[evane570]

Last summer I installed an alpine head unit (CDE-9845), Rockford Fosgate Punch P5002 amp with 2 12" sony xploid subs and a Rockford Fosgate one farad capacitor. The amps total RMS watts at 2 ohms is 610 (all channels combined) and the subs are 1200 watts each. I bridged the amp to connect the subs and had a friend of mine who works at bestbuy install the system with me (we used 4 gauge wires). The system sounded great and really hit hard. I had really no dimming with the lights at all until one nite when they started to dim really bad. I got to a friends house and parked the car and I smelled something burning. Turns out I fried my alternator and it melted alot of wiring and my fuel line. I had to get a new alternator and wires and it cost me $850 to fix it. The car only had 45000 miles at the time and was owned by a previous owner who most likely had a system in it (on the alternator that was fried was an aem pulley and in the back you can see he had a battery screwed down in the trunk). After getting the car fixed I took out the subs and havent put them back in. My question is would I be safe to put the subs back in the car or do I risk frying the alternator again? I don't know that much about audio stuff and was wondering if it was to much power and if i needed to buy a high output alternator or what I should do. Any advice would definately help me out so let me know. Thanks.

 

[evane570]

anyone?

 

[madmark10]

hmmm i have a 1200 watt sony xplod amp and 2 12' 1300 watt subs and mine does fine, im not sure why yours friend

 

[hondaluver]

you should be fine, sometimes alternators do just crap out, so get a new one...doesnt necessarily have to be high output, but with the aem UDP its not operating at full potential, so its at risk of damage. Most people who put pulley systems on have to be aware of what audio they run since the alt isnt putting out recommended amperage. I'd say def get a new alt if the one fried, prolly a high-output since the underdrives will take some amperage and voltage away from overall charge. The system you're running is far from high power, so dont be worried....ALSO have the battery checked and load tested...might be that yer battery is old and the alt was the only thing powering your system when it fried..good luck man

 

[213slayer666]

^^^
yep

i'm running 1200 rms at 12.5v, with an udp and my alternator works great yet. i have an optima red top, so that probably helps out a lot too

 

[svtguy21]

same as^^^ above but 1400 rms

 

[Justin svt]

you guys have 1400 watt rms amps?!

 

[turboguy327]

A High output alternator is not always the greatest idea anyways. They do put out more amperage but at a cost. They put out that higher amperage at high RPMs. At idle they actually put out less amperage than a stock alternator.

 

[Focus_on_This]

Well i couldnt tell you reasons of why the alt. went but you said the car was used? and looked like he had a audio set up into before so you don't know what was running off of it. My point is no way in hell was 600 rms total hurt anything. i had a zx2 before my focus running 3,400 rms total and 4 years later still no problems only put a deep cycle batt. in the car. and my focus has 4,000 rms running into it all factory parts. no problems at all. Becuase you have a cap doesnt really change things. it just holds a charge. at 600 rms again you would be just fine. at 1,400 rms a deep cycle and you shouldn't have any problems.