Sounds to me like voltage drop at the amp.

The FIRST thing I would do is get the ground moved somewhere else. That location is the furthest from ideal. If you can get the power from the amp directly to the battery that would be great but you can't do it in all cars.

 

Yes the electrical looks like the main issue , but if it is seized that bad one could think maybe the motor shifted ? never seen square sub personally , but I have motors shift on subs before. If the coil is burnt , there should have been tell tale signs before it "locked" up such as smell of coil at the time or times before , You will have to pull it and inspect . If it is burnt you then know you need to look after the electrical issue.

As for connectors if you goto a stereo shop they should have something that will help you hook up to the side posts on the battery and get some more gnd cable so that the amp can go direct to neg terminal on the battery .

 

Any stereo shop should have these, it replaces the bolt in your positive battery terminal:




Remember how much you hate it when you replace it. A new GM car is designed the same way and the same bag of crap, just newer.

And that ground is bad. See how the metal tab you are connected to is held to the next piece with tack welds? Well the next piece is held to the floor with tack welds too. All in all it makes for a low current connection. Screw to the floor or, better yet, get a longer cable and go to the battery. We just had a Pontiac G5 come in with a ground to the floor in the trunk and it had current issues. Relocated to the trunk mounted battery and all was good. The body metal run from the floor in the front of the trunk to the battery at the back of the trunk was too high resistance. Junk.

 

ok, well in that pic see the battery ground, an inch out of the picture its bolted to the frame, so i will buy new grounds. and a new post for my positive terminal


come to think of it, my positive wire only needed to be 7' to reach the positive.. the cutoff wire from my positive could be my new ground, being as its really long, it could reach!, ill havto check though.

Thanks guys, good to know for future... i hope kicker replaces it, i just rear ended some guy, lucky enough he just wanted cash... there goes the sub fund, along with every other hobby for a while

on a funny note, when i hit him the airbags didnt go (i was going about 25km/h give or take), now either i didnt hit him hard enough, or along with every other electronic peice in the car, my airbags are bad! damn GM.

good thing is everyone knew my sub was blown, cant blame my music!

 

ok, well since my battery negative is about a foot long,(it goes from the - right to chassis) to ensure i get a solid ground i crimped on a copper end and put it under the same bolt as my cars main ground.

also i dropped the sub off to the audio place, he was unsure if kicker would replace, and it does cost 25$, so i took the chance, might get lucky.

is it ok my ground wire is about 6' long, my positve is 8, i just measured. my amp only accepts 8awg so its the best i could do

heres what it looks like now,

 

That will work perfect. As the battery's ground goes directly to there you've essentially have a direct connection.

 

heres a quick question for ya, the battery in the car is an AC delco, i have a somewhat new motomaster on hand. the motormaster is smaller, but has more CCA. To me it looks like the smaller battery wont last as long as the AC. should i swap anyways? this battery has been in there a while and now that the subs out in doing alot, carpeted the box, rerouted all my wires, remounted amp.


Is it even possible to do a Big3 on one of these backseat battery cars?

 

Anything is possible; that will just be more work then it would typically be with the batt under the hood (near the alt...) I would think you'd gain even more benefit from doing the big 3 with the length of those shitty factory wire runs to/from the batt than most of us.