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New system installed (mostly)

Calicak89

SM 2018
SM 2017
PM 2016
Full Member
Joined
Mar 12, 2012
Messages
981
Location
State College, PA
I've been meaning to post for a few weeks since some asked about the progress but have been crazy busy. I completely overhauled the system in the past few months.
I moved my Kicker 5 1/4" coax speakers from the front to the rear doors
Pulled my 2 kicker 12s from the midgate and built a new midgate box for  2 JL13W7s.
Put Kicker CS 6.5 components in the front door and A pillar
Bought and then modified a set of kick panels to house Polk DB6501 6.5" components.  
Running a Delco 200A Alt. in the factory location to push the stock electrical system plus a Kicker KX1600 to push one sub.
Put an Optima Yellow Top in place of the stock battery.
Added a second charging system, a Nations 220A and Optima Yellow Top 3478 (to the naysayers, these are the old style yellows and have been used to push the systems in this Av, my 05 Av, and 05 Silverado, so please no suggestions on other batteries as there is no way I'm getting rid of these until one of them dies.)
The second charging system runs a Rockford R600-4D for the front doors, A pillars and kick panels, the second Kicker KX1600 for the other sub, and a kicker ZX460 under the console for the rear doors.
All wiring is 1/0 OFC. for both charging systems. The secondary systems passes through a distribution block and splits to the 3 amps on that system, 1/0 to the KX1600, 2 ga. to the R600-4D and 4 ga. to the ZX460.  The other KX 1600 has it's own run of 1/0 from the other battery.
I just need to run through and secure/tidy up the wiring.


 

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Looks good man  (y)

I am also going to swap to the yellow tops. And I was going to run triple batteries and dual alternators. I was gonna run a 200 amp and power a red top on the secondary battery tray and then run a 320 amp on two old style yellows in the stock location and another one in the stock airbox location. Do you think that I should run an isolator kit when I will be using the two alternators to run two separate systems? One stock-ish and one just for accessories with two separate alternators
 
In your application, an isolator wouldn't be necessary as you would have two completely separate charging systems, keep in mind that the two systems must be kept completely separate, sharing no commons.
If you are going to run twin systems, I'm not sure that a 3rd battery would be necessary unless you are going to be doing massive test hits in a competition setting. The alternators will be supplying all the amperage you need. The battery is needed on the stock system obviously for starting. In theory, the battery on the second system is somewhat redundant, but because of the fluctuation in power generation at the alternator and the fluctuation in amperage draw from the system, the battery is need to "smooth" out the power, otherwise you will blow the diodes and kill your alt.  A 3rd battery would only be needed as a reserve if your system were to draw more amperage than your alternator is producing.
I'm not an electrical engineer, but this is the way i understand it to be. RedheadedRod, or Enoniam may be able to give you a bit more insight, but I really think that adding the 3rd battery would be a waste of your time and $$$
 
Thank you for the insight man. My truck will be doing shows and such not for audio competitions as much as lighting. I want to be able to power up every accessory I have including full audio, tons of lighting, a winch and an air compressor and make sure that I have enough oomph behind it so that I never ever worry about not having enough juice to power all my accessories. That is why I was going to run dual batteries with the second system
 
Bruizza said:
I bet that sounds absolutely amazing!!! 

It's getting there, still working on a little bit of sound deadening in some areas and tuning it in the way I want.  I was thinking of picking up a new signal processor, as I'm running a Sony XE-90 MarkII that I bought used back in like 96', I think it's a 1991 model, but it has hasn't failed me yet. but it only has 4 channels + 2 sub channels, so I'm forced to to send the same set of signals to two amps (front and rear doors, one half of the R600-4D and the ZX460), I'm using the other 2 for the kick panels and obviously the subs.  I would like to isolate the signal going to the 460 under the console so that I can get cleaner sound from the rear doors cause the old school kicker460 doesn't have any built in processors.
I never really planned on going this extreme, but I had a pile of componentry lying around and was made a crazy deal to pick up the 13W7s in a cash+trade deal on my old underseat box with another member on here (Thanks Karl  (y)).  I've only purchased the Polk components, one of the KX1600s and some wiring specifically for this install.
 
