System question??

I just got my alternator replaced yesturday because the old one was shot and had slipping bearings that made the absolute worst squeaking noise ive ever heard. So i hooked my power cable back up to my amp only to find that it seemed like there wasnt enough power to power the 1400 watt amp. This was never a problem before and i do not know why it would do this. The subs only bump hard half the time because the power light on the remote bass controller up front dims off and on and then gets bright. There has to be enough power so i dont know. I also just got a 1.5 farad power cap and dont know how to preset it or whatever so that you can hook it up. Would this power cap take care of hte problem?? And i never had a power cap before but the whole system worked fine. Any advice or info is appreciated, thanks.

okay it could be a few things.

make sure your wireing is 4 gauge, and that you fuse can support it. also make sure the battery connections are free of corrosion on the positive and negative sides. make sure the alternator is hooked up right

the cap should help solve the problem, to hook it up, run the power cable directly to the cap, then run a power cable from the cap to the amp. run the ground from the amp to the cap, and from the cap to a GOOD grounding souce. the BEST gound is running a cable from the cap ALL the way to the battery ground termanal. newer cars don't have as good as a frame and relying on the frame to complete the circuit to the battery is not a good idea. with that kind of power you can't just ground it to any old place. make sure that the power and gound cables from the amp to the cap are no more the 3' in length.

also when you run power and ground on the same side negate each other and form a magnetic shield. so putting the RCA and remote wire on the same side will sheild them from interferance. if the power and ground are also on the same side.

best thing to have is a volt meter on the cap, and making sure the volts say above 12. i have a Rockford power 1000db with 1000 watts RMS. is your cap 1400 watts max or rms? my lights STILL dim because with this kind of power you need a 5 farad capacitor. especialy with the car is only idleing.

any other questions please ask, i'm very knowledgeable about car audio.

Check the alternator ground also

OK, thanks, so when you connect the power cap, you need to run it in the power wire and in the ground wire? i had it hooked up just in the power wire and it was only at like 9. something. And i have no clue because i was running my 1400 watt amp max before without a power cap and it worked great without much dimming or shorting of power. Now it dies almost completely whne idling.

if your alternator when bad, i'm assuming your battery died as well. well older batters that you let go dead all the time can go bad, you might have a bad battery now.

look at diagram for instaling cap wires.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v254/treefrog1112/Untitled-1copy.jpg

Your wrong about the ground wire... Never run a ground from the battery all the way back to the cap. The reason for this is the ground wire then is too small and you risk your ground wire melting.

What you should do is put the ground from the power cap to the chassis/frame and make sure it is grounded good. Run 4ga wire from the + on the battery to the + on the power cap. Also, on the power wire there should be a inline fuse within 18" of the battery. Now when you have the power cap hooked up it doesnt matter what the length is of the power wire. If the cap is further than 2-3 feet from the amp then find a ground that is closer where you can ground it to the chassis/frame. If its not grounded good then you have a better chance for melted wires, thats why make your ground short as possible. This way when hooking it up to the chassis/frame it uses the whole car as a ground, much better to use the whole car for 3 feet then using 4ga wire! It is also a good idea to put a inline fuse in between the power cap and the amp.

i had my installed with the ground running all the way to the battery. They car audio shop i go to was told to do it by rockford fosgate in a class thing. they are very good at what they do and i trust them.

the idea of a ground is to create a circut, if you ground to the car you are relying on the frame to create the circut. its just more efficent to run back to the bettery. as long as you are running good 4 guage wire its not going to melt. ive ran it this way for over a yeah and its not melting yet...

but i'm taking that under consideration and checking into it more

Your chassis is probably the best ground you can have in your car! Think about it... Car companies wouldnt be using a chassis for ground if it was bad now would they? :rolleyes: Companies have been using the chassis gound for years! Cars are still running and thats the biggest ground in the car, your motor runs off of it!

I ran and managed a audio shop for 3 years. I have been to every and any install class you can think of. You are never suppose to run a ground wire all the way up to the battery from a cap. I'm sure it hasnt melted yet but you also dont have enough power to instantly melt it. I'll bet part of the wires are melting slowly unless you have like a 500w amp. I've taken out stereos where the guy wired it like you and when I removed the ground and power wires they were brittle and black. If he would have ran that for much longer it would have started a fire!

absolutly correct. TreeFrog, electrical current; just like water; travels the path of least resistance. as far as running electrical current along the side of your door pannels. you shoud NEVER run RCA's along side a 4gage constent power. its interference will create noise. and the THD will increase dermaticly. its best to isolate any constent powers & remote as best as possable, and insolate the signal wires (speaker wires, rca's) along side each other. and the shorter ground the better!