Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Audio Capacitor

you may want to invest in a second battery setup if you think the system is putting that much strain on your alternator. most likely, you aren't hurting anything, at least not that much, but you have to expect a little wear and tear when you have that much extra power.

and what're you running? 2000 watts, RMS? peak? is that just what the box said? sorry, I'm not trying to make you out to be an audio dummy or anything, but usually those with really expensive/top of the line systems know a thing or two about car audio, and capacitors are pretty basic.

Knu, my concern is with higher ESR caps that have absolutely no value and do introduce a strain on the system, even if minimal. And unfortunately, there are quite a few out there that fit in this category.

The growing number of oversized caps is alarming and like you said - many smaller caps is better. I had not looked at the 3+ farad cap market to see how high the ESR is these days. Never really saw a need for anything larger then 1 - 1.5F, if you NEED that much, get a battery and actually add some reserve capacity....LOL

Yes, it is. Caps are a waste, IMHO. If you are really worried, do the big three, and upgrade your battery. If you still have problems, do the alternator. If that doesn't help you are SOL.



Morgan

To expand on Bill's post a bit, most amps built today have regulated power supplies and one of the key components are caps.

RF has a new amp that uses advanced caps with extremely low ESR that recharge quickly enough to allow their amps to produce more continuous music power than traditional amplifier topologies do. Right now, the caps make the price prohibitive, but they will come down.

As said before, caps do have a place, but you must be careful when purchasing. Even when buying one, i would invest in other areas first because the bang for the buck on even a good one is quite low.

caps dont really help in a system putting out over 500 watts rms.

i'm pushing about 1100-1200 watts rms @ .9 ohm yes kiddies .9 ohms and at first the bass would hit so hard that the headlights on my car would dim very baddly and i tested the voltage drain by then turning on my dome light which would completly shut off when the bass hit. yea its ghetto but it works and gives you a good idea of how much current your pulling . i'm pulling about 150 amps total

so i looked around and looked at 1 farad caps which don't really do anything and will not really solve any problems
and all the way to 5 farad caps.

then i found the answer BATCAP check out xstatic batcap its half battery half cap and works great.

now when the bass hit my headlight only dim a very little bit and the dome light only dims a little too.

if you running a big billy bad a$$ system you'll want to do a couple of things .

- upgrade the factory ground . run a 4 gauge wire or what ever matches your amp's power wire from the - terminal post on the factory battery directly to the ground of the car less than two feet of wire . theres a nice spot under the air filter on the transmission mounting bolt. be sure to scrap the paint off with a wire brush in a one inch square of bare metal. if you have a chassie ground aka the - ground wire off the amp grounded directly to the chassie ground in the trunk. if you screwed the - ground wire off the amp to a metal surface in the trunk this means you !!!

- upgrade the + wire that leads from the alternator to the + terminal of the factory battery with 4 gaufge wire or at least the same size wire you are using to power your amp this will help recharge the stock battery a lot better

- running the - wire off the ground of the amp directly to the - terminal post of the factory battery if possible this helps out a lot compaired to just grounding the - wire off the amps ground wire to a chassie ground

yea boy also dynamat doesn't really help . i dynamated my whole trunk , the lid, under the spare tire, the rear deck, ect, and the trunk still beats like crazy. it was a waste of money if you ask me

i just picked up a yellow top Optima to run in my trunk. would running two yellow tops be optimal? then with a cap as well?