hey all,

I think I know what is causing my problem but here is the problem first.

The everytime I bring my stereo volume above 21 and the subs pump, my lights dim. I look at the volt meter on the dash and you see it drop from 13-14 down to 12-11 so I know I am putting some serious draw on my power system.

my setup is the following

• 2 Kenwood 1000watt amps
• 2 Pioneer Premier 700watt subs
• 2 Mobile Authority 1 Farrad Capacitors
• 4 guage wiring from bat, back
• 8 guage wire from distro box to amps

I had my magic 3 redone in 0 guage as the original wire there was looking pretty rough. I also used my dremel with the grinding stone to clean the grounds to make a good contact. I think my problem is the battery. I have a 600Amp battery under the hood of this car. Kinda looks like a battery that you would stick in say a go-cart. I went to crappy tire to get something to replace the small cell however they wouldn't sell me the eliminator 1000amp bat as they said it wouldn't fit. What is the biggest battery that I can put in this car without having the poles arc off of the hood. Also would a bigger battery solve this issue or should I be looking at matching it up with a bigger alternator?

 

I would try the battery first. it also possible that you will need a high output alt but i would wait to see if the battery helps. if your battery is 4+ years old almost any new battery will probabl;y help.

 

The 600amp is brand new. The guy put it in 3 months before his girlfriend decided hat she was gonna sell the car.

 

how big are your amps? how big are the onboard fuses?

 

Amps are 1000watts peek, 460RMS bridged.

Fuse is a 80amp Pheonix Gold.

The fuses on the amp are 30amps I believe.

I just edited the primary post with the information on the amps. I thought I had put them in there but didn't.

Sorry bout that

 

I'm running a 1000cca Wal*Mart special. It doesn't fit in the little dip in the battery tray, but it doesn't hit the hood either. This thing was in my 67 Riviera (had a 430ci motor... it needed it!) and I didn't want to buy a new one for the Iroc. No headlight dimming here! And I still have to get a cap and do the "magic 3"

 

im not a car audio expert by any means, but i am into electronics...


wouldnt a large cap store enough energy that when you hit your hard bass, it discharges and assists the battery??

i thought thats why people put thoes large caps in their car audio systems to begin with..

 

ive seen tests about caps.. ithought they were useful until i saw the tests. one word of advice.... useless, they help nada. get a better alternator, and then a bigger batt.. cover the terminals with rubber( my terminals are the side post version)

 

invest in a new battery, then you should be fine cause you arent running too much power. Your alt might also be going so you could get a stock one re-wound for higher output or you could buy a whole new unit

 

Like bommin said you should't be having any problems. check your connections from your amps again. look at getting a 140 amp alt, it should help a bit.

 

Well your definatley putting a strain on your alternator and your tiny battery.. the battery tray that comes with our cars is really small..I have squeesed a 900 cca battery onto the top of my tray before to help with my tunes but it didnt fit in the tray it fit over it and some. I made a strap my self to keep it in place due to my driving habbits and the folks at houston speedway thats the first thing they check is to see if your battery is secured before you make a run..
To cut a long story short when I finally got my lights to stop going dim I had installed two 1000 cca batteries and two 1 farad capacitors . (batteries went on a tray in the trunk).
When your injectors are firing,fuel pump humming,headlights on,electric fans blazing that little battery doesnt stand a snowballs chance.
when I was doing what your doing I was replacing my alternator once every 10 to 11 months(thank *** for auto zones lifetime warranty) I replaced mine at least 6 times and them things run about 145 bucks.
Sounds to me like you invested in an awesome set up of sounds now all you lack is the (support)power to keep pushin it....
Believe me Gm didnt Have us guys in mind when they designed that tray.
We need to get everyone who has a system to have a sound off at one of our meets one day just to see who has the best 3rd gen Jams....

 

Well I was going to say somthing else..our cars pull between 60 and 70 amps operating on the road(motor,lights,fans etc etc) as I stated before. Your stock alternator should be a 140 amp. One of the single kenwood amps that you stated at max out put will draw approx ( about 250 to 300 watts)@ 60 amps full blast the way most of us like to hear it. One amp alone should be clipping the heck out of your system.Wich I for got to add to what I was saying before. I would Start by upgrading to a high out put alternator that charges max output at idle put(order one off the web) and then replace the go cart battery battery also. I would also replace your 8 gauge wire with 4 gauge and your 4 with at least 2 but thats me..
I wanted to ask you where are you ground ing your cap to?? and how is it secured?
Make sure your chasis ground is bolted (like a 3/8 or bigger ) not a small sheet metal screw.

