why the hell are capacitors so expensive?

im running a 1800 watt power acoustik amp to my 2 infinity kappa subs. do you guys think i should use a capacitor? if so how powerful? let me know. thanks.

oh yeah, how are capacitors hooked up? any pics would be nice

 

1. do your lights dim? if not, you dont need a cap. before you get a cap, do this first. run bigger wire under the hood. get some 4 ga, run another line (i use a fuse on it too) from the alt to the battery, battery to the frame, and from the battery to the block. most people forget this important step. everybody runs 4ga or larger from their battery to their amp, yet they leave the dinky 8ga under the hood untouched and wonder why they are having charging problems....

 

i'd buy a bigger alternator a cap really doesnt do that much unless you buy a full farad and even then it's like the same price as a new alternator. i'd also agree with cam3po you could have a 200 amp alternator and not have a big differance because of crappy 8 ga. wire.

 

how hard is it to replace the 8 ga, going from the alternator. and when you say battery to the frame, do you mean the grounder?

 

Yeah they mean the ground. Once you run 4 gauge from the battery to the AMP you will notice an immediate difference. The rule of thumb that the sales guys like to quote, is that for either 100w or 200w systems or higher you need a CAP. They say this because most and I mean even the cheap AMPS are designed to run on 14.4 or even higher voltages. This little voltage difference makes a lot of diffence in the power output.

 

100 Watts and higher? Most Recievers alone can put out more than 100 Watts at max output. The sales guys who told you that "rule of thumb" are trying to rip you off into buying a $100 capacitor. You should really only think about a cap once you get around 500-600 Watts, and only a .5 farad cap, at that. Once you get in to the 1000W neighborhood, get a full farad. As for the voltage, the amp has a range of voltages it can operate in, as long as it doesn't fall below the minimum. Your charging sysytem should be operating fairly close to 14V anyways, and a cap will NOT, I repeat, NOT increase your voltage, it will simply prevent it from dropping too low during high-draw moments. BTW, I run a 600W (total, including deck) system, with NO cap, the stock 105-amp alternator, and a three-year-old Delco battery without any power issues in my system (well, if you watch the lights REALLY intently, you can barely see them dim, but I'm gonna wait on a cap untill I switch to my Audiobahn bottom end ) You should, before anything else, run your thicker-gauge ground, as mentioned before. This will ensure that your electrical "foundation" is sound. If nothing else, it will make your car ready for bigger and better things, and give you one less thing to worry about. Are you running any other amps besides your sub amp? If you're really running about 1800W, you are almost in the realm of needing 2 farads' worth of capacitance. When hooking them up, you want the lead from the cap to the amp(s) as short as possible. You can get caps that have a fused distribution block in them, if you are running a mulit-amp setup. However, I am not too familiar with the Power Acoustic amps, so call them up and see what they recommend. Hope this helps.

 

they recommend 1 farad, caps are very expensive. im going to run the 4 ga ground and power, and then ill see what i can do,. thanks for the detailes and help.

 

wow, someone bought into salesman BS. you do NOT need a cap. i'm running a system thats around 1000 watts and its not even dimming. caps arent necessary if you set up your electrical system right. as for the line from the battery positive to the alt, all i did was pick up some 4ga (i also included a fuse, very good idea to always runa fuse on 12+ lines in a car) and since i already had a side post on the battery that accepted a ring terminal (can be found at any car audio store and some parts stores), all i had to do on the battery side was screw it down. on the alt side, i just used a ring terminal on the post (the one thats got a red 8ga wire screwed down to). the screw was long enough to allow me to put the ring terminal over the stock wire. you can see the wire (which looks pretty stock with some split loom over it) running temporarily over the upper radator hose. the onyl modification i had to do was make a little cut in the rubber cover over the stock alt wire just because it wouldnt sit over both wires right, but you wouldnt know it now. still workin on the sbc 400 swap, so dont mind the bit o messiness

 

alright, ill let you know how it turns out.

 

Crazy thing, my sony damn near shuts my headlights off! Never thought bout changing my alt wires though, I'll have to do that.