There are many reasons why you may have just bought a capacitor. Maybe your headlights on your car are reducing, or that you simply decide to purchase a capacitor as a cautionary measure. Now comes the important part, how do you exactly install a car audio capacitor? After a little research I found that it actually isn’t as difficult as it may seem.

Before installing a capacitor, you must definitely charge it to avoid blowing fuses. To do so, use a voltmeter with a resistor to charge your audio capacitor. Once the voltmeter shows 12 volts, the power capacitor is done charging. Now you can proceed to wiring the capacitor in correspondence with your car amplifier.

Wiring One Car Capacitor
Wiring One Car Capacitor

Use a 4-8 gauge wire dependent on the size of your capacitor. A car audio capacitor has two terminals, positive and negative. Attach the positive terminal to both the amplifier’s and car battery’s positive terminal, and the negative terminal to the ground. It’s very important to make sure the ground wire is secure to the vehicle’s metal frame.

Deciding where to mount the capacitor solely depends on your car. It should be installed in a safe place away from passengers. Many assume that the capacitor should be fixed as close as possible to the amplifier to lessen the stretch of the wire. This assumption this will improve performance by cutting down the distance it takes the current to travel, and theoretically lessen losses. An alternative outlook suggests installing the capacitor closer to the component suffering from a voltage shortage, such as the headlights. Whatever installation method chosen, the idea is to hook up the capacitor to the amplifier terminals, the battery, or the distribution block.

Wiring Two Car Capacitor
Wiring Two Car Capacitors

When wiring multiple capacitors, you can either wire both ground wires together by running one ground wire to each of the cap’s negative terminals. It is possible to also ground each capacitor individually. Run the power wire through the amplifier’s positive terminal and to the battery’s positive terminal. It’s important to only use the amount of capacitors actually needed, and to keep in mind that having the largest capacitor is not necessary as well. To determine the size and number of capacitors that your sound system needs, calculate your amplifier’s wattage and convert it to farads.