Fancy Electrical questions

[Raven 10+ year member]

I've been considering re-installing my capacitor. I don't have any electrical issues to date, and it would just be something to help out the midbass. It will be attached to my component amp, since my front supplies more midbass than the rear. Here are my questions.

* Do I wire it in series or parallel?

* When a cap discharges, I can only assume it sends power to both the battery and amp, if it's true, is there any way to keep the discharge from going to the battery?

* After the cap discharges, is there a way to keep voltage AWAY from the cap until the charging system restores a certain voltage (14 in my case)?

Click to read more...

 

[johnecon2001 5,000+ posts]

Power flows one way. In the case of a car, it flows negative to positive. Wire the power wire to the positive of the cap and then from that same terminal, run another wire to the amp. Ground the cap and the amp in roughly the same spot. Dont loop the ground.

If you want to keep voltage from getting to the cap after a certain peak is reached. You should wire a switch to a voltage meter. when the voltage reaches the desirable amount the switch triggers open. The only problem with this is finding a meter that will send a signal when nominal voltage is reached.

hope that helps.

 

[Bake 10+ year member]

I think a cap would recharge faster than your switching circuit could react to it. Also, if you switch the line, the amps would shut down every time the swich breaks the circuit. Just wire in the cap as he said and see if you notice any difference. If you have a dmm, check the voltage at the amps inputs before and after to see if there is a measureable difference

 

[Raven 10+ year member]

Ground the cap and the amp in roughly the same spot. Dont loop the ground.

So you're saying I should basically wire it in parallel, but with seperate lines for ground. What does running seperate grounds accomplish?

 

[johnecon2001 5,000+ posts]

You have nothing to gain from running the grounds in parallel. And most problems with systems usually occur because of grounding, so I would just want to make sure there aren't any connection issues there.

 

[Raven 10+ year member]

Ahh, I understand that. Thanks!