Amp fuse

I bought a precision power amp istallation kit and with it came a fuse. It bolts into the floor and has two connectors on either end for a wire. which wires do i hook up to it?

It goes in the power wire coming from the battery, you want the fuse within 18 inches of the battery and you can mount it in the engine bay wherever it will fit.

Why does the fuse have to be 18 inches from the battery??

This way when the fuse blows it doesn't screw up your entire electircal system. I forgot the exacts though...

It doesn't have to be exactly 18 inches, you just want it to be close and that's as far away from the battery as you should put it. The fuse is there to protect your car, if your power wire were to ground out to the chassis and you didn't have a fuse, a shitload of current would flow through it and could quite possibly light the wire and then the car on fire. If you have a fuse then it blows and nothing bad happens. The closer the fuse is to the battery, the lower the risk of a groundout causing a fire.

the 18" is just a convention .... when they started doing car stereo competitions, they had to have some finite number - so they picked 18. That ahould place it in the engine bay, fairly close to the battery and still allow for some flexibility - especially in the custom installs.

okay, i've got my amp all hooked up with the fuse in the engine bay. when i turn it on theres a high pitched whistle that gets louder when i rev the engine. any clue what this is???

alternator whine, normally caused by a bad ground or your rcas being too close to your power wire

alternator whine, normally caused by a bad ground or your rcas being too close to your power wire

it keeps going ... and going ........ and going .......

it keeps going ... and going ........ and going .......

what does?

what does?
The Energizer bunny

the RCA cables too close to the power wire thing .... if you REALLY look at it, you will see how silly that assumption is.

The volume of the aternator whine stays constant, even when the stereo is at minimum volume. When the stereo is at minimum volume, there is practically no current flowing through the power wire to the amps - if you're theory were correct, the volume of the whine would be dependent on the power coming though the power wire (relative volume of the stereo).

you do have a point, but amazingly it can still cause noise if you have crappy rcas. Either way, it's good practice to separate them, even if the chance of it causing a problem is 1/10.

it must be a bad ground then because i have my RCA's and my power wire on different sides of my car.

try using UTP (unsheilded Twisted Pair) RCA's .... the coax cables tend to be noise antennas

you can get a ground loop isolator for about 12 at a stereo store. Wal-Mart or auto zone follow the directions not hard to hook up. they make one for your power wires and one for your rca cables I would go with the one for the power wires first.

Who knows how to properly hook up a power cap? I have an idea as to how it's supposed to be but I just wanna be sure.

just install it on the power wire on the way to the amplifier.. like this:

http://www.caraudiohelp.com/images/car_audio_capacitor_installation.gif