OK, I've been trying to read things about what gauge wire you should use for amps and my brain is just not working with me tonight. Here's the deal. I've got 2 alpine amps that I'm going to be running, one is the MRD-M500 and the other is a MRV-F340.
Originally I had a 4g power and ground going to the MRD-M500 (mono 500 watt amp). Now, I was wondering could I safely drop the power and ground down to a 6 or 8 gauge wire and not destroy anything or just keep it the 4 gauge? I've read where people run 8 and where others run 4.
Then on the MRV-F340, it is a 4-channel amp with a 320 RMS output. My question is do I run 8 or 10 gauge wire for this?
If it matters there is going to be a 4 gauge wire running from the battery to a fused distribution block (thinking of running 50amp mini anl fuses in the block). From there one wire will run to the MRD-M500 and another to the MRV-F340. I do plan on having an inline fuse on each of those wires, the one from the MRD-M500, I plan on keeping my 80 amp fuse. For the MRV-F340, I have not decided but am leaning toward the 50amp. What are the recommendations on this?
Just bite the bullet and do two runs of 4ga from the battery, I guarantee you'll be getting a bigger sub amp in the future, why not get the wiring in for it now?
size of wire has allot to do with the piece your powering and the length of run itself. the shorter the wire the smaller it can be. i dont have my wire chart in front of me but i know. iasca.com i beleive had a wire char, and crutchfield.com also used to have a wire chart that would show you how many amps a wire could handle safely dependant on what size the wire and what length the wire was.
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Your best bet would be to run one main power wire back to a fused distribution block and then a short run of a lesser gauge wire to each amp. BUT, doing that means that the main power wire must be able to handle the current that the amps could draw......
According to the wire chart in my MECP guide, 12ft of 4awg will handle 65-85 amps.
Your MRD-M500 will draw a maximum of 60 amps. It probably won't ever draw that much current under normal usage, but it is fused at 60 amps, so it is capable of drawing that much current before popping the fuse.
Your MRV-F340 will draw a maximum of 30 amps before throwing the fuse.
OPTION ONE:
So basically, if you do the distribution block route, You will want to run at a bare minimum 2awg wire, but 0awg can be had fairly inexpensively in some places, so that wouldn't be a bad idea at all. Then a nice short run of 4awg or 8awg to each amp. I am pretty sure the F340 will only accept up to 8awg. Now, the guide also tells me that 8awg is good for 65 amps up to 4 feet. So I would say do 8 gauge from the distribution block to each amp, now for fuse sizes in the distribution block, you want to basically be making sure the fuse is at or lower than the max capacity of the wire it is protecting, 60amp fuse on each side of the distribution block will protect each of the short runs of 8awg. If you run 2awg for approximately 12 ft from battery to trunk, fuse it with a 100 amp fuse. If you use 0awg for the main run, fuse it with a 125-150 amp fuse.
OPTION TWO:
You could also just run a second power wire. I hate this route because I like just having a main power wire in a simple daily driver system from front to back to keep things simple. If you spend the extra to make that one single wire run bigger than needed, you have headroom to upgrade in the future. SO if you do go this route, it looks like all you would need to do is keep the 4awg(fused with a 60-80 amp fuse) hooked up to the M500 and run a length of 8awg(fused with a 25-35 amp fuse) to the F340. Like I said, this isn't my favorite route, but it will work for the system you have. The problem with this is, if you ever want to upgrade those amps to larger, more power hungry ones, you will need to rewire yet again, and the less you do that, the happier you will be lol.
On the other hand....you have other fingers.
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