How To Fix a Car Amplifier That is Overheating

A car amplifier is used to power speakers, tweeters and subwoofers, what is does is gets an input signal from the car stereo and amplifies the signal into an louder signal and sends it to the driver. When this is happening, the components inside the car amplifier, such as the mosfet transistors, warm up and generate heat. Most amps have efficient cooling systems, having a cooling fan to blow air onto the transistors and use heat sinks to dispatch the excessive heat, in order to keep it running at an cool operating temperature. If you suspect your car amplifier is overheating and you can smell an burning smell, or the cover is too hot to touch, really hot that your burn your skin! and starts smoking, after a really long while, then you need to fix this issue because if you don't do something about it, your amp will be fried and burnt out, due to overheating, so please do take action and save it before its too late.

1) If the car amplifier has an cooling fan, locate it and inspect it. First look at the fan blades are they spinning? If they are not, then the fan is faulty, causing your amp to overheat and go into protect mode or there is an lose connection to the fan internally on the circuit board, therefore you need to check the fan connector, by making sure it is connected to its connector socket and check the fan on an 9 volt battery to test if the fan works. If cooling fan fails to operate on the battery, then it needs replacing and will be the solution to this problem.

2) Also check the air ventilation vents on the sides of the car amplifier, to see if they are blocked with dust. Amps use air ventilation vents, to allow the hot air to escape out of the housing, to reduce the inside operating temperature, dust traps in the hot air, leaving the heat remaining inside the amp. If they are blocked, then open up the amp, get an can of compressed air, that is used to clean out dusty computers, and blast it through the vents, to remove the dust. You can also use an hoover, using the nozzle to suck up the dust.

3) Also make sure that the ohm load on your amps is not below the recommend lowest ohm load the manufacturer stated in the user manual. If you don't have the manual, go the manufacturer's official website, find the model of your amp, you should find an scanned version, that can be viewed in a .pdf format. Having a ohm load that is below the specifications, pushes the amp beyond its mechanical limits, therefore causing it to overheat instantly. This can be the cause if you have bridged your amp on a 1 or 2 ohm load, as an low impedance load causes more heat and also reduces sound quality, as it causes an increase in distortion, which too can eventually lead to an damaged voice coil. So increase the ohm load to the standard 4 ohm load and your amp will be pushing less watts, however it will operate much more cooler.

4) Have you set the gain control to high? The idea of the gain is to match the voltage send through the RCA cables to your amp, this is done by using an multimeter, however it is not that accurate, but you can buy an professional distortion detector, created by Steave Meade called the 'DD1', that will match the gain properly and correctly, with your deck. If you have set the gain to high, the driver you are driving will be clipping, which is overloading the input until the output attempts to drive, causing it to exceed the amps headroom, creating a DC signal to what you are driving, causing more heat.

5) Is the amp mounted in an location that allows freely air ventilation around it? If it is mounted under a car seat or in an stuffy location, then the amp can't get rid of the heat efficiently and will heat up quickly and start to overheat. Also make sure there is nothing placed on top of the car amp, things like jackets or clothes are likely to get thrown into the trunk and land onto the amp because if something is placed onto the amp, it will block air ventilation around it, suffocating the amp, as it blocks air flow.