mayhem

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x2

RedZone

grizz did you do the grounds at the same time as the charge lead ? or seperatly. the only way to be sure that it is teh charge lead would be to do it seperatly . imo i cant see a alrger wire from alt to batt helping anything. your amps pull there power from teh battery not the alternator. and if your amps are pulling so much as to drain teh battery to teh potin wher eit needs to "wait" for teh alt to recarge it you need a bigger alt.

GrizZz

Nope, I did them a piece at a time, then drove for a day or two to see if I could hear the difference.

I did some grounds first, front bat to frame. This improved sound a lot, and reduced voltage drop at idle speed a bit. Then, I did a 2ga cable from alt to front bat, and it helped some more, I won't say a lot, but I won't say a little either... just... some more. Then, I added a cable from that ground on my frame, bounced it off the alt mount, then bounced it off a tranny bolt, then to a bolt at the rear frame, where the ground from my rear battery also meets (I had already added a 2ga positive cable from the front battery to the rear battery, where all my amps are hooked up, years ago). Woah... HUGE difference with that one. Now, my voltage barely drops at all at idle, and if I'm cruising with a bass demo cd going full tilt, I can't "bag" my alternator anymore, like I used to. I used to be able to bag it right down to battery voltage, about 12.5v. Now, I can't get it below 13.5v.

Nope. Your amps, and ALL your car's electrical, pull their power from the alternator. 14.5v. When and if you actually bag an alternator (pull more amps from your car's charging system {alt & battery} than the alternator is capable of producing), it'll drop to battery voltage, 12.6ish. Your alternator is now humping out everything it's capable of (and gonna burn itself up if you keep it up for more than a minute or two), so if you keep drawing power, the voltage goes down to the battery's voltage. Keep pulling more power, and THEN you're on the battery. Better have a damn good battery or your amps won't have enough voltage anymore and could start clipping. A battery's job is to supply power when the alternator isn't turning. Once the engine's running, a battery quickly gets recharged (1 to 5 minutes) and becomes "invisible", until you draw to much power from the alternator.

This is why the "big boys" of SPL competitions don't just have a lotta batteries, they've got big badass alternators too. Theoretically, if you have a 500 amp alternator, you could hook it up to just one garden tractor battery and drive a 2500D at 1 ohm (~300 amps at full tilt) all day without harming anything. Do the same to a system with just an 80 amp alternator and a whole bunch of CAT batteries, and your 2500D will get hot (amps get hot when the volts go down), not sound as good and/or as loud, and could start clipping, harming your sub(s).

SUX 2BU

iTrader: (1)

In my truck, I was having issues with low charge voltage when the truck was running. I couldn't run the low-beam headlights and my wipers along with just having the stereo on without it dipping below 13v. I was about ready to buy a new alt. when I figured I'd spend an afternoon cleaning up all the factory grounding spots. What I did was take off each bolt or however it was attached to the truck and scraped away paint to expose bare metal under the washer/bolt/whatever. Buttoned it all back up and I did replace the battery to alt. wire with a 4 ga. from the 12 ga. it was. Not that I really thought it needed a 4 ga. since the current draw from my system won't even pop a 60 amp fuse but the wire had been spliced a couple times so I figured why not. The result is a no-load voltage of about 13.8, up from 13.1 and with load I never go below 13v.

Step 1: clean up the grounds.

mayhem

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x2.

mayhem

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well anyway i went to princess auto and got some welding wire and a 300 amp fuse and holder so i`ll see what happens.