I was wondering do capacitors really prevent your headlights from dimming, I will be running a 1500 watt jbl and was wondering if this would prevent them from dimming
Voltage drops are what causes your headlights to dim. Upgrading the big 3 will be one of the most effective ways of preventing this. Upgrade the ground from your battery to chassis, engine block to chassis and then run a new power wire from your alt directly to your battery positive terminal. Then be sure your gain on the amplifier is not set too high, this can also lead to voltage drops. If you still have problems after this you will either need a second battery in the trunk, an upgraded battery under the hood or an upgraded alt.
well, technically a cap can reduce dimming of headlights, but the only reason it does so, is that the cap will smooth out the spikes in voltage drop, so your voltage stays more steadily insufficient. In other words, the cap will only mask the symptoms of the real problem.
I love how hardcore some caps have become. Boss has one (forgot the farad rating) that costs $360. For that price most people could afford a HO alt haha. Check it out:
On another note: Whoa! Glass is still here? ;) Crazy. I haven't see Glasswolf on AIM for years now. New AIM handle or just not into that anymore?
Those large Farad rated (20-50+Fd) capacitors are typically carbon caps, and have a retardedly high ESR, which means they respond slowly, making them less than useless for these applications. Stick to the 5Fd and smaller caps (electrolytic, 16-20V rating) to get a good ESR value. (equivalent serial resistance)
Capacitors can help if your alternator is of sufficient size, because they react faster than an alternator does, but if the alternator is too small and can't provide adequte current on demand, then the capacitor will only mask the symptoms by smoothing out spikes in the already sagging voltage rails, and at that point your amplifiers will begin to clip their signals, and damage your speakers.
