Trying to help my cousin out

[eltortuga94]

So I was hanging out with my cousin today & he was talking about how he's been having trouble with his system draining his battery & how he wants to buy a capacitor so I was trying to walk through his system with him & ask him if he's done the big 3, if he has a 2nd battery, what gauge wire he's using, where his amp is set at, if he's using the bass boost, all those types of questions, which he didn't really know the answer to any & said that he won't get a 2nd battery. Now I'm not the most knowledgeable in cap vs batt so I didn't want to get technical & tell him something wrong, now this is where my fellow SMD members come in, if you could give a detailed description on the cap vs batt situation, why tuning your amp is important & how clipping affects voltage it would help. I thinking if he here's what iv'e been trying to tell him from somebody else he'll listen. Thanks.

[MIKE-2U]

From what i remember A cap Actually puts more strain on your alternator and is only good for one quick discharge , like a low bass note. Then needs time to charge back up.

[KillaCam]

Whats he running? Id assume just the big 3 and a good batt under the hood will be good enough. 2nd batt may not be nessary.

[BFF Larry]

A cap I would think only help if you have stable voltage, meaning you need a battery upgrade, alt upgrade, and so on.

They are good for burps.

If he doesn't want a second battery, get a better under hood batt.

[eltortuga94]

all he would tell me is he has a dual amp, a rockford sub & that his brother hooked all of his stuff up.

I'm pretty sure he's clipping his amp hard cause he says he messes with the bass boost when he wants the bass to be loud & when you're inside his car & he turns the head unit up you can totally hear it distort but when I told him that you need to compensate the bass boost with the gain & clipping can cause voltage drop he didn't believe me.

[eltortuga94]

Bump before I go to bed. I understand what everybody is saying but if somebody could go into detail I would appreciate it.

[eltortuga94]

Bump.

[Mariobjones]

Battery upgrade, needs big three done, and o-scope to set gains on amp properly

[DJ 92]

The cap vs battery deal is that a capacitor drains much quicker than a battery and a battery doesent need to recharge after the bass hits so getting a battery would be better than a cap. From what i understand the battery getting drained is an alternator issue. With lights dimming and that sort of thing it comes down to the alternator as well bacause the alternator cannot put out enough current to keep the lights at 14v so current switches to the battery witch is at 12v. A large cap would help slightly because it starts out at 14v but it still gets drained pretty quickly so the lights would still probally dim but they would be less noticable. So imo i would recomend the big 3, then alternator, then 2nd battery to solve all issues but if i had to chose between the battery and cap i would go with the battery (like xs power or kenetic) because it would keep the system charged way longer than a cap, but keep in mind the alternator still has to charge it all. And you definately need to tune the amp properly because if you dont that could cause clipping witch forces the amp to play a higher voltage than it can produce and thats bad for the speaker and amp because the amp can overheat and you can damage the speaker.