Not so much your battery as your altenator. What happens is your factory altenator is normally rated at 70-80 amps or more depending on your vehicle. This is enough for the car to work off of, heat, air conditioning, wipers etc. When you hook an amp up and are pushing alot of power it will need more current, so it pulls more current from the battery, which makes the altenator work harder, which makes it heat up and eventually it burns up. So what a cap will do is save the altenator from working as hard when you are using more current that the altenator can handle.

 

How much current draw woud you be using to warrant a capacitor? Other than the internal one in the headunit, the only amp I have in my car is the one in my Kenwood Woox, which is rated at 30x2 RMS. I'd imagine that the draw this thing takes isn't big enough to make my alternator work harder is it? In my old car I had a 130x1 RMS amp powering a single 10" woofer. I had a major electrical problem with the car(bunch of the wiring had to be replaced), though I don't think it was related to my amp. Just want to make sure I'm not gonna kill my Suby with my little sub

 

You should be fine, you don't have to worry when using small amps, it's more when you get into the hundreds of Watts and mulitple amps and subs.

 

justgo,
thanks for the info. that's what I figured but I'm just starting to get back into car audio so I've forgotten alot of what I once knew and need to be reminded every now and again

 

Cardiff Giant,
NO problem, we all get alittle rust on things.

Neo,
I'd would put in a 1 farad if I was running 2 amps. What kind of set-up are you using?

 

I would look into putting in a cap