Stereo pic's.

[cowboy4]

I'm in the process of building up the stereo in my pirata and was wondering what some of you others have done in the older boats?

Right now my amps are inside the cabin in that cubby in front of the observer seat. Have two kicker ks's in some chrome cans pushed by a kicker 150.2, A RE 12 with a orion 600x2,
waiting for the kicker 6.5's to get off national back order then going to run two sets in the cabin along with the 6x9 kicker km's in the base of the observer seat. All the interrior speakers will be on a sony 600 4 channel amp. Thinking of redoing the tower speakers with some custom PA/hlcd fiberglass pods. Then mounting the current cans so they face the driver and observer at ear level.


Who's boat was it that they turned the back ski storage into a amp rack?

[Salty87]

wotan mentioned that he has amps back there...

i have a pair of amps mounted under the dash. 1 is mounted to the vertical wall at the driver's left ankle (you can't hit it or get it wet). the 2nd is mounted on the backside of the bow seat in front of the driver. 800x4 rockford fosgate for the tower 6.5's (just 1 pair) and 4 interior 6.5's, the other is a 500x2 bridged rockford for a jl audio 12" sub. the sub's in a sealed box in front of the driver's feet under the dash... there's tons of room there on a saltare. run an ipod most of the time.

plenty loud for me and not too hard on the wallet.

cuddy must give you some nice alternatives.

[cowboy4]

Yes it does but I still seem to run out of room. I'm debating about building the box to go behind the driver as all that spot is good for is cooler stoarage. Maybe build a massive box / seat there. But then i'd have to load down the opposite side everytime we go out. lol

[Seabeejamie]

I am having MAJOR problems with the amps overheating. I have them mounted on the wall , drivers side, right above the kickboard. Just replaced the Concept amp with a new Kenwood 4ch, same problem. After a while (1 1/2 hrs) they get hot and shut off. I leave them off for about 30 minutes and I can go for another hour or so. Any ideas on cooling this area? I shopped around for an integrated fan AMP, but all that I found were low grade on quality.

[cowboy4]

I would first just do a couple pc type fans or even a squirrel cage fan. Just get the air moving. If that doesn't work you could always go a little mor extreme and water cool them and use A small amount off your raw water to cool them.

[cowboy4]

Well just got the rest of the equipment to go into my boat. Got two pairs of kicker km620's going to be powered by a sony 600x4 which will also have my 6x9's on it. Currently have a set of monster cans with kicker speakers on the tower on a 150x2 and then the sub on a 600 orion.

Now the headache of mounting it all.

[jonyb]

Mine's not a new Supra, but here are some pics of the stereo: http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d19/jonyb1/Supra/

[tazz3069]

Seabee-
I would check to see how your speakers and amps are wired. My brother-in-las has the same propblem with his setup.. It was wired at the factory. Now, I do not have a Supra yet. I have am 07' LSV. I did my entire sytem myself. I wired the rear cabin speakers in Series. Wiring it this way will keep the heat down on the amp. If I am not mistaken, the cabin speakers are the ones that are cutting out.
If the rear two speakers are wired in series, then it should be pulling 4 ohms. Wired in parallel brings the speakers to 2 ohms. 2 ohms is asking more power from the amp. Wired in sereies (4 ohms) sound quality is much better at less power needed . I hope this helps.
What amps do you have? If is the Kicker 700.5, then go to www.kicker.com, find the amp you have and find the owners manuel. There you should find how to wire it in series. Too this day, I havenot had any problems with my system. Here is a link to my system.
http://s185.photobucket.com/albums/x13/tazz3069/

[cowboy4]

Now for a quick lesson on ohm's law. Wiring in series or parallel will not make any sound quality differences or heat difference on the amp. The key is getting your load to match what the amp's designed for. the number of "ohm's" is a resistance. If you wire in series it adds the two together. if it's in parallel it divides the resistance. so say you take two 4 ohm speakers wire them in series you'll end up with a 8 ohm load. If you wire the same 4ohm speakers in parallel it would be a 2ohm load. Now if you wire 4 4ohm speaker in parallel (1ohm load) to a amp designed for a 4 ohm load you will make it run hot at the bare minimum and most likely blow it up. But at the same time if you took the same 4 speakers wired them all in parallel to the same mono block amp you would end up with a 16ohm load and the stereo would seem extremely quite. so to get it to work you would have to wire two of the speakers in parallel and then wire the two pairs in series. Once again I'm just throwing out easy numbers and i can get A lot deeper if need be. Or just look up ohm's law.

