I posted a while back with problems i was having with my subs, they were sounding wierd and realllllllly distorted. anyways, i got it fixed. it was a bad ground, the friend that was helping me wire up my system used a U-terminal, instead of a ring, and just screwed it in there. i went back and rewired it to a 4G stinger ring terminal (with the rubber condom on end), drilled a new hole and sanded down and screwed in.

now...problem

it started acting up again last week, so i had a look at the ground and to my amazement it looked like sh!t. the rubber around the ring terminal was all melted, the 1" foam under the carpet had a hole burnt up to the carpet, and the metal i sanded down was all black. i tried to clean the metal and re-screw it down only to find the hole was stripping...

-why is my ground get like this? do i need to get 0/1G wiring for ground?
-is it normal for the rubber thing to melt?
-how can i get the screw to stay in, without stripping, but still getting it nice and tight?

system is 1200W amp and (2) 500W rms/900W peak subs

thanks

thats a big enough system to have current to catch things liek carpet, then your car, on fire. the best route would be run the wire up one side of the rear panels and screw it onto a bolt where your shocks meet or something in that general area. actually now that I think of it any bolt works, just sand around the area. and if you are anal like me, sand the area, get it good and tight, then paint over it again with the connector in place. that way theres as little bare metal showing as possible.

i origionally had a new hole screwed in under the carpet, right behind the rear seats. i sanded the new hole down and screwed it in, but it got stripped, so i couldnt make it that tight...

thats why you are supposed to use a bolt that is already on the car, something with threads. dont use some hole u drill in. use a pre made botl hole with the right bolt.

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You not suppsed to just do that. (this is what you do to find ground, ofcorse for SQ comp.)
1) Use RadioShack made speaker box (its a special device to find the best ground), connect one wire to positive wire that goes to your amp. Use the other wire from the speaker and movie it around the trunk region while touching it. The speaker will make different noises, when you find a place that makes the least ammount of noises it will be your ground.
2) See if there is any fuel/braking lines under the place where you make a hole. Drill a hole, and sandpaper the location to bare metal.
3) Go to HomeDepot and buy singe out grounding block, screw the block to that location.
4) Then from the block run your ground wire to diff-block
5) From there you have a good place to run ground's to your amps

NOTE:
Lets say you have 1200Watt SUB amp and 45Watt 4ch amp, the most powerful amp which is subamp, ground wire should be the closest to the grounding point itself, then you connect the 45watt amp ground wire.

in addition to the poor ground, awg 4 is too small for 1200watts (peak i assume?)
amps = watts/volts, 1200w/12v = 100Amps at peak output. awg 4 is good for about
60 amps. go with some awg 1 or 0

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4ga is good up to 150 amps and you can go over this slightly if you keep the runs short. The ground cable should be more than a few feet at most... 4ga will work fine.

If the amp is 1200 watts peak it won't be pulling anywhere near 150 amps. 1200 rms is pushing 4ga. A short ground it will work but a bigger power cable is needed.

The burning you found is most likely from the ground being loose. The resistance goes up and causes the current to go up as well which overloaded the cable. Just clean up the surfaces and put a nut and bolt in there and make it tight.