If your spending a bunch of money I would also join a IASCA competition forum.

 

Ground your cap to the nearest dumpster!

Get a bigger alt



End of story.

 

ROFL, the tests dont lie

 

Stock alt is 105 amp. 140 is an upgrade.

 

It amazes me how everyone is so against capacitors.I would personally never go with out a few caps or batcaps in my system but hey thats how I listen to music and not every one does.
But again they will work for the people who can really apply them to there system. Caps arent going to improve or noticably assist your sytem at all if your not putting a large strain on your system with strong bass.
Caps have an extremely fast discharge rate where as a battery has a very slow and steady discharge rate.
If you like parking your car and listening to it loud with out running your car motor I would definatly replace your battery or even get two of them at the same time and jumper them together.
I have six deep cycles in my truck that I tail gate party with and I can let it play 5 hours with out starting my truck once and thats running (4) 15 inch cerwins at 50 on my volume. with 2 1000 watt amps pushing.
Find someone who has really close to your set up and see how there pushing it is one of the best ways because they will better relate to your struggles for power.
check this linkout as well.
http://www.electronixwarehouse.com/e...capacitors.htm

 

Generally the people who say the caps are trash are the people who have been in car audio long enough to see people misuse them to the extream. Tests have shown a cap can hurt you more then it can help. Bass hits, battery drains,cap FULLY discharges withing a fraction of a second while the bass is still hitting the cap and the battery are now asking to be recharged by the alt which is probably still a stock alt since all these "caps help lites dimming" dopes dont upgrade their alt at all.

Even in a car with a ample alt and underhood wires a cap doesnt add anything. Go put 7 caps wired in your system, you wont even gain .5db. You will gain the status as being a jackass who waisted his money!

 

Believe me Im not trying to argue .. But I would love to see the link to any article on the net where a test was done and the test shows what you just stated.
Sounds to me like you dont have alot of hands on experiene with caps because if a cap was FULLY discharged the only way it can be recharged is dissconnecting it from your system and recharging it with a resistor then reconnecting it. To the system again.

 

And it sounds like you are a complete waiste of time talking to, judging from this and other posts, you dont have a clue what your talking about.

 

In other words you cant find the info to back what your saying? Like I said before I would love to see real test results. or is that some thing that you just say as a matter of opinion.

 

i'm going to agree here rob, it sounds from the jibberish you post, like you have little idea what you are talking about. But it seems like you enjoy posting, so have at it.



adam

 

I don't have a test but this should be enough explination. and your link earlier of why they are good, of course a company who sells them will explain that they will help. I found this on soundillusions.net

 

9177 and Onebadwagon thankyou, At least im not the only one who sees it.

 

The Red line is a capacitor voltage.

The Yellow line is 0/1 gauge voltage.

Blue line is no cap, with the engine off

Dark Blue curve---
For our first test we played the system with the engine off and no cap. The result
was the purple trace at the bottom. We played the system as loud as we could get it
that seemed to produce no audible distortion. This was track 30 of the IASCA disc. It
starts off with fairly low level sounds for the first 34 seconds. In order to insure the
electrical system was stable we did not start the measurement until we were 20
seconds into the song. This means that our 0 starting point is :20 on the CD counter.
The battery was able to maintain it's voltage just below 12.5 until the loud bass hits
at 34 seconds (14 seconds into our chart) At this time it dropped to about 11.5 and
had a few large variations due to the music. According to the computer calculations
(third chart) the average voltage for this test was 11.7volts. This test was done as a
baseline for the following tests.
Yellow curve—no cap
For this test the volume was left as it was for the baseline test. The engine was
started. Notice that at low volume the alternator was able to maintain about 14
volts. When the loud music hit the voltage dropped to about 12.5 where it remained
except for a few short moments where it actually climbed back to over 13.5 volts.
The computer averaged calculations for the average voltage during the 100 seconds of this test was 12.973 volts.
[/B]Red curve—cap added[/B]
This test was identical to the previous test except the cap (15 farad type) was added
6 inches from the amp with 4 gauge wire—no relays or fuses. The red curve seems
to overlay the yellow except that the actual peaks don’t rise as fast or as high during
the brief quiet moments. I feel this would be due to the alternator having to recharge
the cap. The voltage on loud passages hovered around 12.5 volts. The computer
averaged calculations for this test show the average voltage to be 12.878 volts. I see
no meaningful differences with or without the cap. I certainly don’t see the voltage
sitting solid at 14 volts.
One note I might add is that this was a two thousand watt system driven right to
clipping and the average voltage stayed above 12.8 with a stock 80 amp alternator.
Under these conditions the battery would never discharge!
The green and light blue curves were done just for kicks while we had the system set
up. In both these tests we turned the volume up until the system was very distorted.
This placed a severe load on the alternator and caused the voltage to dip as low as
12 volts. The curves seem to follow each other so closely that unless you have a
good monitor it is doubtful you can tell there are two curves. The average voltage for
these two curves were both 12.277 and 12.295 volts. If this volume were sustained
for very long periods of time this battery would discharge.

