I have a Rockford Fosgate 800.4 and a JL 1000/1. Running approx 1800 watts RMS.

Anyone wire up a capacitor to their system? How many farads would I need?

 

3, 1 farad caps, 500 watts for each cap wiring is easy its all paralel red to red, black to black

 

what brand capacitor is good???

 

why 3 instead of just one 3 farad?


Rule of thumb is one farad per 1000 watts. I would invest in one 3 farad or 5 farad cap. You can find them on ebay.

 

Honeslty, you wont need a capacitor. A capacitor should only be used to stabalize voltage, as it was created to do so. If you have limited current supply, that would be your problem. A bigger alternator would be needed if that's the case. A capacitor wouldn't help as much, as you can't store energy if you dont have much from the start.

I use to have an MB Quart QAA4250 (~150Amp) that pulls as much, if not more current than your JL 1000/1 amp. I also have my TRU T4.65 that pulls around 80A at full tilt. I have never ran into such problems with dimming and such before. I dont even think Percy or Retrodrive here runs capacitor(s).

 

Excerpt from www.bcae1.com

I've never seen any proof anywhere that a large capacitor does anything to improve the quality of the amplifier's output. Some people claim that they help to prevent your headlights from dimming but in most cases it's simply a placebo effect. If the capacitors did what they were supposed to do, every capacitor manufacturer would have a demo vehicle showing how the output changed by xdBs when the caps were in or out of the circuit. To my knowledge, no company has proven that they do anything. Take the money that you would spend on a capacitor and spend it on an alternator upgrade.

Capacitors do not increase the voltage at the amplifier. The capacitor's voltage will be equal to the battery and charging system voltage. If the voltage at the battery falls below the capacitor's voltage, the capacitor will instantly discharge into the battery until their voltage is again the same. Unless there is some significant resistance in the power wire between the cap and the battery (with no load on the power wire), there's no way for the voltage between them to be different. If there's a load on the power wire (an amplifier drawing current), the voltage at the cap and amplifier will be lower than it is at the battery.

Read the capacitor page for more detailed info.