Hey guys... I am going to be running a 4 Gauge amp kit, but my sub amp has 8 gauge terminals. I am planning on buy a 4 - 8 gauge splitter, that way I use the correct terminal forks AND I can run another 8 gauge amp for my interior speaker at a later time.

The question is, can I ground the amp with an 8 gauge even though I have a 4 gauge power cable? I know that if there was 100% draw on the power cable it would burn out the smaller ground, but my amp doesn't draw that much power, doesn't it output as much as it draws?

The alternative is to shoehorn 4 gauge cables into my 8 gauge terminals. That was actually my previous setup but I don't want to do that if I don't need to.

 

If it was me, I'd probably do two distribution blocks. One for power, and one for ground.

 

If you sub amp doesn't draw a lot of power you could run 4ga power to a distro block and run a single 8ga wire to your existing amp as well as an additional one. A short run of 8ga say 1-3ft has a 85-105A max draw. This way you'll be able to connect the wire to the amp without any space issues.

As for the grounding you could use an 8ga ground on the amp and when you add one you could either ground both in different locations or get a distro block for ground.


I could be totally wrong about all of this so don't listen to me.

 

Get the distro block as you said for future upgrades and run an 8 gauge for ground and you will be fine.

This is somewhat how my current system is setup I have 4 gauge running to the back a 4 output distro block 8 gauge wires running into 3 amps and 8 gauge grounds going out of each amp.

 

What size wire you "can" use depends on your current draw. As a rule of thumb, use the same gauge for ground as you use for power. If your amp necessitates using 4ga power, I think you know what your answer is.

 

+1 to filtor.


ground wire should always be the same size as the power. Larger is okay, but not smaller than the power wire..

they sell 4 gauge spade terminals that plug into 8 gauge slots, so look for those, or yeah use a distro block.

 

Well I ordered a two distro blocks and the second amp today, so I won't have to risk anything. On the power side I'll have a 4 gauge in, two 8 gauge out, and the reverse of that on the ground side. I was going to wait on the second amp but now I'm just doing to do this in one shot.