The Richard Clark Capacitor Test is nowhere to be found anymore, but i did find that picture from the test:lala:

 

I dont know why this thread is so long all you need is a high power alt and a high power battery like a optima.

 

It does't hurt to check if your ground return path has been upgraded, it worked for me, no bigger amp like some shops recomended, no cap nor bigger batt needed for me.

 

i am having a very similar problem that is getting progressively worse. I have a high output alternator that was working perfectly for about two years. Then, when the system would hit when i was sitting at a light, the lights would dim. Now, it does it all the time. Any idea what my problem could be?

 

bad connection at the battery perhaps...or maybe your alt is getting tired. have you tried upgrading your big three wires under the hood? most people see great results doing that

its a common problem for the lights to dim at idle even with a high output alt, its when they dim at higher rpms that you have a problem

 

Well I am gonna get me a 140amp alt and then get the boys at Ferris Electric to rebuild it. 100$ and they can get an extra 35 to 40% more juice out of it.

 

ya they're probably just re-winding it. you can never be too overkill when it comes to an alt

 

I’ve said it about your posts before and I’ll say it again, THAT’S NOT AT ALL CORRECT!
You do NOT need to disconnect the cap and charge it through a resistor for it to charge from being fully discharged. It’s a good idea to do so but the cap WILL charge RIGHT back up. That’s the thing, it will charge RIGHT back up, FAST, and pull an a$$ load of current in the process. You don’t know what you’re taking about. I don’t know if it’s your friends telling you things that are wrong and you’re believing them or if you’re just that slow, but STOP perpetuating this misinformation.
But I digress from that.
Now, to ThraxXx, I would start with a new, bigger, battery and go from there. That MAY fix the problem. If not get a bigger alt. Then you’ll be golden.

 

Get an Optima yellow top.

 

EXACTLY

 

Well I can't lock down a place in town that sells the Optima Yellow tops anymore However!!! they have these new Orbital Cycle Extreme-Duty Batteries that are packing 1000amps. I think that might solve the issue. The other option is to do what my buddy did in his Dodge Dakota. He bought a 1000amp battery from the Toyota dealership. The battery costed him $100.

The new amp I ordered is the Chrome Powermaster DELCO 140AMP altenator. So far teh Delco stuff seems to hold its own and the Altenator comes with a 5 year warranty...and its chrome which will add to the other chrome stuff I got under my hood. Hopefully after all that I should have a stable running system. I will keep you posted.

 

My lights dim on my car when the bass hits. I have a Optima red top 4 months old and a 3 month old alternator. I was thinking of getting a cap because when i drive at night my headlights dim when the bass hits. If this can be solved for me without getting a cap please let me know.

 

After seeing those tests with the caps and listened to the members, what was said about them seems to be true. The cap drains, and then the starved system will get its power from the battery. When both the Battery and caps are craving for juice you have the altenator running its little heart out to putout as much power as possible to feed both items.

This might be why I notice my stereo runs fine if the bass hits are quick and staggered however if its a bass hum the volt meter on my dash drops pretty quick.

 

Do a search for magic 3 upgrade. You’ll find what you need.

