The other night I had the amp overheat and shut down after an hour and a half and I had to turn the air conditioning on full blast pointing towards the floor for about 30 minutes before it would play music again. It was under unusual circumstances with the van over loaded and boxes rammed against it so the heat couldn't dissipate and just built up. Even the seats were getting hot with the amp between them.

I'm just worried that this might start happening when it gets cold and I turn the van heat on. Does anyone have some good suggestions on how to cool the amp? I already have the sub box over it with the sub pointing down on it to help cool it but I guess that isn't always enough.

The best thing to keep an amp cool is to give it space. Covering it with the sub box is probably the root of the problem (although I don't know what your setup is like exactly).

The heater in the winter, unless it is blowing directly on the amp, probably will have little or no bearing on its performance.

The sub box is built up over the amp between the front seats. It is the only place in the van they can go since it has to be totally empty at times to carry equipment. The back of the sub box narrows to give it openness to breath.

Sometimes hot air flow is better than no air flow.

Unfortunately, cooling is something usually taken into account when designing something... BUt at this point you still have options. What about running a small fan, perhaps similar to that in a PC, hooked up to the switched power supply lead?

Sometimes hot air flow is better than no air flow.

Maybe that was the problem that particular night, it had no air flow, it was totaly blocked. Maybe I'll look into plaing a fan on it somehow. I just don't want to ruin the amp, would be very hard to replace.

my rockford fosgate amp, powering 2 hx2 12 inch subs will usually shutdown after 30 or 45 minutes when played at full volume. The amp is sealed in the trunk mounted on the backseat split in my civic., when the seat is folded down it will not over heat as long as there is some airflow.

I was thinking about some kind of cooling solution, something along the lines of fans mounted on amps, but havent done it yet.