What Size Cap for 1099 Watts

what size wiring is in there right now? what type of difference are you noticing in the subs, describe what is happening. and in my opinion i think you should trash the cap. do the big three if you don't already have it, also upgrade your wiring mabey get a new battery to. caps don't do anything but take up space.

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Right now I have a 4 gauge from the battery into a fused distro block then two 8 gauge coming out. The wiring is from a Schoshe kit I bought at walmart and I'm going to upgrade to a stinger 1/0 gauge kit. The reason I tried the cap is actually not for the normal reasons. I had a dimming problem but that was solved when I upgraded my amp plus I have a 60amp alt. and an very big Interstart Megatron so really I'm not worried about the power. The problem I was noticing was that sometimes I would start my car and my subs would dominate and pound hard, then I would get in another time and start it up and the subs didn't have near the output so I was constantly changing my system settings which got annoying real quick. So I got to thinking and put a voltage meter on the power wire and noticed that I seemed to be getting pretty sizeable fluctuations. I remeber from my brief time at ITT the basic principles of capacitance so I thought what the hell I bought a cheap cap from walmart and the cap basically charges to 14.9 volts and stays within a .6 volt rage and I have noticed that I no longer have to change my settings every time I get in the car. It sounds the same everytime I get in the car.

wondering how much longer that 60 Amp Alternator is going to hold out? Sounds like a larger alternator should be your next purchase. 60 Amp is Not alot of power considering the vehicle functions without the stereo must run off of it. Bet you are starving those amps! The alternator might be able to fully charge the battery sometimes and not enough other times.

What type of vehicle is all this in?

You should get bigger alt in order to correctly charge that battery and cap. The cap basically put a band-add on the problem. Your alt will start to give out hear shortly if you don't upgrade and bad stuff can happen if you draw to much power from your electrical system.

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This is a 1998 Mercury Mountaineer with the 5.0 V8. I don't really think I have a charging problem actually even before I installed the cap I rarely had a dimming problem since installing the kicker amp the only time I ever had any noticible dimming was usually when I'm showing off and have the subs running pert near full bore and it's too loud for me to sit in the car anyway. I do thank you for the suggestions though and being a better safe than sorry kind of guy I'll have my mechanic check it out when I take it in for it's yearly check up. and May go ahead and upgrade it. What size would you suggest?

Also I just double checked and I made a mistake on my original post. I believe that I actually have a 95 amp alt. I may have been thinking of my wifes car I think it has a 60 amp, Sorry bout that.

Before i suggest eny alt size. Have you done the big three on your electrical system.

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its all good no problem. I was wondering how a v8 would have a 60 amp alt in it.

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Want to know some good equipment- JL,Adire Audio,Mcintosh,Brax,Helix,Eclipse,JBL,RE,Dimoand Audio,Zapco, pritty much anything DYhon,Forbidden recommend
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The bigger the better. 150A would be the min. From your earlier post you were saying the gains would be different from time to time. A guess would be the PS on the amp is unregulated and output power depends on input voltage and available current. Your sizeable voltage readings would confirm this.

You shouldn't notice a difference in fuel economy. Hauling around the amps and the subs already took care of your mileage. If you are going to add more amps, you don't have too many choices. Don't forget to upgrade your main battery ground and you should have a min. of a #2 AWG off the Alt. to the battery. The Big Three; learn it, know it, install it! Unless you listen to the system with vehicle off, a second battery is not suggested.

I already intended to upgrade all of the wiring to 1/0 gauge just to be sure. Thanks for the advice. If I could bother you one more time for a small piece of knowledge. I was thinking of running a 1/0 ground wire directly off of the battery to ground all of the audio components too, is that recommended or would it be a waste of pretty expensive wire and time?

I have heard two schools of thought on the subject. Your vehicle's frame contains alot of metal, steel. Not the best conductor, however the frame has soo much metal it is acceptable. Every install I have done has been using the vehicle frame. Strip off the paint on the grounding spot on the frame. Bolt on your ground wire with heavy duty crimps Repaint the bare metal. Don't use seat bolts! Look for posts reguarding grounds.

Other's have run wire directly from the battery ground to the Amp. Is there an advantage?, depends on the vehicle construction or the installer. More money, time, materials etc.

I'm running #1 AWG welding cable with a 150A fuse off the stock battery with a 160Amp alternator to Zapco C2k-3.0,4.0,6.0. and have zero noise problems and zero dimming. #1 AWG from custom ground block to frame with 1/2" bolt. Cables from Alt to battery, Battery to frame are all #1 AWG. Good Luck!