Replacing an amp connected to a 1F cap

About 2 years ago when I worked at Best Buy, I had a system put in (probably nothing near as good as what you all have in your vehicles) because I was able to get things at a good price.  At the time, I didn't think I needed a huge sub and lots of amp power for it because I didn't listen to hip-hop/rap.  Bad move on my part.

The good news is I had them put in a 4-gauge ground wire and a 1 Farad cap in back, so I'm all set for something better.  The sub was a RF 10" (don't remember model, but it handled 200W RMS).  The amp was a RF small stereo amp that could be bridged to put out about what the sub needed.  The installer probably knew this was too little power and sub for the rest of the system, but they didn't bother to inform me otherwise.  He turned the gain WAY up (even though the Kenwood deck had 4.5V preouts), and so I found the amp would give out after only 30mins of straight play.  Eventually I found I needed to reverse the phase of the sub and then was able to lower the gain on the sub amp...so things got somewhat useable.

A friend was getting rid of his RF 12" DVC sub (4 ohm coils, each 200W RMS), already wired into parallel.  I know I shouldn't have this connected to my little amp, because it could probably fry the amp up seeing that the amp is bridged and not stable to 2 ohm, but I'm doing it anyway...been that way for about a year now, and no problems.

Now I got a new RF 351 Power amp, and that will put out like 400 or 450W RMS (actually, the birth cert says 493W) into 1 channel at 2 ohms.  The only problem is that I'm a wuss and not sure what I need to do to take out the existing amp and put the new one in.  If there was no capacitor between the battery and amps, I'd have no problem, but with all the talk about the cap being like a bomb waiting to go off if something goes wrong, I'm a little hesitant to do anything unless I have some instructions to follow.  I probably know most of what I have to do, I'm just looking for some reassurance and instructions.

Can you guys help me out here?  My THOUGHT is that I need to disconnect the negative wire from my battery.  Do I also need to take off the positive, or remove the fuse on the positive?  I then think I need to disconnect the power lead to the amp, the amp-turn-on wire, speaker wires, and LAST the ground wire (all together making sure not to ground the power wire or let the positive/negative touch each other).  Am I good so far?

Then when putting the new amp in (it's only a slight bit bigger, so it'll go in the same place), I connect the ground FIRST, right.  Then what order should I start connecting everything else?

Is there anything in the process that will drain the cap if I do it wrong?  I think as long as I know what's going on, the process should be like 15-20 mins tops.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

Mike

Not a good way to charge a cap up. I try not to be so strait forward but what you are suggesting will really deminish the life of your cap. Caps are shipped with a resistor used to charge them up for a reason. If you charge a cap slow it will retain a charge for far longer and the life of the cap is also increased. Its the same as when you charge a car battery with a charger you should always charge on the lowest setting if time alows it because it is far better for the battery. Just putting strait 12v to it with no resistors is a bad Idea. There is no quick way to charge a cap properly, its one of those things that just takes time.

Thanks guys for the suggestions.  I was hoping there was a safe way for me to swap the amps without having the discharge and recharge the cap, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  I'm just taking it to my local car audio specialty shop and having them take care of it.  The piece of mind that I won't screw something up is worth the $50 they'll charge.

Mike