I have an ADS amp pushing 320 watts and I just purchased a Lightning Audio 1 farad cap, I know more than I need but it was cheap. I went to a stereo shop to buy power wire connectors, not a big fan of this shop but its close and I just needed parts. The guy tells me I should be running 4g power wire instead of 8g, which I can understand but I don't want to redo the wiring, and that because my wire is so small I'm only getting about 1/4 the performance out of my cap. This I wasn't so sure of because one article I read about caps is they help if you have smaller gauge power wire. This next part I really didn't understand, he suggested I run 4g out of the cap to a splitter that converts it down to 8g to go into my amp. The distance from the cap to my amp is less than a foot what could this splitter do for me? I don't really trust these guys but they did get me thinking, any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Wilhelm,

Moreover what will determine the gauge of the wire is the distance of the run from the Battery to the Cap/dist block.

Line losses are deterimined by the load (amps pulled)and the length of the wire with it's internal resistance. give me a while and I'ss see if I can scare up an application chart.

Dave

 

Wilhelm,

here you go;

http://www.the12volt.com/info/recwirsz.asp

Now the wire from your Cap/ dist Block 8 ga would seem to be fine.

Dave

 

Thanks for checking, if it helps I have a 98 and the wire runs from battery to the back driver's side corner of the trunk.

 

at 320 watts you do not need 4 guage. 8 guage is fine until about 500 RMS, and the guage will not effect the performance of your cap. The people are just trying to get you to buy more stuff then you need (the wires, distro block, ect)..1/4 the power, LOL, go back, tell the people to shut up, and get ur 8 guage power/ ground and ring terminals and install that cap.

cheap/quick diagram for wiring:
[battery]------powercable-------[cap]--[amp]
| |
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ground ground

 

those grounds should be comming from the cap and amp...I dunno why it changed it when I posted, my bad.

PJ