I have a few questions. Before I ask them, I'll put up my situation. Currently, I'm using 4ga wire, only running 200w rms. I'm going to upgrade to a 500-600W sub amp, and put in a 120W mid amp. I know I'm fine running my mid amp off of 8ga, but will I be ok with 8ga to my sub amp, or should I leave it at 4ga? If I do this, do I need to upgrade my main line to 1/0, or is it ok with my existing 4ga? Another question has to do with a cap. I'm mostly concerned with consistent, great sound quality, but I wanna be able to push a good thump if I want to. About how many farads of capacitance do you guys reccomend I use?
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Hell hath no fury like a pissed off balloon animal.
"Sup, G?"
"Aren't you white?"
"Only on the outside, craka."
i'd say you could run your sub amp off of the 4ga wiring. it should be no problem at all. secondly i would recommend getting a cap. my buddy just bought one and his system hits so much harder then it did before.
I have a Kicker DX 350 and a Rockford Fosgate Punch 60, 647 watts total, both running off a single 4 gauge power wire. No cap.
<img src="http://www.webgraffiti.it/gif/smile12/smile197.gif"></img>
anybody wanna get rid of, or know where I can find a distribution block that takes 4ga in, and has at least one 4ga out? I wanna use my existing 4ga wire to a disblock, and run 4ga to my sub amp, but my mid amp and any cap(s) I get will be fine on 8ga.
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Hell hath no fury like a pissed off balloon animal.
"Sup, G?"
"Aren't you white?"
"Only on the outside, craka."
Be careful about putting a cap on 8g. It'd be better on 4. The cap will be reinforcing anything the sub amp needs, so 8g might be a little too small. I think you'd be better with 4g for the cap and 8g for the sub amp. Your 8g run will be short enough that you should be fine. In fact, looking at the rec.car.audio faq at mobileaudio.com indicates that for a load of 50-65 amps, you can run up to 7 feet with negligible problems. I'd check the fuse rating of the amp (figuring that you'll typically only blow the fuse if you're either pushing the system into clipping or shorting something out), and plan from there. I do know that Stinger makes a fuse/distribution block that has four 4g outs. That would be more than enough. It even comes with adapters so that you can put 8g into the 4g outs to run to smaller amps. That might be the ticket for an install such as you're suggesting.
Remember to check the fuse rating of the other amp as well, if you use just one power cable, you may need to upgrade to 2g or 1/0 to make it work properly with low-enough loss to prevent problems.
Just my $0.02 worth though, ymmv. Good luck!
Stinger STEE4 (gold) / STEE4PT (platinum): 4 gauge, 3-way “T” block.
This is what I use, in the gold. You can find them on eBay once in a while.
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I found a Tsunami disblock at work, and I get it discounted. It takes in 1/0, and does 4 4ga outs. I'll probably upgrade to 1/0 main line just so I don't heat up my line and have plenty of current handling if I need it, then run everything off of 4ga. Do you guys think 1.2 farads is enough capacitance?
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Hell hath no fury like a pissed off balloon animal.
"Sup, G?"
"Aren't you white?"
"Only on the outside, craka."
for what you're running, yes.
Yep, 1.2F is fine. The rule of thumb that most people like to follow is 1F for each 1000 watts of power. You can always put in a larger cap and not cause any problems.
