Amp cooling ideas?

I was thinking of ways to help cool my amps on the VERY HOT kansas days...One idea I had was...My boat is an '03 205V...On the left side of the boat there is a air intake that a tube hooks to and goes thru my storage compartment and into the bottom of the hull....I thought about putting a PVC Y inline with the tubing to blow some air onto the amps...Not sure if that is a good idea or not....Was wondering your thoughts on that and any other things people have done!!!

Thanks in advance

I saw some small cooling fans at Radio shack today they had a couple different sizes to choose from. You could always wire that up to a switch and turn it on when needed.

With the cooling fans, why not tap into the remote Power-on wire? Whenever your amps are on, the fans are on. And with a switch, you could operate in auto or manual modes.

(Message edited by mc_driver on May 22, 2004)

putting a Y in the vent tubes works well when you are moving. The fan idea is the best way to go. Get a themrostat switch from radio shack the has a high trip point. This would be around 150F or 70-80C. The thermostats should be fairly small. you can wedge them between fins on the amp or use some other method to attach it to the heatsink. In some cases then fans draw low enough current to run them straight through the thermostat. If the fans draw too much current, you may have to use a relay. Using this method, the fans will come on when the amp reaches a certain temp and will remain on until it falls below that temp. I would not hook up to the remote power on wire. You deck may not be able to supply enough current for the fans and you will smoke your deck.

Do not put a Y in the vent tubes. They are for venting gas fumes. If for some reason you had a gas leak and fumes got in there then you fired up your stereo it could be the loudest stereo boom ever, on the lake.

What KJ said, dont run off deck remote directly BUT you can and i did run a small relay off the deck remote lead to turn on all three amps and their respective fans that run all the time the radio is on. They dont draw that much from the battery/alternator but do usually go over the limit on head units unless your just running maybe one amp and fan?? Check your manual for your head unit before proceeding.

This technology is really being pushed by computer overclockers right now. There are all kinds of things people are coming up with to solve this in computers. Have you tried looking at places like overclockers.com or http://www.xoxide.com/watcoolkit.html for ideas?

You have an unlinited source of water. Why not get creative and make some water-heat transfer blocks, and put a pump in to pull water from the lake thru a thru hull fitting, and out the side of the boat. You could even wire the pump off the remote deck power (thru a relay most defenatly), and have a killer system. I bet it would help you get the most watts of power out of the amp possible.

those would be cool but im not sure they are the most cost effective solution, unless your Grant or a couple others on here with an endless supply of JACK.

Yes, but as Robert said, you have lots of cold water available. Maybe you can make your own solution *based* on these ideas. There are many 'homegrown' water coolers for CPUs that are quite innovative.

Shane, I was having the same problem, I live in Texas and the ampsI have get EXTREMELY hot so I purchased some of these amp fans for about 15$ per fan. I think they are stinger, designed for cooloing all car amps, They really work well, I was pretty surprised how much airflow these little guys produce