RamRod82

I have my fan all hooked up with a thermostatically controlled relay along with a good old fashion relay so i'm getting power direct from the battery but then i got thinking about hooking up an old capacitor into the system to decrease the heavy load when the fan initially starts each cycle. The capacitor I have is from an audio system I got from a friend so it is big and is capable of holding a metric sh** ton of power (can't remember exactly how many farads). I've been reading about running capacitors and starting capacitors and wondering if anyone knows if the common capacitor used for car audio is either one. Or if I should just charge it, hook it up and pray my 4Runner doesn't catch on fire. Any electrical wizards with knowledge would be appreciated.

BigBluePile

iTrader: (3)

Interesting idea, actually, one that my buddy is concidering on his FJ-60....


Bttt....anyone??

irab88

iTrader: (4)

i was thinking about doing the exact same thing. just make sure to hook the cap up correctly (+/-) if it applies. a capacitor is nothing more than 2 plates really close to each-other without ever touching, so hooking it up shouldn't give you any issues.

got any pics of the capacitor?

'scribed

RamRod82

So after watching like 57 youtube videos I think I have a grasp on the ol' capacitor and it should work just dandy with my fan. My biggest concern was charging the capacitor correctly before use. Well i'll hook it up soon and get some pics & let ya'll know how it works cause the dimming lights is getting annoying and i'm sure its not very good on my little stock battery. stay tuned

RamRod82

Ok so I hooked-up the capacitor, it's a 1,000,000 uF or something like that, and basically it didn't do crap. I slowly charged the capacitor until it was at 12 VDC, hooked it all up, waited for the fan to kick on and the lights still dimmed. I can't honestly say if they dim any less than before but since I went through the pain of doing it i'll just leave it there. Disappointing

Bassmastry101

iTrader: (1)

Adding 6-8 gauge grounds to the engine and battery will help out some. With my Honda, the lights would dim if anything was turned on (fans, brake light, turn signal). Threw on some grounds from the block the body/body to batt and it cleared it up. Gave it some pep too!

RamRod82

Good call. I was actually just replacing the terminals for the power and ground wires as i noticed they were looking a little shabby when i installed the capacitor and was thinking that very thing that the ground wires looked pretty thin. Eons ago when I was into car audio it was common knowledge that the ground should be a equal or smaller gauge than the power wire which is not the case with my rig. I'll get that hooked up and see what happens.