strange thing is it still works... I just don't want to risk it catching fire or something in the future. Especially if I can get these guys to warranty it.

In a brief response to my prior post, as I said there was no offence intended and I hope none taken. I was however left with the impression that a battery could be connected indiscriminately until such time as the speaker responded. I fully agree that connecting a 1.5v battery will do no damage to a speaker, but this wasn't the impression I was left with after reading the post. When we start talking about connecting erroneous electrical signals to BCM inputs / outputs and potentially into either the Class 2 serial data bus (or in newer vehicles the GMLAN BUS) I do have my concerns. Regardless, now that this has been clarified I believe it'* a non-issue.

Regarding the behaviour of the amp, it'* always worrisome when something behaves this way, especially if it now seems to respond normally. I strongly believe in the adage "Where there'* smoke, there'* usually fire". Obviously something out of the norm occurred it should be investigated to determine the cause. Without examining the amp I can't really comment. If I were to speculate, I'd be looking at connections again. Sometimes it'* helpful to trace the wires and create a schematic of what you've wired. You can then look and see if it'* wired the way you believe it to be. Double check to make sure none of the speaker connections shorted when the speakers were installed. This isn’t terribly likely though since the applicable areas within the door are virtually all non-metallic. It is possible that the equipment was defective but quite honestly I have rarely seen defective equipment new and never connected straight out of the box.

Agreed, but this was a refurbished amp so I'm concerned.

One thing I did have a question about though: In the manual for the amp it specifies that to enable fader control between the front and rear channels the unit must have two "Dummy" plugs inserted into the "Amp 2" RCA inputs when using the speaker level inputs. It does not say if this is required or not. I doubt this is related but it is the only thing I did not do. The plugs were not in the box like they were supposed to be.

heres a link to the manual if you dont have anything better to do
http://www.kicker.com/06/tech-suppor...0c01%20WEB.pdf

Anyway I appreciate the insights and help

in the picture with the wires spliced in, why is one of the wires coming from the speaker and going to the amp? is this working as a remote wire?

It takes the audio to the amp for the front channel preserving fader control. The other brings it back. The system could be wired to send the signal coming from the rear audio wiring to the front with the fader adjusted on the amp instead. Unfortunately wiring it that way would kill your chimes as they are played through the front left speaker through the factory wiring.