What's up,

I have put a couple of posts regarding my car hesitating/shifting hard, during acceleration, while having hard hitting bass. In my car I can’t put it pass 12 in volume during CD play, with the bass **** at half. I have gotten a couple recommendation from some of you guys in this forum and also by asking audio shops. Changing my stock battery to a yellow top or getting my alternator re-wound to increase its capacity. BTW, I have a JL 500/1 and a JL 300/4 w/ a Xstatic Batcap 400. Still a little confused, I decided to do some research on my own. In searching I found the following from JL Audio's website:

"If you are installing the 300/4 with other amplifiers and wish to use a single main power wire, use 2 AWG or 1/0 AWG main power wire. This 2 AWG or 1/0 AWG power wire should terminate into a distribution block mounted as close to the amplifiers as possible and should connect to the 300/4 w/ a 8-4 AWG power wire."

I only have a 4 AWG as my main power wire. This is cause, I got the 500/1 install first by a shop. They did a very good job and since I only had one amp I was just fine. When I decided to get my second amp I got another place to do the install, cause the previous place was a bit pricey. I guess you get what you pay for, but since my friend knew the guys I thought they would do a good job. I remember asking the guy aren't you going to run a new 4 AWG from the batter to the new 300/4. He said oh no, the wire is plenty. Also I notice after taking my panel apart that he didn't even use a distribution block. Pisses me off!!!

The other thing to look at is the following, also found from JL website:

"Many vehicles employ small (10 AWG-6 AWG) wire to ground the battery to the vehicle chassis and to connect the alternator's positive connection to the battery. To prevent voltage drops, these wires should be upgraded to 4 AWG when installing the amplifier systems with main fuse rating above 60A.”

So there you have it, in plain english. It’s amazing, how some so called pro installers don’t know ****.

So now I am going back to the original place I had my 500/1 installed and having do what is stated above. I will hold off on adding the optima yellow top, unless I still have problems.

Sorry for the long post, and I am sure this information is redundant to some of you guys, but I hope it help some of you guys that are sharing my frustrations. I will post after the changes are made...in about 2 weeks or less.

OH one question: When I got my 500/1 installed they used quality monster hi-lo converter (for bass) and monster RCAs. Of course, the other shop used cheap stuff. Would it be worth it, in trying to improve sound qualtiy, to replace with monster. Thanks.

 

hmmm...I guess nobody cares, or hasn't encountered any of these problems. Oh well, so much for my long post. hehe.

 

4 gauge is fine for what you're running. At 15-20 feet, 4 gauge should be able to handle 1000-1200 watts of power. I think they should have used a fused distribution block though which would separate the 4 gauge into 2 8 gauge power wires.

Going to a 1/0 or a 2 gauge wire will not fix the hesitation. I have 1/0 gauge wire going into a fused distribution block with 4 gauge wire going to my 450/4 and 500/1. I went with the 1/0 because I wasn't sure if I was going to add a third amp or not. The distribution block has a third 4 gauge out. Anyway, I still got the dimming and hesitation.

The best way to fix your hesitation problem is to make sure that your ground connections (for your amps and the battery in the engine bay) are clean. There should be no paint, just bare metal where the grounds are. You might also consider upgrading the -battery to ground wire by just adding additional 4 gauge to it. This will help but not cure the hesitation at high output levels. I would consider adding an additional yellow top to your system in the trunk. The best way to cure this problem would be to get an HO alternator but that is very expensive.

Hope this helps.
al