(little OT) How to build a portable car battery powered stereo system

[Renegadrian]

Folks, I need to build a portable stereo system for the Swing dancers I'm friends with.
I have a couple of car batteries, and a car amplifier. I have to feed it with an iPod or a CD player.
I also have a couple of speakers from an old boombox.
so...WHERE SOULD I START WITH THAT STUFF?!
I am particularly concerned on working with a car battery (amperage=danger?!)
THX

[Nasse]

There is old saying you should not do two things in your life and another is folk dancing, but any way...

Car battery voltage is not dangerous, but it can give enormous amount of amperes. It is best to make idiot reliable and short-circuit proof mechanical job, and put that extra fuse in line, 10-15 amps or more if needed

Take off metal wrist watches and rings and jewels, those could cut or zap your hand of finger off or burn when short circuit

Wear gloves and read safety rules when charging car batteries, they contain acid and do make hydrogen which explodes very very easily be it strong or weak mixture does kaboom

for outdoors I would try to find efficient watts/decibels speakers

[liddokun]

Not sure if you have a Traynor dealer over in Italy Adriano, but Traynor makes a very nifty little portable amp:
http://www.traynoramps.com/products.asp?type=4&cat=56&id=408

It's 50 watts, and has 2 inputs and an aux input for ipod/cd player. It runs on a car battery which is rechargable. If you can get your hands on one of these, it would definitely save you the trouble of having to build one. Sorry I can't offer you any other suggestions though.

[Renegadrian]

thx for the advices, yeah I know it's not the voltage but the high amperage that can be dangerous...So I'll go with all the safety tips...I don't wanna buy the traynor, altough seems quite good...I already have a power amp and the speakers, so I have to go with that stuff!!!

[Renegadrian]

Ok I had my first LIVE test - I wired a car battery (45A) to a 2.1 connector to feed the amp, which is a LEPAI 2020 (good amp for the money...) and have a 6A fuse on the positive wire. Then 2 old boombox speakers hooked up...
There were 30 people doing SHIM SHAM at Saint Paul's Abbey outside the Walls in Rome...And a lot of people stopped to see the dancers...Gotta make a wooden case with the speakers and the car battery, and the Lepai on top...