i just bought my first capacitor, a 6 farad. I have never charged one before. I called the local car audio installer and they said i do not have to have a resistor or test light or anything of the sort to charge it. they said it would just make a loud pop and spark when i connected the wires. everywhere i look on the internet though it tells me i need to have a resistor or something of the sort. Do i have to have a resistor or not is my question????
id take your capacitor (sp) back and invest it into a bigger alternator or another battery. just my 2 cents.
I'm Sorry that no one answered the question that you ask. Yes you do need a resistor to charge the cap, before you install it. Any electronics supplier or Radio Shack will have one. They are cheap. I would use a 1K around 1/2 watt to 1 watt. The electronics store will know what I'm taking about. Yes, do use a resistor to charge it and I'm sorry that no one understood your question
You might not want to hold the resistor with your fingers when you charge it since they can get hot. Also, you can also use the same resistor to discharge it before you remove it from the car. Not using a resistor to charge or discharge a cap can lead to a real corrosive mess (RE: electrolyte) in your car if it explodes, although odds are that nothing would happen if you didn't use a resistor. If you've ever seen a car where a cap exploded, you'd understand why you should be careful with them and always use a resistor, regardless what people say.
A little late here on this post, but charging a cap is interesting... You have been given the right info on how to do it... Now for the fun part of this stuff! used to use an old 2 farad cap for this.... charge it with out any resistor...makes one helluva spark! During a caps depelated state of charge, it is essentially a dead short...the same as putting a wire between your batterys positive and negative terminals! Of course this state of impedance is going to change...rather quickly. THe charge rate for a cap is very quick. the higher voltage, the higher the impedance...basically, its a logarithmic thing...Help me out here Ranger....your the math wiz! Now I used to do this trick...with a fully charged cap...short out the terminals on top of my buddies metal copenhagen lid....POP! and it would blow 2 small holes in it! People even today think a cap is like a freekin stick of dynomite. It aint. A few times I put a fully charged cap in my pants and shorted the terminals..makes a nice spark and a POP noise....thats it....they dont explode...unless the voltage is exceeded....lets not go there with a large cap.....trust me, I know.....garbage cans make a nice containment field to a point.....
thanks guys, yall have helped out greatly. now for the new issues that is happening. i was driving, quaking hard of course, and and all the lights in and on my car blinked twice and my subs turned off. i checked the amp fuses and all were blown. i replaced them and still no sounds from woofers. my amps was smoking a little but not bad. the power led on the amp comes on but i cannot get any sound out of my woofers. does this mean my amp is blown, and if so can it be fixed for a lower cost than a new amp????
You could have blown the amp, but it's strange that the protect lights aren't on since that's what usually happens. It sounds more like you have a short in the power wire somewhere. Just out of curiosity, how do you have the cap wired in? Just the power wire passing to the amp (and not the ground), right?
i have the ground going from the amp, then to the cap, then to the chassis. and the power going from the amp, then to the cap, then to the battery. this is how the instructions said to do it. is it wrong??
i just took the amp apart and there are some big black cylinders in it. some of them have melted plastic on them and there was some liquid that smelled kind of sweet on the bottom plate where one of these cylinders is located. can this be fixed???
The ground wire shouldn't pass through the cap, just the power wire should. They should be grounded to the same part on the chassis. At least that's how I've always done it and I've never had any problems. Sounds like you blew the capacitors inside the amp. Can you take a picture? They can be replaced, but usually when they go, they take other components with them, especially the resistors and possibly the FETs & output transistors.
