Thread: Do I Need To Beef Up My Alternator Or Anything Else

http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/t88047.html

Too long to quote.

~Cupcakes

We do not know eachother personally, so let's not make any assumptions as to eachother's credentials. I disagree with how caps are generally used in car audio. There is a wealth of mis-information to be found all over the internet. I go by personal experience from various systems I have put together and or seen in person. I have seen caps work, and not work at all for the problem of dimming. I always prefer to use the methods that always work, rather than rolling the dice with a device that isn't always the answer. Know exactly how it works is a big help.

~Cupcakes

For starters, a large mistake everyone makes is how much power they are running. For instence a cars electrical system is measured in amps or ampere which is a measurement of electric current. This means, its NOT HOW MANY WATTS! a good way to get an idea of how many amps your amplifier draws is to look at what size fuses it takes. For example, my kicker kx600.1 Amp has one 30 amp fuse. Therefore, the amplifeir cannot draw more than 30 amps or recieve more then 30 amps. Typically they will match a fuse with an amplifer giving it around 3-5 amps of room to go over. This would mean that my kicker amplifier takes 25-27 amps but has a 30 amp fuse. A typical car's alternator is capable of generating 150-180 amps, but dont forget it has to power your entire cars electrical system (lights, windshield wipers, fans, cigeratte lighter, stereo, etc) and charge your battery simultaniously.

Now to my next point
a capacitor is a device that stores a short instant electrical charge. When your amplifers are running for every output of sound like a subwoofer for instence, they require a tremedous amount of electricity. Your battery has an instant 600 amp output. plenty of power to power that amplifier. Unfortunatly every time your battery discharges your alternator has to recharge it. Now if i add an capacitor in the power line it adds an additional source of extra power at the cost of losing my alternator down the line. This is due to after the capacitor discharging along with my battery the alternator has to work twice as hard to recharge both the battery and the capacitor. So in lamen turms, a capacitor is a band-aid to a bigger problem.

How to get more power!
why not instead of wasting one to several hundreds of dollars on a short term solution such as a capacitor you could just as easily go to an automotive shop and have your alternator replaced with a high performance one or simply get your old one rewound, but what good does plenty of power due when theres no where to store it? you wont necessarily need a performance battery but a good one. this will help by backing up that high charge. everyone with a cap will eventually run into the problem of destroying there alternator costing them more in the long run. so this is your chance to get it right the first time!