Under floor cooling for ZX amps

paintguy · Post by **paintguy** » Mon May 03, 2010 12:34 am

Hi all,

Very much in the early planning stages with this one, but one thing I'm unsure of is cooling for my amps. If all goes to plan I'll be having a ZX350, ZX450, & ZX500 side by side across the boot (trunk) floor. One idea I've had is to make a timber box frame around them, then cover this with some kind of heavy duty metal mesh (like the Select Products HD grille mesh), then trim over this with a 'breathable' acoustic carpet.

Do you think this will give me enough air movement to cool the amps, or do I need to look at making a sealed box with cross flow fan ventilation?

I know heat build up in the amps differs with their loading, so the ZX450 will be having it easy running mids and tweets @ 4Ohms, ZX350 will be running my midbass @ 2Ohms, and the ZX500 will be bridged to run a 4Ohm sub.

Thanks,
Andy.

Post by **ttocs** » Mon May 03, 2010 4:42 am

I can tell you that any covering over the fans grills will pretty much kill any air going through it. Could you add an industrial touch and use some expanded or perferated steel?

paintguy · Post by **paintguy** » Mon May 03, 2010 5:38 am

ttocs wrote: Could you add an industrial touch and use some expanded or perferated steel?

That's the sort of thing I was thinking of - making an enclosure around them out of timber (or possibly even welded steel) and covering it with the mesh I mentioned above. Select describe it as: "16 guage steel with 33 perforations per square inch, 63% open area". I'd also be leaving at least 1" clearance all around and above the amps (as per the manual).

I'm pretty sure that bit would work fine, but it's the fabric covering that has me worried as I think it may restrict airflow too much. I really need something to keep it stealthy, as it's an estate car (wagon), and it also needs to be a usable load area at times.

finbar · Post by **finbar** » Tue May 04, 2010 7:12 am

paintguy wrote:
I'm pretty sure that bit would work fine, but it's the fabric covering that has me worried as I think it may restrict airflow too much. I really need something to keep it stealthy, as it's an estate car (wagon), and it also needs to be a usable load area at times.

Would window screen work?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_screen
I have been able to get it in aluminum and fiberglass. The uncoated aluminum was the most opaque. The light reflecting off it obscured what was beneath.

paintguy · Post by **paintguy** » Tue May 04, 2010 9:25 am

Thanks, that's another idea for me to think about