I recently installed a new 5 channel amp, HU, 10 in Sub, speakers etc.. My battery seemed to be pretty week before, but now, if I run the radio for more than 15-20 mins with the car off, the battery is flat out dead. I know the AMP will eat up some battery, but does this sound normal, or could there be a problem? I've thought about hooking up a capacitor so the amp kind of has it's own battery to feed from. It's not a huge system, but obviously would eat up more juice then the stock one. Any ideas? Someone also suggested checking the water levels on the battery, I can see the water, but it's not filled to the top. Any ideas would be great. thanks

 

I've had a similar problem. All I have is a JL 10W7 and 500/1 amp, and the headlights dim, even with my 1-farad cap. I think I'm going to upgrade to 4 gauge wiring, and a yellow top battery.

 

Adding a CAP and running your car with it off will drain the battery even faster. The battery now has one more thing to charge. Best best is a dry cell battery.

 

Yup, think Ted's right. Sounds like your battery's junk. Chuck it and get an Optima or some other dry cell. Really though, your battery wasn't designed to run your stereo drawing that much ampage for a long period of time at high volume. If that's what you're doing with it, you might want to think about getting an AC to DC converter to just plug in instead of running off of your car's battery. Hope this was helpful. Either way, good luck!

 

How much power is your amp putting out?
What size lead wires are you using?
Where are your grounds connected to?
While your battery could be the problem there could also be several other possibilities including bad or under sized grounds, or even a charging problem with the alternator.

 

The amp is like 600w, 200 for the sub and the rest for the speakers, it's a 5 channel MTX. 8g power and ground wires, 14g wires to the speakers. Now, I had issues with this battery before the stereo and I know friends of have 3 times the system I do w/o issues. I think it's a battery problem, any suggestions on where to get one? As for the ground, its real short and is grounded right behind the strut bar. I just drilled a whole into the frame, but it's not real good, could that be an issue?