Sorry for the daft question,

If I fit an upgraded stereo to my daughters car - which only has 2 front speakers, is it ok to run it with only the 2 speakers even if it has outputs for 4 speakers?

Cheers

Mooky

As long as you make sure the 2 outputs that are not used are not shorting to each other or anywhere else that should be OK.

Yes, it's absolutely fine as, if the connectors has the other wires just cuts the ends off and wrap them (so they can't short).

I assume its a relatively new stereo?
I do recal it was possible to damage the output tranistors but I would guess this is on older stereos. You could always fade the sound forward to be sure though.

Good point Loggyboy, but I think that was, as you say, on the older sets. I would guess the new ones would sense no current draw on those unused channels and so prevent excess load. In older sets, the open-circuit (i.e. no connection) was seen as a really high impedance on the channel and could draw a higher curent than the devices could handle over a long time. Not 100% sure but if I'm wrong someone will put me right

HTH

Surely that can't be right.. that would mean that you'd have a maximum speaker impedance rating on those stereos? As far as I recall, you only ever got minimum impedance (usually 4-8 ohms on older ones)

Definitely nothing wrong with connecting only two speakers up to new ones!

Old valve amplifiers and some transistor ones could produce a very high voltage with no load and burn themselves out. Modern transistor ones don't have this problem.

I've never given this any thought till now, but we've been fitting radios to the cabs of tractors etc with just two speakers for years & not seen any problems that I'm aware of.