Allright everyone... I need some major help from the geniouses on this site :hail: !
I posted earlier on my power acoustik install. The sub sounds great, only now i have another dilemma... The car they are in is dead. I have a 96 grand am gt that i have owned since last october. SInce i have owned the car it has been through 5 alternators(literally). All of these have been at the expense of autzones warrenty, but im tired of replacing the d@mn things. I have also replaced the battery, alternator cable, voltage regulator wiring, belt tensioner, belt and the terminal ends to the battery... basically every charging sytem component i can think of. I installed my subs right after christmas. I am currently running a 1800w rms Power acoustic amp into a 12" PA DVC sub. THe other day my charging system light came on so i took it to Autozone to have it tested. The test came back fine... I turned the stereo on with subs a boomin... It was fine...b@$tards! The guy saw the amp wire and said man thats a big wire(4 gauge) that's your problem. So i unhooked it... fine. THen he told me that i needed to get a battery switcher and another battery and convert it to a dual battery setup. We tested it one more time and it was fine. The guy finally told me that everything was fine and that the light was probably faulty. So I was ASSured that my car wouldn't leave me stranded. After driving for about 30 miles the car's systems began failing, just like the last time the alternator went bad. Luckily the igintion sytem lasted until my neighborhood. I coasted it home only to find that with the theft sytem disabled i couldnt pull my key out and the lights were trying to flash. well, sorry for thelong post, but i needed to vent and try and get some help. my basic question is wether or not i need a second battery or even a capacitor. Also is it possible for the amp to fry the alternator.
Sorry again for thelong post...
Jared (84'fxrupr)

 

It's possible to fry out alternators. Alternators are ment to charge a battery every once and awhile when the battery starts to get low. Their not meant to power the car and all electronics like some people think. Batteries are the holding of the charge... amps suck juice from the battery and alternators just kind of top them off when they start getting low... That's pretty much what it comes down to. When you start burning up alternators it usually comes back to the fact that you're leaching to much off the battery it's getting low and the alternator can't recharge the battery fast enough putting a lot of stress on it.

I would suggest a 2 battery system also. Caps aren't meant to replace batteries they only really come into play sometimes when a head light might flicker under very heavy bass during a certain part of a song.

For a 2nd battery there are basically 2 types you can get a Wet (conventional) or Dry (deep cycle). The deep cycles are made so they do not vent gases into the cabin or a confined area. Their also made so they don't have much of a memory, in other words they're meant to be ran down and recharged and they will take that multiple times unlike a Wet. They do cost more though.

I would highly recommend a Dry Cell like Optima or off shoot brand I think Interstate is making batteries similiar now.

 

generally adding more batteries or more caps will limit the life of your alt because it has more components to recharge...i suggest upgrading the big three wires and taking your alt to an automotive electrician who can rewind it to but out much higher amperage. You should notice a fairly large difference just with those mods and might not even need the auxillary battery and isolater.

as for your 4 guage power wire draining your battery..that makes no sense at all

 

Man you guys are fast... Thanks for the help, but i found the problem. The people i bought the car from rebuilt the top end of the engine... in doing this they F*cked up the wiring horribly. I have replace several wires although im not sure what the big 3 are. One of the wires was actually a wire plug for the voltage regulator. The piece i used had a little bit different clip on the end so it didnt snap into place, but it did fit. I guess over time it had loosened itself and while i was working on it today i found it. Pluged it back in tightly and Everything works fine now. After all that i was back to happy with my car... and then i tried to turn on the heater and nothing happened ...b@$tard grand ams! Oh well
Another day another dollar
Thanks for the help guys
Jared(84'fxrupr)
P.S. How much does it cost to upgrade the alternator?

 

i couldnt tell ya how much it costs to get your alt re-wound...ive never done it but it depends on where you get it done i suppose

i got a 280 amp alt shipped for $550CDN i think

 

alright, i have another question.
I saw on another thread something about alternator wine. I had always been told this was a sign of a bad alternator. I think i hear it and then when i turn the radio down it goes away. ANyone have any more info on the wine?

 

This has come up before.

Usually its a bad ground, too many ground points, or your RCA cables are too close to power wire, or RCA cables have poor shielding.

 

with my previous car i had the alt went bad and i had it rebuilt at a local shop for higher amps. total it came to about 80-90$ U.S. put out about 180-200 amps. only problem was it really didnt start charging the greatest until about 900-1k rpms. at warm idle it would put out around 10.8 or a little lower. but once it got reved up a bit it would be puting out a constant 14.4-14.6 volts.

 

amps pushing subs will always shorten the life of an alternator, the more true power and the more often you are cranking the volume will kill them faster. there are a few things to help, i use to go through an alternator about ever 2 weeks. then i began to look into preventing it, you can get your alternator re rapped to charge more, you can use caps, and you can run another dry cell battery, since i work at a battery manufacture, i decided to run this enourmous battery, i have an escort gt with my system in, the battery is as big as my spare tire well, you can wire it in with your cars battery but it will still shorten the alternators life, just not as fast, but what i did is i got an orion mbr70, it is a battery isolater/regulator, it is an external 70 amp alternator dedicated for the second battery, they are not made anymore to my knoledge, but im sure some other companies make something similar, since ive put it in about 5 years ago, i have not had to replace 1 alternator and i dont baby my system, the reson for the dry cell battery, is instead of having liquid acid in them, it is a gel acid, i make them so i know this for a fact, they will take a ****load more abuse and severe discharging, and also you can mount them on there side and they dont leake, but they are exspensive.

 

Extra battery is only required when the your listening to music when the car is not running.go with a higher output alternator

 

batteries also act as a reserve when the car is running. They pick up the slack from the alt

 

your alternater always has to put more voltage in the battery then it takes out of it.no matter how big your battery or how many batteries you have . bottom line

 

i agree with you...your alt should always be upgraded before adding extra batts to your system. Im just saying in come cases you cant have an alt big enough for your system so batteries are needed to run it for a decent amount of time.

 

Autozone generally sells substandard alternators you will be lucky to get one that is acutally capible of 100% of it's rating so if you are pulling a good constant load on them charging an amp then you may go through 20 or 30 if you can even find one from AZ that is capible of this level of load.