The vintage Alpine 7801 deck I previously installed started having some issues with the internal amplifier. Resulting in an annoying popping noise occasionally to frequently depending on well who knows. Obviously a new deck would have been the easiest, but finding late 80’s to early 90’s working stereo gear in good shape is a bit tough to start with and even tougher if you are looking for a deck with an amp. Most of the higher end decks of the day were “dead heads” pre-amp only. So an amplifier was the best solution for now.
My original thought was to install my slightly newer 1992 PPI Black Art A204 amp. It works and looks great, but I wasn’t quite ready to do a full trunk set up on this car so I settled for a hidden modern amp.
Enter the Rockford “motorcycle amp”.
It’s tiny, it’s 4 channel and it claims 300 watts.
Now where to put it.
These two empty studs above the glove box will do nicely.
Picking up all that scrap ABS at Tap Plastic comes in kinda handy.
I made a quick mount for it and this allows it to tuck up and out of the way of anything and still get a reasonable amount of air space around it. While I’m not pushing this thing that hard on my stock replacement speakers, it does get warm.
Sorry this picture is terrible, but you get the idea.
While I was running the power wire I fixed the half-assed alarm install and ran that siren wire actually through the grommet rather than around it. Glad it never rubbed through and caught fire.
Sound wise it sounds pretty good, of course so far my comparison is a stock deck that only worked on the right rear, or the dying Alpine that popped repeatedly. Next up in the audio department is new front speakers.
