I just got my New optima yellow top battery! I have it, a 1.5 Farid cap and My lights still dim a some points. help!

 

It's your ground!!!

Also check the voltage output of your alternator. The voltage regulator could be going bad. It needs at least a volt and a half more when your car is running than you're able to get with the car off.

..either that or you're pushing some serious wattage.

 

Ok this is my setup. I have 2 350watt 6x9's in the rear. JL Audio 6.5 in the front, pushing that I have a v12 500 watt Alpine. Sub is a JL Audio W7 12" puahing that I have a 1000 watt 2 chan Rockford amp (not the new cheap shit). Umm I have a 1.5 farid cap. The cap read 14.5 or so when radio is on but not uphigh. I do have a bunch of shitty ground. I have my cusin brining me some new connectors and ground cable right now. So I will be changing all the ground.

 

Holy crap! That's a boatload of wattage.

It's a real good idea for noise purposes if you ground everything to the same spot. I use another 1 gauge wire like I use for power to run the ground to the battery's ground strap and the same gauge wire that I use for power leads on the grounds as well with gold-plated terminal blocks.

No point in delivering tha juice if you can't ground it.

But I don't really need all that wire with just one crappy amp in my car now. I used to need it... (I had a sony XRU-220 deck, 10 disc changer, 3 amps, active crossover, 2 passive crossovers - pushing 11 speakers in a Toyota Pickup... 130db was considered loud back then. That was 1991, though.) I just keep taking my wiring kits with me when I part with the vehicle, because each time I run a 1 gauge kit it's about $160 to do it right. I wish I had better hook-ups on that stuff.

 

dude you might consider running another battery dedicated for feeding your system. youve got quite a bit of draw there especially if you are running things near peak.

 

Monicle's right. You probably need a battery isolator, too.

 

Yeah. Well my brother inlaw has a bigger setup and he has the samething I have and he has no issues what so ever. The whole car is grounded stock. The amps are grounded to the Cap and then a wire from the cap the the chassie. I had it setup a bit diffrent this morning and it helped out a bit. BUT!!!!!!! Let's say the windows are closed and the car is on and radio is off if I try to hit the window switch up while there closed I see my lights diff a slight slight bit. I don't know what the help to do. The cap say 14.8 14.9 and I think that it good. I know the ALT works because my old batt never died. Ehhh help!

 

They make 5-50 Farad caps ya know.

 

in my 98 civic im running 6 1/2's sony xplodes in the doors at 120 watts a piece and 2 6x9s in the rear at 160 watts a piece 2 pioneers at 2 ohms 800 watts a piece and a directed audio 600 watt amp for the subs....lights dimmed a tiny bit before but when i threw together a ground wire kit in the engine the dimming stopped completely..that and it idles, starts, and shuts off better and a little better throttle response...grounding is the key to any electrical/stereo system...if u have a 4 gauge power from the battery to the amps and a 16 gauge ground...just isnt going to worl...ground wire should always be atleast the same size as the power wire or your going to get bad sound and power/ground ratio

 

cap on the battery? didnt see that before i posted last time...need shortest ground wire as possible that and a lot of times a capacitor will help out a lot...especially in smaller cars like civics that dont have a lot of electrical power to start off with compared to a big suv or v8 car..capacitors run pretty cheap and they are great for big bass drops because they store energy until the big bass hits that way it doesnt take straight from the batter/alternator 100% of the time...sort of like a cd player with read ahead so your cd's dont skip like crazy