hope you all can help

[spades27]

hey there all just a quick question is there anyway to stop me head lights from strobing everytime the bass hits it strobes and dont know why put a new altinator and a cap too Oh ya i forgot i also have the h4 convertion kit in it for the head light thought id add that just in case

[pookypal15]

not my area... but I see no responses... so while you wait for a more intelligent response I would check to make sure you have good grounds.

Add another cap or get a bigger one, turn the vol of your amp down and its input up

[mouchyn]

you gotta upgrade to a bigger alternator. you can have yours rewound to output 100+ amps. setting your idle a little higher will help once you get the alt rewound.

[Vanilla Sky]

sounds like you have a couple problems here... first things i would do:
upgrade your grounds
upgrade your alternator wire
upgrade your battery to fusepanel wire
do a big wire upgrade to your headlights (search)

after that if you're still having problems, have your alternator tested and your battery tested... if they test low, replace them...

a capacitor may help after you have all of the above done... it's useless to have a cap and crappy wiring and a worn alt... may appear to work, but in reality all it does is mask a real problem...

and by the way, i'm willing to bet that your headlights are pretty power hungry... that's why i say upgrade your wiring for those, also

[w00tw00t111]

Well if your headlights are dimming when the base hits it means that for that split second you are not getting enough power to the lights b/c the amp/subs are requiring it. I think that most likely the easiest solution for the problem is to get a real real nice capicitor. From what I understand a capacitor basically stores power in it. This regulates the amount of current that the amp is drawing. Hope this helps. If all else fells just upgrade your alternator that has the ability to supply extra power. I have heard of people using 2 or more batteries to power their av equipment.

[Mike's89AccordLX]

Headlight relays. I need to find my how to for that and get that up here.

[Vanilla Sky]

mike, thanks for that bit of info...

and remember, caps aren't the solution, they are the band-aid fix for what can be a serious problem

[pookypal15]

see i knew more intelligent replies would come up... if not confusion


but really do try to gather as much information as possible before doing just a temporary fix

[Vanilla Sky]

what are you confused about? whatever it is, i'd like to get it cleared up

[pookypal15]

No, I was actually directing that last post to spades27... cuz if you recall my first reply was check grounds and caps,etc (but I'm just stabbing in an area I don't much about)? Then later definate answers came up like alternator, battery, but grounds did reappear. And then caps come up again... thought that might be confusing towards the original poster - even though I believe Vanilla Sky has explained the cap issue. But my particular reply is losing meaning

[spades27]

wow confutions is right ok heres the thing new alternator and battery i just out on and i have 4 guage power and ground form frunt to back also new fuse block and cap i just think my amp is drawing to much power so im going to try to add one more cap to see if it helps

[Vanilla Sky]

what kind of current draw does your amp apply to the system? i'm probably gonna guess that you need to have an even larger wire than you have, and better connection at the grounds...

[spades27]

im not sure all i know is that the amp has 2 power out puts and 2 ground out puts

[Vanilla Sky]

how many watts is the amp?

[spades27]

500 under rated

[3rdCoast]

because of the age of our car the alternator r pretty worn and old. Ur putting in a sound system of today in a car close to 20 years old. They didnt have much for sound systems back then. For those suggesting bigger wire thats just gonna help with the power draw problems what the problem is is the power too much draw from the battery and alt. so u need a better/bigger battery and probably an new/rebuilt/ higher output altenator. Caps r useless they really dont help much. The best thing u can do to help fix this is get and OPTIMA YELLOW TOP BATTERY. They r leak proof maintance free battery. They are made for high power car setups for like lights sound systems i just put one in my car and i got almost no dimming at all u have to really be paying attention. Im gonna be lookin myself for a alternator up grade soon.

[Vanilla Sky]

3rdcoast, you really should read the full thread before you make a post like this, which is pulled out of your ass, and i take as SPAM, which we have a policy against. i've seen exactly two posts from you today telling people to run out and buy a $150 battery when it isn't thier problem. please refrain from spamming the boards further.

[3rdCoast]

i also suggested an alternator if read what i posted. And its not spam. I dont care what u consider it u seem to think u r somebody special so i dont wanna hear it. u can jam ur policy talk up ur ass for all care

[Vanilla Sky]

post reported for a personal attack.

[3rdCoast]

that was weak

[HostileJava]

You know I hear all this talk about caps being useless and power/ground wire upgrades not being necessary. I see alot of power amps come through work for home theater systems and I havn't seen one that doesn't use bus bars instead of wires for grounds and LARGE filtering caps to make sure the power going to the amplification section is good and clean. But I guess just because the pro's design these types of things into $2k and up amps doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. And btw 3rdcoast before you tell me I think I'm somone special, let me tell you. I KNOW I"M SPECIAL

Caps help filter out slight dips in power and can actually pronlong the life of your equipment, but the alternator has to be up to the job and remember the larger the ground wire the less resistance, the less resistance there is the more power you get.

[POS carb]

gat a bigass capacitor!

[spades27]

ok all well i tryed to clean up the (+) and (-) terminals and ran a ground from the negative terminal to the body of the car also added 1 more 1 faret cap head lights are not strobing as hard now.

[3rdCoast]

i wasnt talkin to u