 

Hey thraxx this link should help... every one seems to be a pro.. might as well here it from the pros.......they have an awesome search features where you can find anything you need to know about audio systems ....they have a forum as well...they also have a page where you can find amperage requirements for each individually rated amp.

http://www.rockfordfosgate.com/scrip...Z2U9MQ**&p_li=

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by robsgta
[B]Hey thraxx this link should help... every one seems to be a pro.. might as well here it from the pros.......they have an awesome search features where you can find anything you need to know about audio systems ....they have a forum as well...they also have a page where you can find amperage requirements for each individually rated amp.

I dont think everyone thinks they are a pro, i know everyone isnt a moron who would spend $ on a cap when they really needed a ho alt.

 

I love it when marketing leaches it's way into a "Tech forum". Hey, I'll sell you something for $150.00 that I pay $10.00 for. Think I may tell you it'll help even if it wouldn't?
It's all about marketing.

 

Yup, its amazing how all the sites with information showing caps help are sites from either the people who make caps or people who sell caps.

Of course RF isnt gonna tell you "hey caps are garbage"

These people who fall for the marketting lines probably stay up late at night and buy all those weird producs they show on tv, like the amazing potato pealer 5000!!! same difference..

 

After I race the both of yall I will let you two listen to my stereo..then maybe we can make some comparisons...

Secondly if you want to sound good you have to spend money .Unfortuantely you have to do that but if you can find a cheap way you do that then just do it. I know what has worked for me hands on and hands down.
If you havnt spent at least a grand in your system maybe this conversation isnt for you.

"Arguing on the net is like particpating in special olympics it doesnt matter if your right or wrong"
Your still retarded.. :lala:

 

Everything you have just said is stupid.

1,were not talking about racing,why is it that everytime one of these totally wrong people get offended because half the forum tells them they are wrong they say " nah nah i got a v8" trying to make up for lacking in other areas are you?

2,yes you have to spend money, ON AN ALT NOT A CAP

3,I have seen and heard many systems under a $1000 that will EASILY put you to shame.


You seem to like living on your own planet. Join us here on earth sometime!

 

heh.
so thoes bigass audio system caps really are just plain old capacitors?
this whole time i thought they had some circuitry in them that made them "smart caps" and had them dissapate the electricity over a peroid of time or somthing.... i never gave much thought to it (im not a audiophile)


i do know however that a alt thats been rewound for more power doesnt always make that power at the same RPM... usually the potential output is higher, but you also have to spin it faster....

so unless you're changing pulley ratios, you dont necessarily sit there at idle with your improved alt and have more amps available.
you could raise the alt speed... athough you have too keep in mind the alts max speed, pulley ratio, and engine max RPM...
you could run a bigger battery.. even at lower voltage, if more amps are available it should work...
or you could do that slick lil 2 alt thing that ive heard audio guys talk about... it would be super easy in a surp belt equipped Fbody since a 2nd alt is almost a bolt in where the smog pump is...

 

Here is an interesting angle. I have not really heard of Caps solving the light dimming issue, for the reasons mentioned above, however, I had always been told they are more for getting quick little bursts of power to the amp when it needs it. It is supposed to improve quick responce for things like punchiness and rapid bass.

The purpose of a cap is not to power the amp but to provide a little buffer to let things react a little quicker.

I had always heard of caps being called a "stiffening capacitor".

For dimming lights, a deep cycle battery has been mentioned before, as would a little beefier alt as mentioned before.

Just a note

:lala:

 

Red tops are not deep cycle, so that might be the problem. You should really consider to do the big 3 upgrade if u havent already. Here's a great tutorial on what to do http://forum.sounddomain.com/forum/u...c;f=5;t=007801

 

IMO a deep cycle will not help anything unless it has a higher cca. Only benifit to a yellow top or any deep cycle is they can be completly discharged and then recharged and still work like new, atleast thats the idea anyway.

 

Is there any way i can do this and still use my side posts? Also do i jsut run the positive from my alternator directly to the battary? Or do i hook it into my sistribution block then go off from there to my battary? Does any one have any pics of this that has been done on our car's? I want to maintaing a stock look and still use sideposts if at all possible.

At least i know when my firebird is running it will be fine i think i used all new 4 guage wires on it. But its a 68 so that was simple.

 

lol i read part of that article... are they talking about a one wire alt?.. the guy i bought my car from went OD on the grounds... he grounded everything to everything. neg groumd to body, positive grounded to where the alt grounds to... engine ground to body. you name it its grounded...ive seen ground kits that add like 10 extra horses sometimes.. maybe they help?

 

:werd:

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