My amp is overheating after about a half-hour of moderate play. Is this common? It has a built-in fan. What more can you do to prevent this from happening?

common if wired incorrectly or put in a place it can't breathe

what is it, where is it?

The amp is a Alphasonik and it is mounted in the trunk against the back wall. (vert)

What resistance are you running it down to, and what is it rated for. More often than not, people will run an amp to 1ohm or less and the amp is only rated for 2 ohm. With the same voltage this will cause excessive current draw by the amp, and therefore excessive heat generation.

.02

I have two sets of 4 ohm speakers per channel running the amp at 2 ohms.

all sounds fine.

over this nice long weekend, can you run the system with the trunklid open (car sitting still of course) and see if it happens?

at that point we can rule in or rule out heat.

or get some 80mm pc fans and mount them to assist the usually diminuitive fan built into amps (my PG tantrum 1200.1 with a built in fan damn near caught on fire as the insides melted)

pretty common. I just replaced my Rockford 800a2 with an Audiobahn 4125 with 2 fans because the rockford was overheating at 2 ohms. New amp doesn't overheat at 1 ohm.

not much airflow in the trunk of a vert.

OK, I played the system pretty loud with the trunk open and a shop fan blowing in the trunk. The gain on the amp is set just under 1/2. I played it for about 40 min. with no problems. The amp was hot to the touch, but never cut off. I guess this means I have a heat issue. What is the best fix for this? Obviously I can't drive around with a shop fan, would the pc fans be enough.

bump

I used to use 4 squirrel cage fans from partsexpress.com. You can get them pretty cheap from them.

Mike