I currently have a 3.0 Farad cap that hasen't been installed in about 1.5 years. Do i have to re-charge it before install. if I DO...then can comeone explain how???i lost the charging adapter that it came w/. Also someone told me it can be done w/ a test-light but I forgot that info too I'm gonna be wiring everything up this week and I really need to know. Also...how do I even know if the cap is good anymore. how long do they last normally.

 

1.5 years? its probably totally dead by now... If you send it to me, I'll dispose of it for free for you. PM me.

 

Def discharged. Prob better to charge it than risk just hooking it up. Could get some nasty sparks or heat the unit up too fast (IE melt some plates).

You need a resistor, about ~150ohms (anything close will do), 1/2 watt minimum, higher is better. Connect the ground on the cap, and hook a 12v lead to one side of the resistor. Touch the otherside of the resistor to the cap, while watching the volts on a meter. Touch the resistor frequently for temperature. If it gets too hot, it'll burst. Hold off for 15 secs then start again. At about 9-10 volts, you can just touch the positive right to the cap. You need to hook up the positive permanently before it can drop to 10v again.

How/why does this work/help? The resistor keep the current going to the unit very limited, forcing it to charge up slowly. Charging up very quickly from a discharged state can do all sorts of damage including starting a nasty fire.

Charging adapter = $.11 resistor

Cap should last for quite a while. Typical signs of bad unit include blowing the pressure cap off with some nasty crap, etc. Not likely to happen in the time you own it. I'd say 5 years is a good number.

 

well i tried the method w/ a standard brake light bulb inline of the positive wire. Someone told me to hook it up and whenever the light bulb goes out..the cap is charged. Anyways...I hooked it up and the light never even turned on. So I slightly touched the poitive wire to the negitive wire to see if it has some spark...it did so I just installed it. No problems whatsoever. Everything is working fine and pushing 1000 watts of peak power thru the amp w/ no headlight dimming...I'd say it working fine. anything I should look out for now. It's been installed for one week now and has had plenty of use allready.

 

you used the bad but very fast and usualy effective method

 

but like I said...the bulb never turned on, but everything is fine now and I have ZERO problems. anything I should look out for or test??

 

Should be the other way around - bulb should slowly light up while you are charging. What kinda bulb did you use tho? 5w is ok, 50w prob wouldn't do much lol.

You should be fine now. Sorry I didn't see this earlier, I didn't even notice the date.

 

Not too sure on the specs of the bulb. It was one of our taillight bulbs that I had an extra of. I had it connected for about 10 seconds or so and saw nothin so I disconnected it. Then my buddy who used to built competition stereo systems said he thought I'd be fine and it shouldn't need re-charging. Anyways...then all I did was very quickly touch the poitive wire coming off the cap and the negitive wire coming off the cap, just to see if the cap had anything in it...and it sparked so I just installed it.

 

don't worry about the date...I appriciate ur help anyways/