when i turn my music up loud in my car the bass will cut out only during the day when it is hot outside i think that my amp is over heating because it is fine late at night anybody know how i can fix this?????

o yea i live in south GA so it is hot as hell everyday.

 

I was running into the same issue with my setup and simply (temporarily) mounted a computer fan above my amp and wired it into the remote wire to turn on when the amp turns on. Hasn't cut out since.

 

interesting do u have the fan blowing air towards the amp or pulling it away?

 

Towards the amp.

 

do you happen to have a write-up on how you set it up

 

Don't have a write-up, but here is the basics of what I did.

1. Purchased a basic computer fan like this from MicroCenter.



2. Cut out two small wooden rectangles which were roughly 1"Lx1/2"Wx1/2"D (these measurements were bases on the demensions of the fan I used)
3. Drilled out a small holes through the mounting holes on the fan through the wood and secured it with a small screw.
4. Repeated step 3 for the other side.
5. Pre-drilled a small hole in each piece of wood to mount the fan above the amplifier.
6. Cut off the wire end, and wired the fan to the ground and the remote on the amp.

Note. I painted the two small wooden pieces with black spray paint to match.

Here is another view.



*Keep in mind this is a temporary solution.

 

all of the computer fans that i have found have three or four pin connectors for the computer where did you buy yours and did your have the pin connectors???????????

 

I actually purchased mine at Microcenter and some of them have a two wire connection to the fan then have a four wire pin which connects to a second pin connector. You can simply cut off the pin connectors and you only use the red (+) and black (-) wires like in the model below.

 

I have 4 fans , 2 per amp, and when it gets in the 100's here, they still shut off !

 

run AC there to cool it down...

 

MIne goes into thermal protection in hot days after extended playing at high volumes......my take is that most amps ran under 4ohms will do the same specially in hot days if played for long periods....time for a separate sub mono amp in my case

 

ma i don't think it matters what type of amp. once you have it up loud for a couple of hours if will burn to the touch. i used a computer fan also and it helped alot.

 

my amp works fine even in 100 degree weather. i think it also depends on the design of the amp's cooling structure. not every amp dissipates heat equally.

 

Yeah, for some reason functional heat sinks are no longer in style. Look at old Phoenix Gold or Linear Power amps, those were heat sinks. Also the design of the amp has a lot to do with it. If an amp is 90% efficient it does not waste power by producing heat, this is why a class D amp runs cooler than A/B.

 

Don't forget that it's a good idea to make sure to never turn your gains all the way up. All this will do is increase distortion. You should set your gains around 3/4 or slightly more. This will help with the heat factor.
Another thing to remember is if your running a high current amplifier you should be running a decent size power & ground wire. Atleast 4 gauge & depending on how far away your amp is mounted from the battery you may need to use even larger wire. Look at it this way, if you were drinking a vanilla shake & you had to use a coffee stir straw instead of a normal sized straw you would be working harder to produce less of an effect correct?

 

nice post and everything, but it doesn't go with the topic being discussed

yeah, the amps back then seem to concentrate more on fuctionality than on sheer appearance. Even with my system turned up on a hot day, my amp (RF Power 451S) doesn't skip a beat.

 

it does have something to do with it because if ur gains are too high, the amp will thermally overload and shut off, if you dont have enough current running to the amps, there will be more heat generated in the wires and in the amp trying to find more juice to keep it happy

 

yeah if i set my amp gain at 3/4 its would be asking for trouble. if you have your system setup correctly it should be much lower than that. id say mine is about 1/4-1/3 the way up.

 

yup mine is about 1/5th and is deafening

 

yeah ur right, i guess all i saw was wire size etc in the post that threw me off. i stand corrected

 

The gains on the amplifiers are not volume controls. They are there to match the ouput of the headunit that they are connected to. All headunits do not have the same preout voltage, some are 1V and others go up to 8v, so the gain is there to properly match the output of the headunit (this will give you the best signal to noise ratio for your system, as well as avoiding clipping). Also all amps do not have the same input ranges. So someone turning there amps input sensitivity to half may be different than another amplifiers halfway setting on the input dial.

 

Sorry guy's I should have been alittle more specific in my post. 1/2 to 3/4 gain level for the sub(s) 1/4 to 1/2 for the mid's & highs. Ofcourse this is all based on the output level of your equiptment. These are just rough figures!!!!