Calicak89: You hit the nail on the head on the electrical.

Battery is necessary to smooth out alternator or you can blow diodes. A bad battery or missing battery can cause voltage spikes and drops in your system causing damage to electrical components as well.

Alternators do NOT need to be sized for 100% full output on your amplifiers. Only thing over sizing hurts is your pocket book. Realize that a 200 amp alternator can EASILY handle a 1000 watt sound system. The formula to figure this out is Watts = Volts x Amps.

Note that Amplifier efficiency in the past was considered to be 50% so you actually output half the wattage it takes in. The rest is released as heat. Newer amplifiers may be 70%-80% but depends on make and type of amplifier circuitry used. Looking at the size of the fuse is helpful but not 100% either. Some manufacturers size the fuse to blow before the true full limitations of the amplifier can be met to protect the internals. Others may over size it to make it look bigger. But it is generally safe to look at the size of the fuse to size your equipment. If we look at the last paragraph we can multiply the fuse value by 12 to see what wattage it can run through it.

Note that full running voltage is roughly 14 volts. This is not a big deal. Just use 12 volts for your planning. While older amplifiers sometime used unregulated supplies and could go much higher than rated wattage. They never went over the fuse it came with. Most MODERN amplifiers I have seen are regulated with extensive internal capacitance.

When you double up batteries in parallel you increase the storage time but you also increase the internal resistance. This means you can run longer but your amplifiers may not be able to draw full power for very fast and deep bass notes if the internal resistance is too high...  Some confuse this and I had a long going argument with "oldspark" on mp3car about the internal resistance. I have seen demonstrations where two almost dead batteries in parallel won't start a car where either one separately would. So don't stick a second battery in place just to do so.

A couple of personal observations.
DON'T get any optima brand battery. My experience has been they are not for every day use. They were originally designed for off road usage where that extra power might be the difference between yanking your truck out and not quite making it.
Red tops were the ones I had and while the performance was nice I had nothing but issues with them. Was warned by an electrical engineer working for a now defunct alternator manufacturer that they are hard on a vehicles charging system and other options are available that are much better. Back then the prefered battery was the pure copper ones that still had the low internal resistance but were designed from the ground up to be daily driver batteries. The ONLY issue in relation to optima's was the storage capacity was not nearly the same.

I have no experience with the Yellow Top or Blue top batteries. The EE told me while the yellow top wasn't AS hard on the system it was still hard on your system. Yellow top is a deep cycle battery which is designed to run much longer before losing ability to power your vehicle. Normally used in Marine applications. I have NO clue what a blue top is for...

Couple more items... No such thing as a wire too big. Realize the whole body is used as a negative cable... You can have issues due to too small of a wire but other than a slimmer wallet and harder to apply connectors there is no issue to running too big a wire electrically. Think of it as a pipe for your energy. Too small and your drains don't drain.. Too big...  No issue..

Capacitors were used for a while to help with bass response. Older non regulated amplifiers had issues with not enough power but modern amplifiers have capacitors in them. I read an article once that if you install the capacitors inside the amplifier on the back side of the power supply they can be much smaller to do the same job. ALL modern high quality amplifiers have this better capacitor setup so unless you severely undersized your wire, save money on the capacitor and use it on bigger wiring instead.

Also note that fuses and circuit breakers are to protect the wiring from catching on fire. You should size the fuse to the wire. There are guides online that show what size fuse is recommended for specific gauge wires. They should be installed within 18 inches of a power source. In my dual battery truck I have breakers on both ends of my secondary battery cable and another on the output to my system. I go to a pass through stud which then exposes a 12volt stud inside the cab. I have my computer running off a small fuse off this and the other line has a bigger fuse going to the amplifier. So they are doubly fused. At the battery and where they are split. Why? Because I am protecting the wiring and inside the cab the wiring is smaller thus need more fuses. I have a .5 amp fast blow fuse on a BCM tap to protect the BCM from shorts in wiring I ran for my computer RAP signal.  I can go on.. You get the idea...

Rodney
 
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