lswaidz

I was just curious what you guys all do as far as putting you amps somewhere... I'm going to have 3 seperate amps and there jsut doesn't seem like a lot of places to put them... I could see where the factory sub was... but i'd like to keep some storage space in the car... if any of you guys have good pics of your amp racks or various solutions, i'd love to see them.

~Lance

hndumafia

iTrader: (10)

ive got my amps where the bose sub goes. i dont know how easy it would be to get 3 amps back there though, might be kinda tight depending on their sizes.

im not sure how to get the picture into the post because ive never done that before but a friend just put up some pics he took while working on the install with me on cardomain so here's the link to that

http://www.sounddomain.com/id/diggydiggydum

Rajiv

zand02max

iTrader: (22)

Heres mine

lswaidz

Raj:

How hard was it for you to take your seats out? I tried doing this w/ my Rendezvous and it was a hella bad experience since I had the seat motors and seat heater stuff...

~Lance

hndumafia

iTrader: (10)

takes no more than a minute to get the seat out. the seat frame is just held in by 4 bolts which are very easy remove and i dont remember if it was one or two wiring harnesses, also easy to remove. just move the seat back to get to the front two bolts and then move the seat foward to get to the rear two bolts, then tilt the seat and unplug the harness.
if you've got the airbag lights it will probably trip the airbag light, at least it did for me. No big deal though, you can just get the light turned off next time you go in for service.

Rajiv

bastard

You can disconnect your battery before you unplug anything and not have the problem. You should be disconnecting the battery before installing stuff anyway.

My amps are also in the sub compartment, but on an aluminum rack in order to save weight and to help cooling. You could probably get all 3 amps in there if you're clever with your design and if 2 of the amps aren't too wide--maybe have two on the bottom and one on the top or something like that.

hndumafia

iTrader: (10)

i did i have my neg terminal disconnected while doing my install and while taking out the seat, however if i remember correctly i connected the neg terminal back to the battery before reinstalling the seat to test out the speakers and amps to make sure everything was working before i reinstalled the seat.
so yea as bastard said disconnect the battery before removing and reinstall the seat before reconnecting the battery.

i also agree with him depending on the width of the amps you could possibly get two on the bottom. the area is pretty large.

Rajiv

onecoolee

...and mine (stealth approach) :

hndumafia

iTrader: (10)

onecoolee:
around how much do you think it would cost for a shop to make me a custom rack that will fit nicely into that compartment like yours. ive been trying to find someone selling their stock piece from the passenger side box but no one seems to have them for sale and it's too expensive to buy the oem piece from nissan because you have to buy it with the door and hinge and everything.
ive been thinking about making a fiberglass piece like that using the oem one as a mold but ive never used fiberglass before and i dont know how nice it would turn out.

any ideas?

onecoolee

I htink if you used the stock piece from the passengers side, it would be tight...there really isn't room for 2 amps if you use the stock piece. I was going to do the same thing, until I tried to fit my 2 qamps in there, and it was a no-go. So I opted to make my own.

I probably spent $20-30 on materials to make mine, and my parts list was something like this--5/8" mdf, L brackets, black paint, black carpet, wire grommets, spray glue (3M), and screws. I bought everything from Home Depot, except for the black box carpetting (acoustic subwoofer box carpet, which can be glued with spray glue), which I bought from tweeter, 1 yard total, so I have enough for like 2 or 3 more racks.

All I did was fabricate the shelf that holds that amps, to fit inside the opening, then braced it externally with the L brackets and made sure that it sat on the floor of that well, since it holds about 20-30 pounds. Once I had a good fit, I painted it black, screwed it together, and mounted the amps and ran wiring. After it was in the opening, I mounted it, and installed the black carpet to make it look like it was factory installed, and the carpet actually covers the opening of the sub cover too, so that you cannot see any metal at all, like a trim piece. It was a tight fit, and I hope nothing ever happens to the amps because it is a bear to remove, or do any work on, so I will keep my fingers crossed. The wires all run from the factory sub location to the passengers side where I have a capacitor, fuse holders and some signal processing. I have a complete install thread somewhere in these forums, do a search on me to find it... maybe you can get some ideas there...

Good luck...

zand02max

iTrader: (22)

I just took my plexi-glass amp rack apart and selling it, if anyone is interested. Here is the link with the measurements.


https://my350z.com/forum/audio-and-video/61507-amp-rack-removal.html


I am doing the stealth install like onecoolee or maybe each amp under each seat, haven't decided yet. I have some fairly large amps, plus my 3 farad cap is already in the OEM compartment.

Stereo Shops want $240 just to install the 2 amps in the OEM compartment, WTF? Thinking of doing it myself. I hate people that try and rip you off. They said it was like 4-5 hours labor.

Onecoolee, how is the OEM compartment and the heat, do your amps overheat, do you have a fan?

onecoolee

yes, my large subwoofer amp has a built in inductive cooling fan, that turns on when the amp is on. This amp is running at a 1 ohm load, so a fan would be necessary if it wasn't built in. The other amp for mids/highs/rears, a 4 channel amp, has a beefy heatsink running at a normal 4 ohm 4 channel load, so it really doesn't get too hot.

I have not had any overheating problems at all...even on longer trips.

zand02max

iTrader: (22)

Well I finished the amp rack install inside the OEM sub compartment. What a pain in the ***, but I got both amps and the 3 farad cap in there. Tight fit, but it looks great. I stacked them and put the cap beside them.

Thanks onecoolee for the tips.

onecoolee

No problem...I am here to help, when needed.

I used quite a bit of Dynamat under the amp rack too, and when you find some carpet, or acoustic fabric, you can finish the rack off, and make it look like the amps are floating in there... plus it cleans things up alot, by not seeing metal, or sound dampening padding, etc.

Overall, the rack looks good and you will be happier knowing that your equipment is hidden and much safer in there than in a visible rack behind the seat...

D@ActiveTuning

iTrader: (17)

Sorry to thread hijack, but what kind of speaker wire did you use? All you did was wire it up the wiring harness behind the radio?

hndumafia

iTrader: (10)

i used 12 gauge monster speaker cable for my components and 10 gauge silver studio wire for my subs. the studio cable is a bit overkill but my friend whose garage i was working in had some lying around and i was out of other wire.
I have RCA's from the back of my h/u to my amps and then the speaker cables from the amps to the speakers. I didn't use any of the stock wiring for the speakers, it's really thin and would probably affect sound some quality running 150 watts to each component.

Rajiv

oaktown350

onecoolee and zand02max, how did you guys mount the rank to the car? Did you have to drill into the metal? Or are there holes to mount the rack/amps?

Thanks!

onecoolee

I used L brackets to mount the face of the rack to the opening of the stock sub location (see above). The L brackets attach the the sides of the amp rack and sit flush with the front of the sub opening and are attached by screws (drilled holes in metal). The rack is sturdy/stable, and will hold about 40 pounds, I wouldn't risk any more weight. The brackets are covered by the carpetting to trim everything out, and make the hardware invisible.

zand02max

iTrader: (22)

Ditto, mine was a tight fit because I had 2 large amps and a fairly large capacitor.

oaktown350

Oh I see! So it is not attached at the back or bottom? Do you worry about the entire rack bouncing?

Thank you guys!