Running 18 Volts Daily

[Aaron813]

i do not see where the ground is a issue, as long as the pos 18v wire is secluded from the 12v system, kind a like a house,you have your 110v outlest and then the 240 for the dryer and stove, but there both grounded to the same bar

Thats what i was thinking I plan on running 2 soundstream XXX10000s or 2 XXX6500s 6 of those batts 3 alts for the stereo only 8 runns of power and ground

[fourlug]

i do not see where the ground is a issue, as long as the pos 18v wire is secluded from the 12v system, kind a like a house,you have your 110v outlest and then the 240 for the dryer and stove, but there both grounded to the same bar

I was thinking the same, there are components in my vehicle that run off 5v, 20,000v and 12v... which is why I was double guesing.

[TechSys]

I currently run a 16v system in the van. It isn't really that hard of a thing to do. The ground is going right to the frame, right beside the 12volt ground. Alternator charges at 19.5volts (it's a powermaster 350amp with variable regulator).

14 8volt golf cart batteries. It ain't the prettiest setup and is heavy as hell. Each battery weighs in around 60lbs. 4/0 welding cable from alternator + to the battery bank +, 4/0 welding cable from battery bank - to frame. Stinger voltage meter to keep checks on the system, calibrated with a digital voltage meter to make sure it read correct.

At idle voltage drops to around 17volts. At least I've never seen it below that. At 2k rpm, voltage is at 19.5volts.

Powermaster told me that 19.5volts from the alternator is perfect for charging the battery bank.

Not a good pic of wiring.

What the batteries were sitting at when I first got them wired. They had been sitting for at least 6 moths, if I remember right. Van is not running.

Sorry, don't have a pic of voltage when engine is running. One day I might finish building the back of the van, concentrating on the suspension right now.

Edited April 20, 2008 by TechSys

[SPL2K]

18 volts in a daily driver is really waste of time and money. You are looking at a 1 to 1.5db gain if you're lucky. There are alot better, easier, and cheaper ways to gain a db or 2.

Thats about the same as someone in a civic pulling the passenger and the back seats out of the car to save weight so they can get to the grocery store faster.

sorry...thats just my opinion.

[Aaron813]

18 volts in a daily driver is really waste of time and money. You are looking at a 1 to 1.5db gain if you're lucky. There are alot better, easier, and cheaper ways to gain a db or 2.

Thats about the same as someone in a civic pulling the passenger and the back seats out of the car to save weight so they can get to the grocery store faster.

sorry...thats just my opinion.

The real only reason to run 16 to 19 volts is thats what the amps i want to get do there power at

[sactownstang]

Ya those soundstreams excel at 18v, sell em and get something differnt. That would be easy. UNLESS this is just for spl it seems like a waste.

[Aaron813]

Ya those soundstreams excel at 18v, sell em and get something differnt. That would be easy. UNLESS this is just for spl it seems like a waste.

I havent bought them yet so do you have any ideas of amps that do 5000 rms for under 700 a piece i can get the XXX10000s for 1400

[SPL2K]

Ya those soundstreams excel at 18v, sell em and get something differnt. That would be easy. UNLESS this is just for spl it seems like a waste.

+1.

I had 4 XXX 6500's in a CRX and hated them.

[fourlug]

Ahhhhh so I guess it doesn't need to be seperate, thanks for clearing that up!

[sully]

You can run everything off of 16v system (charged at 18v) if you want. No need to isolate anything. Get a stepdown converter to run the vehicle and let the system run on the higher voltage. Or you can do what I did on my last build. I had 2 6v and 2 8v golfcart batteries run series / parallel to give me 14v resting voltage. Charged it at 14.8 off a HO alt and would hit it with a battery charger/maintainer when I had a chance to keep it topped off since it really wanted about 16v to charge fully. Never had an issue with my 2003 ford electronics. Made a little less than 1 db on a burp but kept the voltage within tolerances while playing music.