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

& hunterius, I just checked that link, nice link... it really illustrates what I've been trying to show with just words....

Originally Posted by muscanto

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!

WITH ALL THIS EXPLAINED IT CLARIFIES ALOT OF MY QUESTIONS.............BUT NOW ALL THAT YOU SAID HAS ME WONDERING IF THE BIG THREE REALLY DOES ANYTHING...................THE BIG 3 WILL DEFINETELY ALLOW MORE CURRENT TO FLOW THROUGH THE WIRES BUT IT IS IN NO WAY WHATSOEVER GOING TO IMPROVE THE PERFORMANCE OF THE ALTERNATOR................. (IS THIS RIGHT??????)....................

Originally Posted by turbocad6

& hunterius, I just checked that link, nice link... it really illustrates what I've been trying to show with just words....

yes , I like that site every time I need some simple and correct explanation of things from Audio world I am pointing to http://www.bcae1.com .... but not every time it helps ...as you can see

I will be using a cap on my carputer and amps to 1 help with line noise, 2 my computer dosent like power spikes or drops to well so this is good protection and 3 to supply supplemental power when using all that power to start your car. Computers will run slow, restart and possibly run a risk of data corruption if they don't receive enough power. This also helps correct some people loud wining or poping on starting their vehicle (Starting a vehicle is a HUGE draw on power).

If you are having issues with not receiving enough power I would do the big 3 first, then get a good battery and a HO alternator. A capacitor will not correct your issues but is far far far from useless like stated above.

Opps, I got here from google and didn't look at the date of this post.

Originally Posted by tech180

Opps, I got here from google and didn't look at the date of this post.

Lol nice.


For what it's worth... on point number 3 it's not gonna help unless your car only takes a tenth of a second to crank.

Originally Posted by malcom2073

Lol nice.


For what it's worth... on point number 3 it's not gonna help unless your car only takes a tenth of a second to crank.

This is true, specially if you have a small capacitor (1f or 2f). I am running 2x 40f caps so hopefully will help a little at least.

Originally Posted by tech180

This is true, specially if you have a small capacitor (1f or 2f). I am running 2x 40f caps so hopefully will help a little at least.

If my math is correct, you'll get 6.2 amp seconds of power at 12 volts out of 80f of capacitors. If your system is using say... 20 amps at 12 volts, you'll have 0.3 seconds until the cap is fully discharged. I'm actually amazed, I didn't expect it to last that long.

Originally Posted by malcom2073

If my math is correct, you'll get 6.2 amp seconds of power at 12 volts out of 80f of capacitors. If your system is using say... 20 amps at 12 volts, you'll have 0.3 seconds until the cap is fully discharged. I'm actually amazed, I didn't expect it to last that long.

One thing to also consider is there will still be power running through the lines (Just possibly not the full current required or fluctuating ). Maybe I will come up with a way to do some testing on this and see how long the caps will last at different voltages running through the lines (Removing my car PC off the line first, lol).