Water cooled amps

Well been wanting to do this for a few years, just for the fact that I can. Not that it was a huge issue but is nice not having to worry about one of my buddy's latest fling or my wife's friends throwing a towel or bag on top of the amps.
The first one I machined the fins off the side and built two tanks to bolt to the sides of the amp.
Worked awesome but wasn't pretty and permanently made the amp water cooled.







It was pressure tested to 300psi nitrogen overnight with no loss of pressure.

Not the arc amps have the heat sink on the base of the amp.
So I have the other coolers sandwhich to the bottom and are cnc'd out of 1" thick aluminum.
I had to add a few more bolt hols then originally designed to keep it from leaking and these will not hold 300psi. But they will hold against whatever pressure a ballast puppy can produce. Both dead headed and with a large restriction.
I am going to get them anodized over the winter and make the trim panel to hide everything but the centers of the cooling blocks and maybe add a small strainer to the system to keep trash out of the system.
But damn do they work. I had two amps with and two without the coolers at one point. The water cooled felt nice and chilly after 4 hours of beating on them and the air cooled were quite hot.
Also these are arc 300.2's the larger being a first edition so it is slightly larger.

I'm assuming there won't be enough heat to heat the water up too much by the time it hits the third cooler in the series? Probably way overkill but hey you got the tools and skill so i agree why the hell not lol. Our water is so muddy it would look terrible running through those coolers. We couldn't do clear lol

That is a bunch of money in materials and machine work, but I commend you on the job. Cool project nonetheless, just would suck to form a leak!

The first one, which can't be seen I barely have 20 bucks into. The fancy looking machined ones were $300 a pair for machining and programming alone.
Now that the programming is done I can get the cost down but just material alone is not cheap. Honestly have almost as much into the coolers then the amps themselves.

Water and electronics don't go well together so I'd ensure a leak free seal and use something other than fly high fittings

Originally Posted by viking

Water and electronics don't go well together so I'd ensure a leak free seal and use something other than fly high fittings

quick disconnects!

cool concept. I'm adding fans to everything I'm doing next, but that takes it to another level!

No fly high fittings were used.
What you are confusing for fly high fittings is the flow-rite fittings. That as has been stated, was pressure tested to 300psi for 24 hours with only .2 psi drop using a fluke netdaq data logger with a rosemount 3051 as the end device.
The Flow rites have been modified to use three orings also.

Very cool project if u have the ability. I have found out through the years if you buy good amps sized for the speakers and have a solid power source, I dont have any heating issues anymore though!

I don't care what amps you buy what power supply or what load they are under. When you shove them into a sealed compartment, that entire compartment will get hot. The goal of this project was to make it so even if the amps were buried in towels it would still run ice cold.

The stereo system is 4 arc ks 300.2's and one DD M1b. Two of the arc's power two rev 410's @ 4ohm and one powers the 4 interior speakers@ 2ohm stereo. The sub amp is wired at 1ohm to a DD 12. I have two SRM4d batteries just for the stereo so power and load is not an issue.

It's the same as if you had a massive fan trying to cool you off inside of a enclosed car in the sun. You are still recirculating hot air.

Just when you think everything's been done to a wakeboat that can be done you see this! I love it! (Well, maybe not the flow rite fittings, but you seem to know your business, so I'll take your word.) Does the ballast pump run all the time or is there some type of circulating loop? Did you punch a new hole through the hull or just branch off an existing line? This is cool man (literally.)

Pretty sweet idea!!!

I wanted to do a quick disconnect and was afraid of pressure loss if I used the industrial fittings I tried (parker snap tite).
So I tested the flow rite's as they come and then added one and finally two o-rings and was confident then. They honestly hold 50psi and only leak if you try to wiggle the fitting while under pressure.
Now over the winter I need to make a quick disconnect for the new bank of coolers. Not sure if I ill turn fittings to go into the flow rites again or what I will do.
Maybe try to come up with something really trick looking.

It's a single pass flow system, the circ pump is tee'd into the inlet for my center fill bag and then discharges out of one of my vent lines in the stern. I put a check valve on the vent so my coolers don't constantly fill one bag.
I did notice a very small slow down on the fill of my center bag when the stereo is on since that put's two 1200 aerator style pumps on one 3/4" thru hull.
But not a huge deal breaker.

I thought it would be kick ass to have a under floor amp rack completely air tight using the coolers and have a non conductive oil in them and use a liquid to liquid heat exchanger scrubbing the heat. That way even a worse case leak inside the heat amp rack would just be a non conductive oil. Messy but not catastrophic.
But think I would end up permanently living in the boat if I told the wife I'm dumping even more money and time into the stereo with no audible returns.