Paul --

You've already made the most important move in this whole adventure -- by going far, far away from those miscreants at that stereo shop. Don't go back, they are clueless about car audio.

As Schofiel/Tadzio said, the rated wattages of your speakers are maximums. Unless you have big boxes full of subwoofers you haven't told us about, your 440 watt amplifier is very much overkill. With speakers as you have described, that amp you bought will be putting out such a small percentage of its total capacity that cooling will not be much of a problem. Anyplace where there is air surrounding it will be adequate; My preferrred location is under the passenger seat, far enough forward that rear seat passengers feet can't hit it, but far enough back that, if you slide the passenger seat forward you can reach amp settings (gain, crossover switches, etc.) while sitting in the drivers seat.

Most times, the cables from the amp to the head unit will be run beneath the carpeting. Run them "sideways" from the head unit over to the side of the car, unscrew a few trim pieces, and you can usually get beneath the carpeting along the door sills, and from there under the seat. You will have to cut a small slit in the carpet under the seat to get the wires out to the amp. It is a good idea to separate the power leads and the audio leads as much as possible, even to the extent of running the power leads down one door sill and the audio leads down the other.

It is possible that your owners manual for your car may have a wiring diagram in it -- Teutonic thoroughness with a German car and all that. If not, then a Hanes manual (or similar) for your car would be available at an auto parts supply store. But I betcha that Dominic at Cambridge Car Audio (bbs id: Cambscar) could tell you without even looking it up the few colors you need to know to for this installation.

I take note of your assistant, here: "...a bit of an expert at car electrics, having worked for Lucas". I guess he would have to be (expert, that is). I saw a great bumper sticker once: "Why do the English drink warm beer? Lucas Refrigerators!" ;-) But I am sure your friend can tell you even more Lucas stories than I can.

One final note, referencing your first post: empeg does make it quite clear that an amplifier is required. Under the "Player" section of their website, second paragraph:

To get sound out of the unit, you need
to hook it up to an amp: this can
either be a dedicated car audio amp
(there are 4 RCA-outs on the back of
the unit) or to the auxillary input on
another head unit. If you want to keep
your head unit (and it has pre-outs on
it) you can feed these into the empeg
car and it will allow you to select the
auxiliary input when you want to play
CDs or tapes.

I'm sorry you missed that, but from everything I've heard, you will be more than delighted with the unit once you get it installed and functional.

Keep us posted on how things work out.

tanstaafl.




"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"