hey, I wanted to install a capacitor in my car, and was told by a friend that you have to prep the cap or something and a resistor of somekind comes into play. Is the purpose of this to just make sure the capacitor is fully discharged before installation? What is the procedure for installing it? Do I need a specific resistance? Thanks in advance for the help
By no means am I an expert on caps, but you shouldn't need a resistor, just run your 0 or 4 gauge (depending on your set-up) into a fuse box, digital fuse boxes are nice and inexpensive, then run the wire to the capacitor, (make sure the battery is unhooked by the way), ground the capacitor then run the power wire to your amp, or if you running two amps, run the 0 or 4 gauge into a fuse block (one in two out, like 4 gauge in then two 8 gauges out) You can get a kit off ebay with all this stuff included too. I bought a Voodoo Amp kit for my brother with everything included for like $90.00 for his Corolla and put it in. Everything so far is so good. No dimming headlights or gauges at all.
that leads me to another question....I am installing two amps. Instead of a distribution block...can I run the 4 gauge power wire directly to the cap and then run two 8 gauges directly from the cap to the two amps...and skip the d block all together? I don't see why it wouldn't work and that way both amps would feed directly off the cap....I dunno, just a thought...any comments?
The distribution block also acts as a fuse box, so I wouldn't recommend it, unless you splice a fuse into each of the 8 gauge wires. But if you do that you might as well get the block. It looks much cleaner and is a cheap buy off Ebay.
you'll lose farad's from your cap running two wires off it, you should run a distribution block with fuses in it like they said other wise you just wasted your money on a cap
Its fine to run a 4 awg into the cap and two 8 awg out, just make sure you have a fuse at the battery. Although the dblock is not a bad idea it isnt absoultly necc. A cap keeps your amp supplied with a very constant power supply when bass hits and uses alot of power from the amp. No matter where it is hooked to the amp it will work. Heck you could even put it under the hood and it would get the job done. Although it works better the closer to the amp it is.
Whoever told you about the resister was dead on. Althoug it is not used for discharging the cap before install it is used to charge it before you use it. It is a good idea but also not necc. When ever I do mine I like to run everything but leave the underhood fuse out till Im ready to try out the system and then I take my old school non-computer safe test light (basically a 12V light bulb in a screwdriver looking thingy) and connect it to the power wire going in the car and the other side to the 12V+ side of the batt. The light will light up and then s...l...o...w....l....y dim while the cap charges. The only reason this is done is to 1) prevent a fuse from blowing, as usally (not every time) when you connect a cap first when it is empty and not charged it will be seen as a dead short and blow the fuse. 2) To prevent black marks from where ever you connect for the instant high current draw that will take place when it instantly charges. You can do it this way and when I am in hurry with a customers car I sometimes do it this way just to save time.
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Is the purpose of this to just make sure the capacitor is fully discharged before installation?
NOOO. U want to CHARGE the cap before installing it. It will come with a test lite and some wires to charge it. Charge it up completly................then u wanna have it look like this. (Hope it is of some help...this is the correct way to do it.)
Yeah, I found out from a friend today that I need to charge it up and not the other way around. There are a couple problems with this for me. For one, the cap was in my old car when I was in high school, which died prior to college. It has been two years since I have had a car of my own. So that means, I don't have any of the orignal packaging/instructions/whatever came with it. All I have is the cap pulled from the car, and its just been sitting in my room since then. I was wondering if I'm just sol with this or is there a way to find out. It is a Monster Cap, so I figured I'd write Monster an email asking them for a how-to...so far no answer. Anyway, thanks for all the help guys, just trying to figure things out for myself this time around, since before I just had everything installed professionally...now I just feel like its a big waste of money to get all that installed, cause I understand wiring and I don't think wire routing will be that difficult...plus I have a Haynes manual incase I run into some problems.
The reason I was asking about skipping the distribution block is because Hi Fi Buys installed my 2 amps in my old car and thats how they wired it, despite the fact that I had given them a D block to use. I wasn't too knowledgeable at the time, so I just assumed they used the D-block. Then when I pulled all the wiring before getting rid of the car I noticed it wasn't in use anywhere...and the SOB's at Hi Fi Buys must have just kept my D block.
capacitor installation question
