By far the best solution is to have your radio converted to 12 volts. It will be much more reliable and will have a longer service life. The ceramic voltage drops have typically a 40 percent error rate which is quite a lot to a radio. Your radio requires about 12 amps when you first turn it on and then draws 8-10 contunious after that. So according to the electrical rules that are in charge here....when you reduce the voltage output by half, the amperage output is also reduced by half. So when you reduce the voltage from 12 volts down to 6 volts the amperage is also being reduced at the same time. So...in this case you will need about 20 amps on the incoming side of your reducer in order to get 10 amps output to power your radio. That explains why your reducer is getting so hot.
Think of this as driving down the street with the emergency brake on...the faster you drive the hotter the brake shoe gets, so in this case you are driving about 70 miles an hour!! In addition the flucation in voltage will eventually ruin your radio, and when that day comes you will be very sad.
By contrast if you had your radio converted to 12 volts it would require just 5 amps from your charging system making it much more efficent and reliable. Best of all you would have the option to add the FM band and nobody would know, it would look the same as it always did.
Just some food for thought....Randy :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :p :p
