Man, this is one of my pet hates, RustyEF. You have no idea what your on about.

Caps do Sweet FA for voltage drop (ie, headlight dimming) you definitely do not need one.

The main cause of this is an inadequate or insufficient earth.

Hell, don’t take it from me, read it from the other 50 trillion people on http://caraudioaustralia.com/

Try, this short technical guide, http://www.caraudioaustralia.com/forums ... opic=45079

i didnt say iut will fix it but it does help, its not possible to fix it.. it a problem fords will always have no matter what. unless you want to spend big dollars to get rid off the problem.

Darkr is right.

Caps are useless. Do not waste your money on them.

Use at least 4 guage for your earths everywhere, even if power cable is only 8 guage.

MAKE SURE YOU UPGRADE YOUR ENGINE BAY EARTHS!!!

Run 4awg in place of all your earths in the engine bay, then run another one to the firewall from the battery terminal.
Make sure all earth points are removed of any paint and are bare metal to bare metal.

and btw RustyEF, its ohm not @HM. just O H M.

they help with quality, it wont fix it, but everyone is for themselvs.

id rather have one just as sercurity. does help and if your gonig to do it right may as well..

id rather spend the extra money and get one then not have one and JUST upgrade earth wires.

well cos none of this makes sense to me anymore.. u all forgot that i'm a s**t with anythen to do with cars:D

i'll ask the guys at bendigo auto sound, they've down hundreds of installs just like mine so i'm sure they'll know wat to do

but thanks heaps for the advise!!

i heard of extra batteries for systems.. wats the go with that?

They place an extra battery in the boot, not just your everyday car battery, but one that is designed to provide current over extended periods of time.
They then connect this battery to either the bat in the engine bay or the alternator.
They are normally only for extreme installs, or for those with money-a-plenty.
For your setup its unnecessary.

If you dont believe me about the cap check out Darkrs links to CAA (now MEA).

ok thanks mate!
will go into the shop on friday and ask em about wat i should be doing n stuff
then ask u guys, get a few ideas runnen round!

the battery ur talking about is a 'Gel Cell' battery, which are designs for dual battery systems (mostly on 4wd's running dual batteries)

Upgrade all engine earths, make sure the amp is earthed properly! ive seen this go wrong before! run decent wiring to the subs, as they are capable of pulling a lot of power! and for gods sake leave your car running if ur gonna pump them!

full ball for a minute at the most and you'll have a seriously dead battery

one more suggestion, if you ever have trouble with a flat battery, caused by the new system or not... look at getting a decent dry cell battery. run them flat 300 times, they'll still come back kicking (and no maintenance)

hope this helped... probably my last piece of advise on this forum :p

Some of you guys really have no idea wat the hell you are talking about..

CAPACITORS do stabilize voltage.. and they have been doing that job for many years.. Ask anyone into electronics wat a capacitor does.. And they do have a place in a car audio system.. But as for the hybrid 25Farad and 40Farad capactiors you would be better off getting a couple of standard 1 or 2 farad caps.. They tend to do the job much better..

In an SPL system capacitors do very little BUT in a system designed for pumping music they do quite a decent job provided the cap is of decent quality and installed correctly..

Caps are only useless if you can have your amp power cables length less than a metre from the battery.. If the power cable runs are wny longer than that then chances are that a cap would be beneficial..

REAR OR 2ND BATTERY.. Are a valuable addition to any Car audio system that is uprgaded from stock.. Car manufacturers didn't allow for you going to put a 5 bazillion watt sound system in your car so their charging systems aren't designed for running it either..

Bit of maths for you all.. 1500WRMS amp will draw upto and above 160 AMPS of current from your charging/battery system.. Most alternators output around the 70 - 90 AMP mark.. this is to run the car and any accessories aswell as charge the battery so you may have 40 AMPs to spare.. you turn up the volume and all of a sudden all the power from the alternator is getting drained to try and run your sound system.. the rest of the power will taken from the battery.. When you turn volume down alternator resumes charging of the battery and etc..

Now imagine you have a second battery in the boot.. you are increasing the available power for your sound system.. How can this possibly be a bad thing..

Upgrading your alternator is also a good idea but not neccessary if the system is setup correctly..

As for the comment regarding the expense involved in fixing up the earth problems in a falcon.. it would cost maybe $100.... Go buy some zero gauge and run a seperate earth from the battery to the boot.. So many people have tried to prove to me that there is less loss if you use the cars chassis but my megohmeter doesn't lie.. I have found in every application i have run a seperate earth in there has been a huge improvement in starting power, less dimming of the headlights, and generally better performance..

And as for the comment that you will have a seriously dead battery at full volume in less than a minute i can tell you right now that is rubbish.. i have run 4KWRMS off a standard car battery for over half an hour at 90% volume..

I am sure i will find something else to comment on shortly..

Cheers,
Nik

Yes, caps do actually do something, but for what they do they are seriously overpriced, money which could be spent much wiser on 0awg earthing cables throughout the engine bay.

Does this guy have any clue what he is on about?

Seriously... It's a ford problem now?

Omfg seriously, if you have no idea, just don't say anything, people on here would rather not be educated with crap.



Indeed you are correct, and it's not a solution for headlight dimming.
(I know you didn't say it is, i'm just reinforcing)




He could just be talking about a general deep cycle, If you go install an optima, your really not going to have much of a power issue after that if your earths and alternator are alright.

I agree with you there, but the point made by some about the addition of the capacitor, is to reduce the headlights dimming...which is not true.

A capacitor fills in the voltage drop that the battery cannot supply continuously to the amp.

Without a capacitor one can notice the lights dimming when a powerful sound system is playing at full capacity, this is because the battery is not powerful enough to power both the subs and car accessories. Having the amp drawing more voltage then the accessories in the car, it will take the majority of the power from the battery leaving the accessories with close to no voltager/power. This loss of voltage is the voltage drop which the battery cannot fill. That is where the capacitor comes in handy.

The capacitor acts like a battery, but isn't. It is only there to fill in the loss of voltage which the battery cannot supply. So when the battery starts to lose it's ability to supply a continous flow of current/voltage to the amp and starts to supply less then what is meant to, the capacitor kicks in and fills in that loss of voltage/current allowing the amp to get a continous stream of voltage/current to function at it's best.

Notice however, that the dimming still occurs when having a capacitor attached since it only fills in the missing voltage drop and therefore the battery is still struggling to power everything.

All in all, the capacitor will only help feed the voltage drop due to the inability of a power source to supply a certain amount of power to a device continously.

The only way I can think of to reduce dimming is making a stronger earth...or having a capacitor run so that it powers the accessories...therefore the accessories will also get a constant stream of power. So if you have the time and money start strapping capacitors to every single electrical device so that you won't get dimming at all =D

Hope that was of some help...and if something doesn't make sense, my bad...and if something is wrong...someone please correct me

phong =P~

well ask any place fords always have headlight dimming. there Sh*t thats why.

f**k thats a good statement. Upgrade your goddamn earths damn it. Its not hard, and it works.

Oh, and btw, mine doesnt dim - running a sub and speakers off an amp, even at full volume.

I'd rather not get laughed at thanks.

Have you got a technical reason other then 'ford is s**t' to explain headlight dimming?

If you don't, why are you even posting in a thread where you have no idea about the topic?

It's like saying in a blown head gasket thread "oooh just use some sellys sealing crap, that's all you can do, because ford is s**t, even go ask them".