I have an Alpine 445 amp in there. When I put these new speakers in, I'm going to bridge the output channels so that should give me 2 90 watt channels. Don't have speakers in the back anyway, do we?

For the head unit, Elmo, I recommend what they call "Mech-less", or one without a CD player. I don't think there's a CD player made that can withstand the vibration of a Harley. The Mechless ones will take a USB stick or chip. My ideal head unit is a mechless marine with weather bands, black face and red or green lights (red or green don't interfere with night vision.) Not sure it exists.

 

I always have changed out the head unit too since the stock radio is not the same Ohm range as traditional car speakers are.

In all honesty I am not too sure if this affects new speakers in anyway but for some reason I think that a 4 ohm radio should have 4 ohm speakers. This could be completely meaningless but whatever...

 

Doc, any chance you a pic of that alpine mounted ? A few years back I looked for an amp but didn't find anything decent to fit under the outer shell.

 

Yeah, Riz, here ya go:

 

I used some of that double sticky mounting tape on it.

 

Looks great in there, thanks ! I'll have to look into that.

 

Works well, too. Note that there are two Alpine 445's now, one "universal" and one specifically for Alpine head units. I blew up the original one I put in there years ago with a "smart" charger and accidentally bought the Alpine specific model instead of the universal one to replace it. I put that one in the RAV4 and bought another universal model for the bike.

 

Why did the charger blow the amp?

 

Well, near as I can tell, the charger I used was a "Genius" charger, which I guess is one beyond "Smart" charger. I was trying to revive a dead battery and it has a "repair" function where it will pulse the battery at like 70V to blow the crud off the plates. I've revived several dead batteries that way and gotten a bit more life from them. I had it on the repair function with the battery connected, and the amp has a constant on line, that is, unswitched, so it was getting whatever the charger was pushing through. The regulator in the amp blew out. So, my theory is that the 70V pulses blew out the regulator. I now only use that charger when I have the battery disconnected.

 

So much for Genius, huh........... and the battery charger too.