yomyster

i was wondering how many people here actually have capacitors in their car for their stereo systems. i have read so much that they are not needed and are a waste of money as long as you have the proper wiring and a decent battery. i have read though from other sources that they help with dimming light issues. so who has one and what size and did you tell a difference with it?

wheel_of_steel

A couple of my mates have put capacitors in their basic setups to help with the headlight dimming issue. It did actually work. I guess if you are using high end stereo equipment and a large battery it wouldn't be an issue.

Stocker

Everyone has capacitors in their car. Every power supply inside every amp has caps in it somewhere; adding an external cap is a band-aid fix that sometimes works to cover a minor deficiency in the rest of the system.

Tomte

Some people also use a battery in the trunk instead (seen that a couple of times with decibel drag cars). Many opinions on the issue. When I did the window shopping for my system I was advised to put one in at virtually all stores and by many friends that had already a system with a reasonably large woofer like I intended to install. The manufacturer of the amp and woofer combination I wanted to buy was also saying that it is beneficial.

Basically it is supposed to smoothen out the current supplied to the amplifier, which is most important for sudden high demands eg subwoofers.

In several topics here some people refer to it as a band aid referring to the already build in capacitors, which should suffice.

I personally do NOT KNOW if it is BETTER, but it does NOT hurt at all if you put one in

I was fortunate to get a very good deal on woofer/monoblock/capacitor so I ended up installing one. I never tried to run the system without the capacitor and had no dimming issues except for the first couple of miles (do not know how many miles exactly or why, except for the audiophile voodoo mumbo jumbo). Some of my friends without capacitors do have dimming issues, but who knows why that happens

optimoprime

i do have higher Db system with battery in back and even though its never powerstarved i still get light dimming. and i do think that an actual external cap would solve the issue. not that its huge deal but my gauge lights will dim when it really slams, have HID's do external lights dont dim but when i had regular bulbs they still did. i'm sure someone will jump in and tell you otherwise but its not bad idea to have one. i just wouldnt let it be the fist thing i bought for the system, it would be the absolute last thing i would be honestly.



heres my current setup

Visionz

I had 1 farad cap in my tib, and I was only rockin a 5 channel Soundstream and a single 10" sub. I had no light dim what so ever. So, maybe the cap worked and maybe it didnt. Either way, it was a cheap investment for piece of mind that my electrical system wouldnt have a draw from the stereo.