First of all, if $ is a concern, the second battery option may not be right for you. It is not cheap to do it correctly. Besides the $ for the battery itself, you'll have to get an isolator, and build an apparatus that hold the battery in place as well as venting out the poisonous gases whether the battery is sealed or not.

If this is the case, your best bet would be to dump the 300/4 and power your comps with the headunit. Your stock system should have enough power to handle the 500/1 as well as your HU, but just barely.

BTW, for all of you guys still advising a cap, can anyone explain how one works and why it would help in this situation? If not, then STOP GIVING THIS GUY BAD ADVICE, PLEASE.

 

I'm suspecting bad installation. What kind of wiring did you use? Can you explain everything that you used? what gauge wire, ring terminals, grounded the amps where?, ran power from where?, distribution block used?

 

You must be smoking something that I want! All I can say is if you listen to him, be prepared to do the extreme. I don't know where you are getting your info from but you about as wrong as you are right. 18"? WTF are you talking about? It's 18" for a inline fuse for the power cable. Now, of course, I would want to keep the ground cable as short as possible. That being said, get a think 0/2 gauge and you should be fine. As anyone knows (maybe not you), you are grounding your amp to your chasis, which is in turn connected to your battery. Now, every thing else is connected to your car chasis which will induce noise into the amp. Hell, what you are saying is basically the car is better the going directly into the battery negative terminal? Think about that for a second. Sheesh. Rule of thumb, if you have a large amp, ground it directly into your amp (generally, larger than 300 watts). Ground loop, if you don't know about it, then you need to do some research.

Caps are crap. Now, that is something funny there too. You must be reading those articles that bashes as much as supply misinformation. As you can tell, there are as many people who uses caps that don't. I'm not sure if you are reading the off the net or from personal experience. This too me sounds like bad info. All you are doing is confusing the poor guy.

Here is a little snippet of info for you about a Cap and why adding a second battery isn't the best idea either:

http://www.caraudiomag.com/specialfe...7cae_gotjuice/

In any case, for the original poster, do some research and don't just trust me and him. As you can see, one of us is wrong and right. I wondering if you actually tried anything I said before or it is all second hand and hearsay. You sound like you know what you are talking about but are avoiding the easiest route to fix a simple solution. Just like the said in elementary class...KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid). Sorry, just being a bit mean.

Well, for your part, for every article, advice, expert testimonials that will say one thing (caps are bad, second battery is good), there are just as many that will say the opposite. All I can say to the original poster is, try the cheapest route first and see if it fixes your problem. If not, then do the other . This is true for most things that we do to improve our cars in one way or another. Good luck.

 

Get rid of your stash, dude. It's bad sh*t. You're the one who told this guy to ground the amp to his battery. Short term memory hurtin' a little? Look at post #14 above. Let me do the work for you: "Your best bet on grounding is to actually run a grounding cable directly to your battery for the Amps."

I told him to keep the ground wire as short as possible. We haven't even been talking about the power wire, if you haven't noticed.

Please put the pipe down and concentrate on what you're typing.

Nope. Got this info from several sources. One happened to be directly from the horse's mouth, Manville Smith from JL Audio. Send him an e-mail. He'll set you straight.

Ah. You're having a lucid interval. This is the best advice you've given.

Well gotta give you credit here again.

 

i used a JL 2 guage amp wiring kit, ran the power wire down the right side of my car, and used jl rca's to my amps... i buy only the good stuff for my car, yes i did use a distribution block, 1 2guage power wire split into 2 4guage... both amps are grounded to the chasis in the trunk, my ground wire is very short, one is around 4 inches and the other is maybe 6... i ran my rca's on the opposite side from the power wire.

i think both of my amps are grounded at 2 different locations, not at the same point, could this be why? would it make a difference if i ground both amps to the same point?

well i at least appreciate your efforts... i'll hear what more have to say on this...

 

it is best to ground both amps to the same point with the shortest amount of wire.

