well yesterday was not a good day for me. while sitting at a local  grocery store parking lot my sp4 caught on fire in my vehicle and i had to pull the heavy box and sub out of my truck while on fire and ended up going to the ER with 2nd degree burns on my hand. My question is why did this happen? i seen a few things about the new leads that the company uses are breaking off and sparking. i was running a hifonics brz 1700 to the sub so it was a good bit under powered. i emailed fi but that could take a few day to hear back, since this was not my fault and had nothing to do with the sub acting up will FI replace the sub or give me a recone at least? If they dont do any thing and i absolutely have to buy a recone could i get a n3 recone for the sp4 basket? 

well yesterday was not a good day for me. while sitting at a local  grocery store parking lot my sp4 caught on fire in my vehicle and i had to pull the heavy box and sub out of my truck while on fire and ended up going to the ER with 2nd degree burns on my hand. My question is why did this happen? i seen a few things about the new leads that the company uses are breaking off and sparking. i was running a hifonics brz 1700 to the sub so it was a good bit under powered. i emailed fi but that could take a few day to hear back, since this was not my fault and had nothing to do with the sub acting up will FI replace the sub or give me a recone at least? If they dont do any thing and i absolutely have to buy a recone could i get a n3 recone for the sp4 basket? 

 

the N3 is a 3" coil recone, so that will not work with your SP4.  You will simply have to wait out the response time from them.

 

Sorry to hear about your burns, i'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for this.

Same thing happened here in Japan. Guy was running 6 BTLs and one caught fire. He was powering them with 6 AQ3500Ds. I wasn't there to see it, just heard about it. He bought another to replace it.

 

My guess is a direct short somewhere or high current burning up the power wires. I carry a small extinguisher just for this reason.

So i wonder how many times this has happened to the sp4 woofers? ive never had a sub catch on fire before, i've fried a few coils but never had a fire in the truck. I took a few pics of the sub after i put out the fire and i took the coil out and it looks almost brand new, so at least that is a nice high quality coil.

A guy I knew had around 4 or 5 bls now! They either catch on fire or they blow. I don't know what the hell he does but it keeps happening. I highly doubt it's FIs fault though. I am pretty sure he was just clipping the hell out of the subs.

Sorry to hear about your sub though! Imo I don't think they will cover it though :/

That amplifier is capable of producing more power than the RMS rating of the subwoofer.

 

You probably exceeded the thermal capacity of the driver.

That amplifier is capable of producing more power than the RMS rating of the subwoofer.

 

You probably exceeded the thermal capacity of the driver.

Please explain. I thought the SP4 was capable of continuous power handeling of 3k watts. 

 

Are you saying the BRZ hifonics 1700 amp can push well over that? Or are you speaking of another for instance?

Once your tinsel leads turn into toaster elements your spiders can only take so much heat before they start burning. When you amp starts clipping you power goes up and causes this to happen.

So i wonder how many times this has happened to the sp4 woofers? ive never had a sub catch on fire before, i've fried a few coils but never had a fire in the truck. I took a few pics of the sub after i put out the fire and i took the coil out and it looks almost brand new, so at least that is a nice high quality coil.

 

can we see the pics?

Sorry to read about this happening bro ...

I see smoke and fire at just about every High SPL event I go to ...

sounds more like user error

Your amp can produce a 1700 watt sine wave.  It can produce up to 2X that if it isn't a sine wave.  It all depends on what you send into it and how much you ask out of it.  If the power supply can support it, it could easily produce over 3Kw under certain circumstances...

Love reading this after just ordering the same subs SMH, Did you have cooling and spacers on it?

Love reading this after just ordering the same subs SMH, Did you have cooling and spacers on it?

And why is that, as long as you know what your doing then you won't have this problem.

My SP4's started a small fire in this chick's panties once. Damnedest thing you ever saw. lol

 

 

Either guys are just clueless and completely beating the piss out of these subs enough to catch fire

or

There is malfunction with the sub causing this..
I think one of these mystery subs should be sent back to FI so a
determination can be made to either fix the issue or tell the person to
quit being a dumbass.

I've done it to a BL 15 on 2x rated power right before world finals.  User error.  The plastic part on the speaker posts on mine melted and shorted to the basket and then the spiders went poof.  Live, learn, and recone.

yep, clipped signal heated up tinsel leads resulting in burnt spiders

Sorry to hear about this happening. I would like to see the pics of the driver. Specifically the speaker wire connectors, leads, spider assembly, and triple joint if you can post. I am also interested in your electrical system including the power/ground distribution for the entire system less the radio. Wire size and grounding points on the chassis of the vehicle. That information will help diagnose the cause. 

 

Although your amp is "rated" for less power that a driver can take, things can happen during playback. A square wave has the potential to cook any sub. An internal short inside the amplifier of component failure can do this as well.

 

Chris

Alot of subs been catching fire lately it would seem.

My SP4's started a small fire in this chick's panties once. Damnedest thing you ever saw. lol

Either guys are just clueless and completely beating the piss out of these subs enough to catch fire

or

There is malfunction with the sub causing this..

I think one of these mystery subs should be sent back to FI so a

determination can be made to either fix the issue or tell the person to

quit being a dumbass.

Lmao.

Yea. Sounds like some serious clipping was going on for an extended amount of time. Tensils got too hot & spider caught fire. Just my theory.

I have about 3x's the power on 1 of my SP4's & lean on them kinda hard. I've never had one get above lite warm..

Yeah user error like everyone said. Put a dd1 or O scope on your amp and gain it right.

 

I've seen 2 btl ufo 18s on a cresendo 5500 each and they held up great for a good amount of time.

clipping is just a wonderful thing ))) More gain more gain more volume on the HU!

Put a dd1 or O scope on your amp and gain it right.

Using either of those does not mean the gain is set right.

i did this with my gcon's but they never caught fire just burnt the spider and the pad on the back of the cone with some discoloration. got the magnet pretty toasty a few times but thats because i was running over rms. haha. but it took the beating like a champ i reconed it and bought another one. but they are sold now and i have 2 xcon 18's now. 

http://forum.realmofexcursion.com/subwoofers/73884-fis-response-burning-tinsel-leads.html

 

and the other on smd, make me scratch my head

 

especially since i too had a fiery fiasco...

 

But since these are 'not' sandwitch tinsel's i dont see why they just didn't come apart.

 

Im still buying fi recones, but those 2 threads didn't make me happy

Edited February 20, 201312 yr by djjdnap