I'm thinking about getting a cap and wanted opinions on who makes the best one.

 

caps are pretty much the same all around as long as its less that 2 Farads. i suggest getting something thats moderately priced. you dont really need to spend an extra 50, 75, or 100 bucks to get basically the same thing.

 

I was thinking of getting a 1 fared cap for the sub amp witch is a 1000 watts but you think i should get a bigger one?

 

Or sould i get one for each amp? The problem I'm having is my light are dimming when my bass hits. Battery is new. 180 amp alt. and all factory power wires have been up graded.

 

its kinda hard to say exactly. if you had them all hooked together through a single distibutor then you could get a 2 F and be alright. if they run seperatly though, its a different thing. how are the amps wired from the battery?

 

I have 4 guage going from the battery to a distibutor block in the trunk and then 8 guage to each of the amps

 

personally from what i've seen a 1 farad stinger cap is really nice both of my friends that have hard pounding systems use them i plan on gettin one as soon as i have the cash they are modestly priced as well.

 

4 AWG is too small to feed 1000+ watts of power unless they are class D amps.

As for a cap, the old rule of thumb was 1 farad per 1000 RMS watts, but now the amps themselves have so much capacitance that you can get away with much less.

I have to wonder why your lights are dimming with a 180 amp alternator. They shouldn't. I would expect that problem to be much less severe if you run 0 AWG wire, and upgrade your grounds including the battery ground. I would also upgrade the wire from the alternator to the battery to something much larger than the stock 10 AWG.

 

All caps out there are the same. They are all made by Lightning Audio and then just sold to different companies who slap there own label on it. I have a 2 farad but i think i might up it to a 5. and when you up grade wires, make you up the grounds, because your system is only gettin as much power as the ground can feed.

 

i agree w/ jim. i think you are gonna need bigger wire all around. if its not too long of a wire, you could probably get away with 2 ga. i would suggest connecting the cap at the distributor before the fuses.

 

I have replaced the alt wireing and grounding with 4 guage already. I'm running a total of 2000 watts. each of the mrv 501 are 500 watts and the mrv 1000 isa 1000 watts. You guys think I sould run o guage to the blocks and then 4 guage to the amps??? with the cap before the block?

 

might as well

 

You don't want the cap before the distribution block. It will have little or no effect. You want the cap as close as possible to the terminals on the sub amp (s). If that means 2 1/2 farad caps instead of a single 1 farad, so be it. You want absolutely NO more than 12" of power wire from the cap to the amp.

 

on my setup i have about 3 inches of wire going from the dist block to each of my amps.. if i was to put a cap into my system, would it work to put it right before the distribution block, since theres only a couple inches of wire from there to the amps? just hypothetical, but im interested to learn something today

 

are you saying wire the cap after the fuses?

if so, what if the caps grounded out or there was a short or something of the sort? wouldnt that ruin the amp? i could be wrong on this and just confussed but i think it should be done before the fusses.

i did mine at the distibutor with more than 12" (~18" & ~40") to the amps and mine still works great and its just a 1 Farad.

 

If you have the cap within a couple inches of the amp, there's virtually no chance of shorting things out. If you do, your fuses will still prevent the battery voltage from shorting out, but it will discharge the energy in the cap.

 

ahh yes. i was thinking to hard earlier and confussed myself.

i still believe you can put it further than 12". a cap is similar to a battery in that it stores a certain amount of power until it is needed so therefore as long as the wire is guaged correctly and not grossly long it will still work pretty much as intended.

now i know that a cap and a battery are different but in general terms they are similar and, in my opinion, close enough in this situation.