on/off led on the amp is completely off. When I turn my car (and headunit) on, it draws about 1000 mA. The on/off led is green. The amp's power is direct from the battery and there is no short in the power line.

Is there something wrong with my amp, or is this to be expected? the 400mA draw is draining my battery and I have to jumpstart my car if I haven't driven in a couple of days. I was thinking it might be a defective remote line, but the remote seems to work vis-a-vis the green led that lights up whenever the remote input is live.

Problem 2: When the amp is on, I can get a signal to the left speaker out but not the right speaker out. Is there a switch on the amp that controls that (perhaps both outputs on my amp is bridged to the left channel). that's my guess b/c when I remove the left channel input and feed the amp only the right channel, the left channel output still maintains a voltage while the right channel output has no voltage across it.

thanks for all your help.

[I Am An Idiot]

It would help if we knew what kind of amp you had. Some amplifiers have 2 seperate power supplies. You could have a bad supply on one of the channels thus drawing the extra current and explaining why the channel is dead.

[grjr]

Sounds like there is something wrong with your amplifier as stated above, 400mA of current draw when the amplifier is off is not normal.

[iUSERTLO72p]

Hello,
Park up at tea time say 5 ish, don't start the car until 7 next morning. 14 hours times 400 mA 5.6 Amps, yeah. What else is drawing? Alarm, clocks. Knowingly, turn everything off as you would last ting at night. Take the positive lead off your battery and insert an ammeter, get a reading. Do the above math, 14 hours times current draw =? 5.6 Amps is a lot but should not wipe out a battery. Do you have a faulty battery? If your drawing more than just your stereo, you can see the effect of draining, but I think theres more to it. Get one of those free battery checks at one of those tyre exhaust places, KwikFit in the UK.

Your amp, disconnect your loudspeakers off the terminals, put a multimeter across the terminals and do a resistance check to see if you have a short. If your not sure, take the amp apart and do the same test on the output transistors looking for a short circuit.

http://www.bcae1.com/ section 20 and 97

The whole site is a mine of info, and I must say its got to be one of the most useful ones I've come across, its very well thought of with its graphics, hell its nearly as good as diyAudio.com.

Cheers iUSERTLO72p