CrazyCaker
Member
- :
- '10 Stang GT / '06 Mazda5 GT
Poseur said:
Do you have any hard evidence of this thoery? A cap charges at an extreme rate (within mil secs), so how would this be anymore of a strain on the alternator?
Please help(optima yellow top)
- Thread starter Fraimr8
- Start date
Do you have any hard evidence of this thoery? A cap charges at an extreme rate (within mil secs), so how would this be anymore of a strain on the alternator?
Scooter_TO said:
richard clark has either $5k or $10k (can't remember which) if you can hear a difference when using a capacitor. he also happens to be one of the first to use capacitors outside of an amplifier and coined the term "stiffening capacitor". hell, he even marketed his own line of capacitors. yet he's proven many many times how worthless they can be.
the fact of the matter is that a capacitor has to have sufficiently low enough ESR and ESL to have any benefit, otherwise the stored energy is wasted due to the resistance. capacitors from back in the day where only offered by a few "elite" companies who could afford to demand high QC of the cap manufacturers (there's only a few in the world). once the cap trend took off, the cheaper brands whored out caps and would take any crap ratings the manufacturer produced. brax is now the only company that i know of that offers caps with an ESR of less than 1 mohm. some of the decent companies offer caps with less than 1.5 mohm, but those are the more expensive ones. but since the average audio consumer is very uneducated, they think that a cap is a cap, and the $50 1 farad cap will work as well as a $100 1 farad cap with a lower ESR rating. now add in the carbon caps or "super caps" which have very high ESR ratings, which negates the purpose of energy storage. spend a ton of money on something that burns up more energy extracting the stored energy than the actual discharge from the cap. even if there where hundreds of thousands of caps in use, only a few thousand of them would be worth a damn, and i haven't even gotten into how much implementing them properly effects how efficient they are.
CrazyCaker said:
extreme rate? the rate is dictated by the ESR, no way around that. and the amount of energy wastes is also dictated by the ESR. since there is no perfect cap with zero ESR, there will always be wasted energy, so since a cap does not create energy, it is an added strain on the alt, even if it benefits the audio system.
as for how fast a cap can recharge and discharge, there are batteries that have nearly as low of ESR ratings, so they charge and discharge nearly as fast, but with a TON more storage capability.
The solution is ground everything very well, and don't add extra junk. I promise you you can push alot of power through the system and be quite alright, nomatter what you think is excessive, it's been done and without problem. YES headlights will dim. It's a fact of life with these cars.
Poseur said:
an interesting thing to point out is that it doesn't take much voltage drop for headlights to dim noticably. we've all rolled our windows up at night at least once in our lives and have seen the headlights dim if you hold the window switch after the windows are all the way up. it's not like the window motors are drawing 100+ amps of current, and the voltage doesn't drop that much, but it's enough to be noticable.
Wake, you mentioned Richard Clark. That name sounds really familiar. Was he big in the audio scene even back 10-15 years ago? For some reason it makes me think of an incredible Buick Grand National sound comp. car that somebody built many years ago. It may not have been him, but that name rings a bell.
FWIW, the 1 farad cap I have is a Stinger model I paid $150 or so for back about 8 years ago. No fancy digital top or anything. Any chance it's worth keeping, or should I chuck it?
FWIW, the 1 farad cap I have is a Stinger model I paid $150 or so for back about 8 years ago. No fancy digital top or anything. Any chance it's worth keeping, or should I chuck it?
MrDiggler said:
yeah, richard actually has an extensive collection of grand nationals, but his SQ comp car was amazing. the time frame is about right as well. i think that was the first car that used caps, but it may have been one prior to the GN. wayne harris also was one of the first to use caps, but not for the same reason as richard, so there is a little controversy as to who first used them. the trademark for stiffening capacitor was first filed july 10, 1992, but richard first used the term oct. 31, 1991.
as for your cap, if it still holds a good charge, i don't see a reason not to use it, as long as it is properly implemented. back when you bought it, there where tighter QC for sorting caps, so getting a cap with less than 1 mohm ESR was more common, but you paid for it. too bad the current caps stinger offers are decent at best. and no matter how many times i e-mail or call stinger, they won't give info on the ESR of their hybrid caps.
got wake? said:
Cool. Thanks for the info. Glad I didn't toss it (although I haven't seen it in a while). To test it I just charge it up and lay a piece of copper across the terminals, right?
I'll get in touch with you when it comes time to install it so it can be "properly implemented". Before I just tied it into the dist. block near the amps. That may not have been right.I can't believe that name clicked after 10 years + !! As for that Grand National I spoke of, if I remember right (this car made a huge impression on me), the interior had been stripped and every inch of the inside of the shell had like 1/2" of clay spread on it before it was reinstalled. Hell of a substitute for dynamat. There might not have even been dynamat back then. I'm thinking there were two 15" subs & two 12" midbasses in the rear, and two horns in the front. I think that's all it was. However, it was supposed to have set the benchmark for sound quality for a car back then. I may have to go googling and see if I can turn up some info on that car. It seemed so unconventional to me that I always remembered it, even if I don't remember it right. It wasn't long afterward that I moved away for a couple of years and really lost touch with the guys I knew in the audio scene around here.
if it's not already charged up, you can use a test light to charge it up slowly to full voltage. then once the cap is fully charged, disconnect it from the charging source and measure the voltage. you should have the car running while charging the cap, btw. the voltage should be around 14 volts. if you see it dropping voltage at a steady pace, the cap is toast. if it stays up around 14 volts, it's still good.
the GN was amazing by the early 90's standards and even still today. of course the sport has been dying for a few years now, while SPL comps is on the upswing.
the GN was amazing by the early 90's standards and even still today. of course the sport has been dying for a few years now, while SPL comps is on the upswing.
Chiguy_2002
Member
- :
- 2003.5 Mazdaspeed Protege to 2006.5 xB to 2004 Forester XT
I remember that too. I feel a little bit older now...I'm sure some of the younger people on here didn't even drive then. It's sad to hear that the SQ competition is dying...I always went for that as opposed to SPL...which is kinda like drag racing...takes almost no skill just how much money you want to throw at it, not like SQ or AutoCross...
got wake? said:
Chiguy_2002 said:
the main problem these days is that kids don't want to take the time to learn about SQ. they can buy a 10 bajillion watt amp and a bunch of subs and make a ton of noise really easily, but taking the time to setup an SQ system is not for the A.D.D generation(homework)
