My amp is installed in the trunk. Check the page for a pic. I can't make it home from work without it overheating (30 min drive). How can I prevent this. This shouldn't happen, should it? I do live in Tucson.

 

What is the impedance of the sub you're using? If it's lower than what the amp can handle it will cause it to go into thermal protection mode.

 

Well, I'd have to check that. But, dammit, it was installed by The Specialist. So I'd imagine they would know better than to do that. When it cuts out, and I am taking a look at it, it's scorching hot.

 

Scortching hot sounds like an impedance problem. If it is slightly warmer than usual I can get you a good deal on fans and have them hard wired in there.

Or you can do what I did in a friends car, I mounted the amp around the box and drilled porting in the box to blow on the amp to cool the unit.

 

 

Your amp could also have a poor ground.

 

Although I really don't want to, I suppose I could go back to The Specialist and see what they have to say.

It's not like I have a huge system or anything. It's pushing 2 6.5's in the front and a 10 in the rear.

So, this is definitely not normal?
Even for Arizona heat with a sub in the "trunk" area?

 

I drilled porting holes in the sub box so the air that moves from the sub blows over the amp and cools it slightly. In this case it won't do anything since it is not a sub.

 

Right. I totally understand what you are saying....and it's a great idea.....but just wondering how exactly you went about it?

 

I think you SHOULD go back to them and see what the deal is. It's not normal for an amp to get scorching hot. Sounds to me like something is wrong with the tuning or install. I've only had amps go thermal on me under serious stress or in 105+ degree heat.

 

A poor ground has nothing to do with an amp over heating.

 

I'm going to go along and say impedence problem in the way that something is wired to your sub. I've burried amps under seats with almost no airflow and running 4 ohms and had no issues.

But my current sub amp which is wired to 1 ohm mono (It's stable that low) gets warm, but no where near hot.. although the 2 4" built-in fans do help.

 

Um...OK....Whatever....I've seen several different times that an install from Circuit City has come into my shop with overheating problems and everything has the right impendance and when I checked the ground they have one small screw holding an 8 gauge ring terminal on top of paint (not sanded down) and all I changed is redoing the ground and never had a problem with it again overheating.

 

Why does an amp heat up? It heats up because it is delivering current to a load. If an amp is delivering current then it is operating as it should and will get hot as a result. If there is a bad ground then the amp will not function as it should and therefore cannot get hot since it is not delivering current. It's as simple as that. Go to Car Sound and ask Richard Clark or David Navone. They'll tell you the same thing.

 

Sorry Shawn. LS1_Rulz is correct.