watts for the buck

Oh God haemphyst is about to LAY IT on me

And I know some of you have seen my ground question already in my other post.

...  ok now look, I know Caps are worthless to you But... Sound Control Yeah I have a 3 Farad Cap. I have a 200amp H/O Alt because i am actually TRYING to get an efficient Electrical system for my vehicle so i dont keep blowing money on broken amps. Like I said earlier I did the Big 3. And When I play my radio loud I lean the seat up so the amps get circulation.

Pretty much after all of these electrical upgrades and I got the rockford Back. It was dropping voltage down to 7v on low notes and BLEW again and I personally feel like THAT ONE was an incomplete fix. I mean with that Never happening before and I've had 3 T10001bd's. But I guess we will never know.

And the AMp definately wont be maxed out. Atleast I hope not with me TRYING to use about 1400watts( thats the max for my subs). The way they are making it sound thats probably all im gonna get

Well lets say the alt and the big 3 are all done properly. Your next area of checking would be your amp and cap grounds. Pretty easy.

For me a good solid metal area of the car that is flat. Get some sandpaper and sand away all the paint till you have a nice area to mount your ground. From there you are ready to place your wire and shoot about 3 screws in place. This will help make sure that the wire is held in place and can't move. Also make sure there is nothing on the other side.

Then check your voltage at the battery, then at your amp. Also try the other areas under the hood. Your upgraded grounds and all just to make sure everything is good and secure.

Then try putting the meter positive on the amp positive and the negative to your actual battery negative. See what this reads then, see how that compares to your amps positve and your amps ground at where you grounded it to the vehicle. Should be little to no lose in voltage. Maybe some tenths of a volt.  ex 14.4 at the battery and maybe 14.38 or so at the amp.

The large voltage drop on the lower bass notes is common because that is when your amp is having to draw more power to produce these longer bass notes. Caps aren't a waste. They serve a purpose, they are not solutions. Caps help store power and discharge at a rate the your battery 15-20 feet away can't do. When you have such a big drop, your amp is pulling more then the system is able to give it.

Give an update with what luck you have on the different voltages and any ground pics as well.

my capacitor is about 1.5ft in power wire away from my amp ( I dont have a sub amp installed right now) so I just measured at the Cap with the DMM (Even though it has Digital reading i still checked with DMM). 

the Positive and Negative at the Battery read 14.27v and at the Capacitor it read 14.25v. So im going to guess thats not too bad. And I actually have one more Ground wire to Upgrade before I hook up this amp. It is from the frame to the Hood of my truck. (Because the Factory has it done with some 18awg wire, and I dont want any wires frying).

I grounded my Capacitor On the railing (Page 3) that I showed you. To the Black Bolts. Because that Rail is bolted to the Floor of the Cab where there is no Paint. But I scraped under the connection just to make sure.

Now I see it. The pics were a little hard to tell until I read the captions.

You are getting a good voltage reading at the cap. Very little lost between the battery and the amp area. I would reccomend trying to clear away a spot on the floor and testing your ground there. Do like you have with clearing away the paint to bear metal and see how that works. Also test it with the meter.

There have been many occasions where I've seen amps grounded to a seat bracket that is a thin metal bolted to the floor. Worked ok with smaller amps, and caused problems for the more powerful ones.

Sounds like once you get that last wire under the hood you are great there. It's just getting the amp area figured out.

What about the gain settings on your amp? How are they set?

What kind of radio are you using and do you have any eqs or line drivers hooked up?

They should paint a picture of everything.

Alright Here's the setup for the most part

http://www......com/item_10116_Power+Acoustik+PTID-4005.html

http://www......com/item_6655_Clarion+EQS746.html

http://www.rockfordfosgate.com/products/product_details.asp?cat_id=2&series_id=7&family_id=23&item_id=100031&locale=en_US

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Products/CarAudioVideo/Subwoofers/Champion/TS-W1008D2%7CD4 4 of them under rear seat.

SPL Cap 3 Farad And rockford RCA wiring.

No sub amp so there are no gains there yet.

The equalizer has a Gain for Aux units which i use for my ipod. I matched it with the regulated gain of the Head Unit (No gain knob on EQ for HU) as the manual instructed.

The Way I did this was by measuring the AC voltage at my speaker terminals (Gain on amp was set to minimum*didnt really matter though*) at full tilt on my head unit & ipod **Note- the reason for measuring at full tilt is because MY ipod's volume seems to have an EXPONENTIAL growth factor. Which means it spikes up at the last couple millimeters on the volume bar**

After Matching the HU and Ipod I proceeded to Set my midrange speakers as Rockford suggest with the DMM. Im running 4 8ohm 6.5" speakers at bridged 2ohm on the T3002. With the Formula Voltage^2 / Resistance= Power, I Measured it to 40v which comes out to be 40*40=1600 1600/2ohm= 800watts

So approximately 140-200watts per door Speaker Since it was measured with a test tone 500hz. (I have 4 door Speakers)

0 Gauge wire

and trying to get the best grounds. The Hifonics amp arrives Saturday.

I mean But when the voltage was dropping (the last time i got the amp back) it was going down to about 7volts, my truck would drain and my radio would almost shut off and just everything would almost die. And that NEVER happened before. I know low notes take more power but 7volts is unacceptable when it has never done that before until it came back from rockford. you get it? I'm Going to home depot to crimp the rest of these 0 gauge wires lol yeah I had to get around the system on that one (=

And the capacitor is about 2ft of wire from the amp. so SHould it be reading about the voltage that the amp is reading? Because its at 14.28v. Im gonna check the voltage at the battery by tonight and ill let you know the drop.

Your install stuff and cap location all sound fine.

"the voltage was dropping (the last time i got the amp back) it was going down to about 7volts, my truck would drain and my radio would almost shut off and just everything would almost die. "

That says it all. It's not the amp.(kinda)  Everything else can't handle the current draw. I'm surprised with the alt you have being around 200amps it wouldn't handle it.

I would have to check with someone who has delt with that before. Or maybe an alternator shop and ask them. You may need an isolator and a 2nd battery. Just so you can have that  large amount of power in the back with your amps.

I had that setup in a hardbody pickup running a crossfire1000d and arc audio 2ch for a max draw of about 145amps.  Never had any problems. That is still 100amps less then what you have.

But your 3002 is fused at 80 and the 1000BD at 150 equals 230plus amps. That Brutus amp on the way is 240 amps alone. You may want to have someone that does SPL check it out as well for some help.

Last question. What brand is the alternator? It isn't one of these rewound or rebuilt ones where they take a standard 80amp alt and turn it into a 140amp one?

Thats the only other thing I could think of.

But see thats why I always Make Sure to Add...

This has never happened before Even with my Old 110amp alt and Not having the big 3. Never below 10volts no matter what bass, how loud, clipping or not clipping. That has never happened to me before. And I just got a New Battery so its not that.

It ONLY started happening when I got the T10001bd Back from the rockford the second time. The first time they just sent me a brand new amp. The second time they fixed the New amp( after it malfunstioned the second time I new it had to be somewhere in the install so I upgraded most of everything Big 3 and Alt). And when it came back the second time "Fixed" The voltage started dropping that low to 7volts.

But Tomorrow when I get the amp and test it ill let you know how it goes with Voltage drop and overall sound quality. I'll be doing my last ground today when this rain stops. Good ole Florida weather

Hopefully it works well.

Do you have any pics of your door speaker install?