Also, I haven't told you about upgrading the 'big three.' It looks like you've got two off them with your grounding kit (adding more wire or changing the existing wire to a lower guage (bigger). The big three are the wires between the - battery to the chassis, - battery to the engine, and + battery to the alternator. One of the reasons I didn't mention this is because it will help slightly but not cure your problem as it didn't cure my problem.

Again, without spending a buttload, I would dump the 300/4 and just power the comps with your deck. You probably won't notice that much of a difference. Leave the 500/1 to power the sub and you're problems will be solved.

 

I'm not telling him to ground to the chasis. Boy, bad quote on your part. I'm telling you the path which is what you propose (which isn't good).

OK, well, let's not make this nasty As you can tell, I also got it straight from the source as well. JL? Not that I don't trust them...ok I don't trust them. Did you even look at the link I put up? Don't you notice that there are plenty of conflicting info out there. Yes, even from manufacturer. I got my info straight from Soundstream about grounding directly to the car battery. Hell, I got it right from their manual when they made those $5K amps. So, yes, there are plenty of info on both sides. Hey, pass the stash if you have it BTW, I don't smoke though but I heard it does wonders

All I can say is, try one method. If it doesn't work, try the other.

 

I'm not telling him to ground to the chasis. Boy, bad quote on your part. I'm telling you the path which is what you propose (which isn't good).

OK, well, let's not make this nasty As you can tell, I also got it straight from the source as well. JL? Not that I don't trust them...ok I don't trust them. I think the problem is right there with the JL amps...I just don't like them to begin with but I'm sure they aren't horrible amps but you can do much better. Did you even look at the link I put up? Don't you notice that there are plenty of conflicting info out there. Yes, even from manufacturer. I got my info straight from Soundstream about grounding directly to the car battery. Hell, I got it right from their manual when they made those $5K amps. So, yes, there are plenty of info on both sides. Hey, pass the stash if you have it BTW, I don't smoke though but I heard it does wonders

All I can say is, try one method. If it doesn't work, try the other.

 

I'm not telling him to ground to the chasis. Boy, bad quote on your part. I'm telling you the path which is what you propose (which isn't good).

OK, well, let's not make this nasty As you can tell, I also got it straight from the source as well. JL? There's your problem. Why are you taking advice from JL anyways? Not that I don't trust them...ok I don't trust them. I think the problem is right there with the JL amps...I just don't like them to begin with but I'm sure they aren't horrible amps but you can do much better. It's a little late to give up on the JL amsp for the poster though.
Did you even look at the link I put up? Don't you notice that there are plenty of conflicting info out there. Yes, even from manufacturer. I got my info straight from Soundstream about grounding directly to the car battery. Hell, I got it right from their manual when they made those $5K amps. So, yes, there are plenty of info on both sides. Hey, pass the stash if you have it BTW, I don't smoke though but I heard it does wonders

All I can say is, try one method. If it doesn't work, try the other.

 

It's best to ground your amps to the same point.

 

Bad quote!? Bad quote!? How is that a bad quote? I didn't take it out of context. It's in plain english. How is that a bad quote? Here is it again:

"Your best bet on grounding is to actually run a grounding cable directly to your battery for the Amps."

From this, you want me/us to believe you were trying to say something else? Sometimes it's better to just admit you were wrong instead of digging yourself in deeper.

With that, I'm done with this thread. Whether you meant something else or not please be careful with what you advise.

 

I guess I'm not done with this thread.

I'll respond to the advice given in the link you provided after work today.

 

Not that quote...this quote, "As anyone knows (maybe not you), you are grounding your amp to your chasis, which is in turn connected to your battery." Anyways, let's let this thread go. I think we pretty much gave both of our advices to the poster. He should have a good idea of what to do. We don't need to go back and forth on this. Hopefully, he will find a solution to his problem(s) and maybe in turn can give us some advice on the way.

 

Agreed, Meph. I was a little harsh in a couple of my posts. No hard feelings here.

 

Nah, no hard feelings. I think we just are very strongly opinionated. I guess this is what happens when you've been doing installs as long as we have (10+ years here). So, I'm sure we're both right so let's see how it goes with the poster.