So i just bought a 1.5 Farad cap and i'm going to mount it today, however after reading the instructions on it, it says not to ground it to the grounding port on the amp (didn't know that, new to this). however it says keep the ground and power as short as possible.

I'm looking to mount this in the open since it has a digital display and keep it close to the amp (mounted on back of my box) without cutting holes in my trunk (since it's a new(er) car).

I can take pictures of the setup if needed but anyone have suggestions for ground points??

 

Mount cap as close to amp as possible, keeping the power lead from the cap to the amp as short as possible, ground the amp to the same place as the amp is grounded, but not to the amps ground terminal. 94

 

For a cap to even work you want the Complete path to be as short as possible.

Current flows in a circle it starts and stops in the same place.

You want to hook the cap in parrallel with the amp. You should have the cap connected directly into the +/- terminals of the amp. Then the power and ground should go from the cap to the car.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by nsxxtreme &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">For a cap to even work you want the Complete path to be as short as possible.

Current flows in a circle it starts and stops in the same place.

You want to hook the cap in parrallel with the amp. You should have the cap connected directly into the +/- terminals of the amp. Then the power and ground should go from the cap to the car.</TD></TR></TABLE> You would think that would be the case, and some amp manufacturers, like R/F had amps with an extra paralleled pos.(+) and neg.(-) terminal so you can do exactly that, however we found that not to be as effective as grounding the cap to the same point as the amp is grounded, why that is I don't know, but it seems that the amp manufacturers seem to think so also, as I do not see any amps like that any more. 94

 

even though my ground run is almost 8ft? however my power run is 1ft maybe 1.5ft...

thing won't turn on though...is there supposed to be a remote wire??

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by fcm &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> You would think that would be the case, and some amp manufacturers, like R/F had amps with an extra paralleled pos.(+) and neg.(-) terminal so you can do exactly that, however we found that not to be as effective as grounding the cap to the same point as the amp is grounded, why that is I don't know, but it seems that the amp manufacturers seem to think so also, as I do not see any amps like that any more. 94</TD></TR></TABLE>
You dont need extra terminals.

If something is telling you something different...... their wrong. Manufacturers don't always write down whats best. They have to face the fact that people are going to do what's ever easiest to do. You probably had a bunch of people trying to stuff the power wire and the cap wires in a single hole. Which is how the extra terminal probably came about. So they said screw it and compromised the caps intended purpose. Most people dont even understand what's the proper use for a capacitor and use it incorrectly anyway. So it really makes no difference to the manufacturer.

If the its wired as I mention the cap and amplifier are grounded in the same location and the wires from the cap to amp are kept as short as possible.

 

I have a rear strut bar in my civic and I just grounded the cap to one side of the bolts that hold on the strut and the amp to the other side. No problems here. Just a thought.

 

Ideally the cap should have some kind of connector for 4 cables built into it, 2 in 2 out.

If running multiple caps a bus bar would be ideal with a connection for 4 cables, 2 in 2 out.