Hey guys!

Installed my new setup today, and I am having a problem with the capacitor. I have a Kole Audio 1.6Farad cap that I charged as I Was instructed before I hooked it up.

Here is my problem...

After hooking everything up, grounds, etc, I get NO power to the cap. It has a digital readout with two RED LED's that DO not power on. I get power to the AMP just fine using the same ground that I previously had the cap grounded to. Is there any particular way to ground out the cap, amp? THe power I have ran from BATTERY to CAP then from CAP to AMP. I had been messing around with the ground setup however... now I have ONE ground to frame to AMP, then AMP to CAP. This is probably not right, but I just got too tired of messing with it!

Any suggestions as to why I am not getting any power to the CAP?

Also... every now and then, when the cap is not grounded, I get it to blink, but its random. It never comes on and stays on.


Any help?

Thanks,
Chris

is the cap brand new???? you have to charge the cap before usage, you could permently damage your system or worse mess up the subs and amp.. the intstruction with the cap should tell you to charge it first if thats not the problem the you should recheck all of your wiring and grounds... make sure you have a self tap screw to ground. best and easy way to gorund




just riding around in the 4 door cav

Try either seperate grounds for the cap and amp, or ground them at the same point... not sure about daisy chaining.

Yes, I did charge the cap before usage.

It charges just fine... I have grounded the CAP and the AMP at the same point, however, the AMP gets power, yet the CAP does not. I have separated them, and the same thing happens. A friend of mine said that usually when it has a digital read out, that there should be a REMOTE hookup on it....


Not sure,

I guess my ground could be too long?


Chris

Hard Hittin Cavy wrote:is the cap brand new???? you have to charge the cap before usage, you could permently damage your system or worse mess up the subs and amp.. the intstruction with the cap should tell you to charge it first if thats not the problem the you should recheck all of your wiring and grounds... make sure you have a self tap screw to ground. best and easy way to gorund

Even if you hook up a cap that isn't charged, the only thing you risk is heat damage to the terminals on the capacitor because they can't handle the instantaneous current that flows without the charging resistor. It won't damage any other components.

Take voltage readings on the pos terminal and neg terminal of the cap and verify that you're getting voltage there. If you are and it definitely doesn't need a remote turn on then your display and/or cap is bad. if you have a good digital multimeter it will have a capacitance setting where you can measure and see if measures the same value it's rated for.


Something else you can do is discharge the capacitor (put the resistor between the pos and neg terminals after you unhook the cap from your system) then take a 12V light and hook it up in series with the cap and reconnect power. If the light immediately comes on them quickly fades to nothing the cap is working and just your display is bad. If anything else happens, the cap itself is not working correctly.

Where exactly does the 12V light go when I reconnect it "in series?"

If my ground for the cap is 2FT is that too long?



c.

ok w/e i dont feel like readin the other post but ok u have to ground the cap to the car and a ground from ur cap to amp none should good from amp to car when theres a cap

next thing i wil say is u will have to charge it again when its all hooked up

and last thing if there it a lil screw like behind but in between the power and ground thats for ur display split the power to it and ur power terminal and u will get a reading

i couldnt find any pics thats showed me the cap good enuff to see if there is but i have worked on some caps thats do have it set up like that so i hope it helps ez

is there usually a remote turn on for a cap with a digital readout?

thank you yes some will have a turn on for the cap display. that way it is not on all the time.

Or some, like mine, have a 5 min wait time. If it detects a voltage change, it turns on the display. if no current changes in 5 minutes, the display shuts off.

Ok... today---

I took off the cap from the system, discharged it, recharged it(when i was recharging it, the display was on, and remained on after I unhooked it from the battery) RE-hooked it up, and nothing... I tested it and there is current going through the cap, and grounded it the way previous post said. cap to car, cap to amp. AMP gets power, but I still get dimming lights(interior and headlights) etc. The display went off, and never came back on. I thought that it was just the display that was bad, and the CAP still works, however, if the cap was working my lights would NOT dim, correct?


UGH!!

Chris

Oh, and there is NO remote turn on anywhere!

So it works until it's re-hooked up? Sounds like you're hooking it up wrong after you charge it.

I really don't know how I could have hooked it up wrong. I test it while its hooked up and there is current going through the capacitor.