Has anyone ever done this? I'm having trouble with voltage, my sub amp is heating up due to this. PPI recomended that I re-coil my alternator to raise the voltage, what do you guys think?

also known as rewinding the alternator. its a great alternative to having a new alternator. i think its the second best thing to do (other than getting a new one).

Plus, they can wind the stator for the amperage you need.

How can I figure out how much amperage I need?

This is hard to determine. A good ballpark would be taking total wattage rms and dividing it by .6 (average amp is at least 60% efficient) and dividing by 13. So for a 1000 watt amp you have 1000/.6 = 1666 total watts /13 volts = 128 amps

let me see if I under stand correctly, if my sub amp is running mono @ 600rms and my other amp @ 4x50 = 200 thats 800 total. 800 / .6= 1333 1333/13=102 which means that I need 102 amps. Does anybody know what the stock honda accord is giving me? Also I have A 1.0 CAP will this help my situation.

I can't even find the amperage for the stock unit on my car...

The cap helps for quick current draws. One thing to remember, if this is your daily driver you cannot listen to it at that level all the time(your ears will love you for it), so you are probably fine. If you don't experience any problems then you are fine. If you do competition then upgrading is necesary.

My first stereo that I installed in my first car was 450 watts rms. The stock alternator on that car was 30 amp I smote 3 altenators in 6 months. Then one guy found that there was an altenator that fit in my car for a later year at 60 amps. It took care of that problem.

You must also remember that that is just the stereo. All of your other acessories will need somewhere around 50 amps also. Once you upgrade the alt. you can throw the cap in for good measure, but that is just one more thing drawing current.

is there such thing as an alternator that's too powerful?

are there any high output alternators for the b18 engine out there?
i couldn't find any

No such thing as too much power *evil grin*. Higher amperage alternators will put more load on the engine. Nothing is free.

I don't know about your second question. When I check yesterday, I found a 135 amp model. But it was not from any well known company like pheonix gold.

Theres a local shop around here that said they could rewind my stock alt to 140. Thats still not enough, but i've heard of people swapping alts with GM (not 100% sure on GM might be Ford).

So if I get my alternator rewound, I won't see the benifits at or above 4k rpms?

No, you will have more power than stock at any given rpms. Only that full power will be achieve at high rpm 3-4k (rated power). Check with your rebuilder.


[Modified by chipoweredcivic, 7:33 AM 1/8/2003]