recently changed my stereo. my battery is located in the rear and i'm running a 4 ga wire up to the front and i'm worried if i need to upgrade to a larger wire? how do you know the right size? the wire i have now is what came with my battery relocation kit years ago, has worked great so i haven't thought about it. local shop says i need to upgrade, that's another $100+ in extra wire alone at 5-6 a foot.

i added roughly 2,000 watt rms and i also have a very taxing draw from the air ride. the stereo amps as well as the air ride are hooked up directly to the battery. surprisingly right now everything is working fine in the effect there is no headlight dim and my battery guage doesn't lower at all.

is there a need to upgrade the wire from the battery, up to the engine compartment if the largest draw (being the amps and compressor system) are directly hooked up to the battery?? i don't know if it matters but i was running a red top optima for some time, had trouble in the winter so i switched ot a yellow. with the new system optima suggested to upgrade to one of their comercial yellow tops which i did. my amps went up from the 12.5-13 with the other batteries to above 14 now.

it's only been a few weeks but so far things seem to be ok.. just want to make sure i don't burn the car down or have any more problems.

 

if you know or can find out how many amps you are drawing you could check out a table such as http://www.rbeelectronics.com/wtable.htm to determinal the gauge wire you should be using.

 

thanks for the chart, anyone know the accuracy to it? according to that guage then the 4 i have is perfect for whatever i do with it unless the car was longer then 25'.