so should i not put a cap in? just like the amp im pratically stealin this thing price wise...also now im kind worried about hiding the amp wire and cables....my truck has rubber down in it and no carpet..how should i try to hide the crap

 

What kind of pickup? I'm at school right now, I'll take pictures of where my power wire is run - beneath the plastic door trim.

 

i have an extended cab 2500hd...its an 04 also...

 

have carpet in mine so i just cut the carpet pad where the wire goes to make it pretty much flat, but this is what i would do if i didnt.....you can either try to hide the wire by craming it in your door silles or running it along the fram rail and drilling a hole in the back of your cab near the floor and running it that way just make sure you use a grommet if you do that way you wont leak water......i would not run anything below a 10 farad cap as it probably wont help much if any and will just be extra work wiring it up.....IMO

 

General rule for caps is one farad for every 1000 watts of power. You run a bigger cap, on a smaller amp, you can create problems. Everytime your cap dumps its stored power into the amp, it has to recharge. If your hitting a lot of heavy bass and your alt can't keep up, when your cap dumps it will take longer to fill up then if it was a smaller cap. This creates an even BIGGER load on your alternator, one that is worse then not having a cap. I've seen a few fried alternators because of people dropping 20 fd caps on 1500 watt systems.

 

so should i get this cap? like i said its roughly 60 bucks brand new for me for the rockford digi 1 farad.....

 

Screw it. Spend the 60 bucks on 1/0 runs and rewire your big three. It'll do just as much, if not more for your system then a cap will.

 

yeah you should be fine with 1/0 and your big 3. Possibly a battery, but def not an alt or cap.

 

i would say if you have a system that needs a cap that will screw up your alternator you probably should have changed your alternator for a bigger one yesturday

i have run a 25 farad cap on my small 3,000w system for a year with no issues at all......the whole point of a bigger cap is so the cap doesnt have to "dump" all its charge to keep up with the bass, just part of it so its not as hard on the system, and with an upgraded dry cell batter to help stabalize the system it should work great....i do agree however that a cap is just a bandade and swaping the alternator would be the "correct" thing to do.....

 

When caps dump, they dump ALL of it...caps aren't smart enough to only dump half. The cap only fills for a fraction of a second. It can't power the amp like a alt or batt could. So the cap dumps it's voltage in say, .5 seconds and the bass note is hitting for 1 second. What use is the cap for the other .5 seconds?

The only thing I advocate caps for is if you buy the digital one and are going for the "bling-bling-impress-your-buddies-who-know-nothing-about-car-audio" look.