Seems like there are a lot of very powerful systems out there in our cars, yet very few people are using capacitors. Does anybody notice a performance drop with the healights and AC on when the system is kicking???

 

Before I used to do systems on cars and usually I was pushing a pair of 12's with a high power amp. Never used a capacitor tho, however I did notice the head lights dimming when the bass hits. I'm on with a new project and yes, it will have a capacitor.

 

I'm installing a 1-Farad cap in my new setup.
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edited because I shouldn't multi-task at work.... spelling just goes haywire...

 

5 farad here. Overkill, but smaller than the cylinder types.

 

Is a Farat like a pet Ferret? lol

Sorry, just needed to give Mr. Fiberglass a hard time.

 

Yeah yeah very funny That will teach me to multi-task

 

no cap here...

evidence/experimentation doesn't point to them being useful for power gains.
regarding using them to fix dimming - i had some dimming issues, but went with a Yellow Top Optima battery and they all went away...

best i can see, save your money on the cap and buy a Yellow Top instead...

 

We had a few discussion in the past on this, to the point where modifry was interested enough to run some bench tests. Some of the results were not surprising, others came out a bit differently than expected. I think this is the thread that started the questions...

http://forums.s2ki.com/forums/showthread.p...&threadid=40247

...and the thread that really started the ball rolling...

http://forums.s2ki.com/forums/showthread.p...&threadid=29969

...here are modifry's results...

http://www.baustnet.com/honda/misc/audio/index.htm

Some interesting reading, even if you don't always agree with it all.

 

"Mr. Fiberglass" - That's great!

I'm getting a great price on a 1 Farad cap so I think I'm going to go for it.

1 question: I am going to install this right next to the amp for my sub on PAS2k's Spare Tire Amp Rack. My Alpine amp that runs my front and rear speakers is under my seat. Is there any point in running this amp off the cap as well? I think it's too far away right?

 

I originally decided to use a 1 farad cap for my two amps. I noticed my lights were dimming with every peak. I figured I might be trying to push too much through a 1 farad, even though it was only about 850 watts rms total.

Upgraded to a 2.4 farad. I noticed a difference immediately in volume and the quality of sound from the sub. Maybe subjective (or perceived), but it made a difference to me. The lights stopped dimming also.