[tazz3069]

Cowboy you are right. I got my ohm mixed up. My Brother-in-laws boat is factory wired. The amp is getting very hot and turning off. All the speakers are wired in parallel. Even the tower speakers are in parallel. He has the 700.5 amp running the 6 cabin speakers and the 2 channel amp running the 4 tower speakers and a seperate sub amp running the sub. Now the only amp that is turning off is the 700.5 amp. The tower amp is also getting hot but not turning off. They are both Kicker amps.
Mine is wire just like you explaind. My two rear speakers are wired in series. The two front are wired normally. My 4 tower speakers are on a 4 channel amp. I haven't had any issues with my system at all.

[cowboy4]

It's kind of a pet pieve of mine cause I'm into car audio. Yet I do industrial automation and being a electronics guy it's so frustrating hearing the idea's and mentallity of the car audio guys on impedance and wiring. It is kind of fun to be in their shop and have them argue with you till you start prooving them wrong time and time again on basic electronics and see them get all red faced.

[Seabeejamie]

LOL...I am an electronics engineer. That being said, sometimes the obvious stares us in the face! I have 6 Polk MoMo's , 12" sub and 2 MB Quart Discus tower speakers. I have a 750 W Kenwood (4ch) wired to the 6 polk and 2 MB Quart's, all wired in parallel. This was my problem. This dropped the Imedance to 2 ohms all the way around, which is where my heat problem was coming from. I put 4 of the polks on the deck (which sounded pretty good, surprisingly) and the mb quarts and 2 Momo's on the kenwood. The 12" sub has a dedicated concept 500W amp wired to it (bridged) which never had a problem. All is now good, runs all day without a problem. I did go a little further though, the kenwood was mounted flush against the driver side wall, I elevated it so that air could get behind it and just bought a fan (120 cfm, 3 W) to wire in to push air across and behind it. I built a duct form out of coathanger and duct tape and have about 4 coats of resin on it now, should be ready to go next week. Luckily no one will ever see it as its under the dash...It's not pretty.

Thanks for the input!

[Seabeejamie]

As to the "2 ohm" "4 ohm" argument and heat......

P=I squared X R (sorry, cant get the little 2 up there).

If you decrease resistance, current goes up to make the same power. My Kenwood can handle 2 or 4 ohm load, but decreasing the imedance (resistance) then current goes up. This is great for sound quality, but increased current introduces increased heat. This wouldnt be a problem for a car mount, but as you can read in the news, it was 107 here in Dallas last weekend. That coupled with no airflow under the dash didnt get me enough cooling. Increasing the impedance therefore decreasing the current flow did the trick and allowed the amp to produce all day long.

[cowboy4]

Sounds like a great project for a water cooled setup!!!!
I have wanted to try it on a amp sometime. Get a fairly inexpensive amp drill the heatsink out or make a custom sink and watercool the beast or maybe even go as far as using a small dorm frig cooling system for a chilled water/antifreeze setup.

Wonder how much torture you could put a amp through???
Well now to do some torture to speakers, hook up some old 6.5's and 6x9's up to my stick welder and watch them scream for mercy.

[Seabeejamie]

Originally that was what I was looking for. Shouldn't be all that hard to tap off the feed water to run to the amp...I know that the hard core PC gamers run water cooled set-up's for their PC's.....I wonder if this could be modified for an Amp?

[cowboy4]

I used to have a 4 channel running a pair of 8in midranges that run pretty warm that I wanted to try it on but before I got a chance to set it up someone decided to clean out my t/a while sitting in airport parking and i was in la.