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Message: <blockquote data-quote="audioholic" data-source="post: 371593" data-attributes="member: 549629">Adding a second battery or a capacitor to 'beef up' your electrical system is an old wives tale, it doesn't work.Adding a second battery in your trunk only helps when the engine is off, and adds an extra drain on the alternator when the engine is running. Ive run dual batts, with a dry cell in my trunk on the last couple cars/stereos I had. I did it mainly for off-engine playing time, a distribution point in the trunk... and well cause it looked cool. *shrug* It wont do much else for you.A capacitor is a not well understood piece of hardware. A capacitor is a relatively small capacity storage unit, with very fast discharge/recharge rate. It holds much less energy than a car battery, but it dispenses and recharges it much faster than a car battery as well. What this means is, when your amplifier draws an extreme amount of current very rapidly, say for a large bass hit, the battery has the energy capable to power the amp, but it just cant deliver it fast enough to keep up with the transient demands of the amp. This is where a cap comes in. It fills in the peaks where the battery cant keep up.The problem with these two items is, ultimately they do not create power, they only hold it and dispense it. An alternator is the key to maintaining proper voltage, as it creates the energy. If your alternator is too small to keep up with the energy demands of the stereo and all the other equipment on your car, a capacitor wont make up for that, and an extra battery will only delay the inevitable.I recommend you upgrade (in this order) the battery under the hood (to an optima for example), upgrade your alternator, then consider adding a cap or 2nd batt if your needs meet the uses I described for them above.</blockquote>

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