Smoke out of the subs! Now that is something I don't want to see.!! But as always thanks for the info. I actually ended up splitting the subs. I had them both monobridged to the amp and now I'm using one channel per sub. I also moved the ground to exposed metal instead of painted metal from the chassi of the car and so far no problem.

I had to use another REALLY OLDamp( it actually has a FAN to cool it off!!!!) because the draggster was apparently blown (the sound quality thru the subs was horrible!). I just got the small alpine t220 for the rear speakers just waiting on someone here to give me som input on the wiring.....

 

Okay, sorry I haven't posted in a few days, I got busy.

Subs keep cutting out? sounds like you have them wired below 4 ohms and thus you cannot bridge the channels on the amp. Two channels amps cannot be bridged below 4 ohms, they will shut off. It isn't your ground and has very little to do with the power side of the amp. It has everything to do with the speakers. Did you figure out if the subs were wired parallel or series? Better yet, take the sub leads off of the amp and test the resistance with a multimeter and let me know. If you have it wired where one sub per channel you are running stereo bass while sharing air inside the box. This is a bad combination for the longevity of your subs.

Sorry to hear that you don't want to do the kick panels anymore. Why?

To use your alpine amp to run the rear speakers, if thats what you want to do ( I would use it to run the front), run 8 gauge for your power and just runnew 18 or 16 gaugespeaker wire to the speakers. What size power wire did you run to the sub amp?

 

Chris: I'm not familiar with the Alpine amp in question, but my Phoenix Gold amp can handle 1 Ohm per channel in stereo and 2 Ohms when bridged. It depends on the minimum impedance of the amp rather than a general rule of thumb. In this case, I believe you are correct that the subs were below the rated minimum impedance of the amp.

Leviathann: The ground can be anything that has a solid metal to metal contact with the chasis of the car. If the surface is painted, sand it down to the metal where the grounding strap or wire is connected. There is a good writeup for "Big 3 upgrade" .... please search for it. The upgrade is to reinforce the basic electrical system of the car. The 3 leads are battery to chasis, engine block to chasis and alternator hot lead to battery (+). The article includes links to buy a nice 0/1 guage wire as well as a terminal that allows additional connections.