I'm putting the amp behind the seat of my regular cab. Does everyone just screw it into the frame somewhere? What about the grounding wire from the battery? Where do you ground it?

 

When mounting your amp, you can just use some self-tapping screws and shoot them into the sheet metal. Just be careful of what may be on the other side (fuel tank, wiring, etc). I personally did not mount my amp to the rear wall because I thought water might enter around the screw holes(alot of people do it this way, though).

As far as grounding goes, run a short heavy guage wire from the negative input of your amp to the nearest seat mounting bolt. Be sure to remove the paint down to bare metal under this connection and re-install the bolt tight.

I bought a paint pen made by Krylon at the hardware store and used it to touch up around my ground connection so it would not rust.

Good Luck!

 

You could run your wire under the carpet or door sill and mount it to ground at the fuse box.

 

below is a quote from Basic Car Audio Electronics, a very respected source. here's the link. http://www.eatel.net/~amptech/elecdisc/caraudio.htm
You have to scroll down to "battery ground" to see exactly where this quote comes from.

"The seat belt bolts are rarely a good place to ground your equipment. Sometimes there will be a thick tar like substance (used for waterproofing) that will prevent you from getting a proper ground. Even if there is no sealant, the connection may be less than perfect because the hardened steel seat belt bolts (relatively high resistance) go into a hardened steel nut that's pressed into a piece of stamped steel that's spot welded to the bottom of the vehicle (not exactly a great electrical connection)."

This is something to keep in mind guys, I found that I had a better ground when I drilled my own bolt through the sheet metal.

 

I decided to play it safe and make my own. I didn't have a power drill so I got a hammer and phillip's head and made my pilot hole the manly way.

 

Thanks for the info, superedge7. There are some excellent tips and information on that site. As with anything, car audio is a tricky business. Sometimes you have to try different ways of installing to find out what works for you and your specific vehicle. I have my amps grounded to the rear seat bolt, but I also prepped mine really well. I removed all paint from the floor pan under the seat bracket and the bottom and top of the seat bracket itself. It works really well for me.

Rob

 

Yeah it is a really good site Rob,
I have used it SO MUCH!! I has really helped me out whenever I have a caraudio quandry.
Just a suggestion, have you tested what kind of volatage you get at your seat belt bolt grounding area? Just maybe you could be getting slightly better voltage elsewhere? If not, then just stick with a good thing DIfferent things work for different people on different cars.

 

When I installed it I had 13.6v with the tunes cranked (I'm only putting out about 250 watts). Didn't check with it elsewhere. I may just move it around and see if it makes any difference.

Rob

 

let me know if you actually find that it does make a difference.

 

Since superedge7 got my curiousity up , I got out the ole DMM and did some voltage checks. 21 feet of 4 awg. power wire and 8 inches of 4 awg. ground wire to the distribution blocks, and 8 inches of 8 awg. from the blocks to the amp. With the engine running at idle, Fat Joe in the CD player (#5), and the volume cranked: 14.12/14.13 VDC at the battery and at the distribution blocks about 8 inches from my amp. When the bass hits, I would lose 2/100 (down to 14.10/14.11)on the meter at both locations. I think I'll put the O'Scope on it some time this week just to get some faster response.

On a side note, something I thought interesting.... may have to do with amplifier efficiency- at a lower volume level(maybe half) I had about 5/100 drop in voltage when the bass would hit.

The voltage seemed to drop equally at the battery and the distribution blocks with the volume at any level, which defies Ohms Law. I guess the resistance of the wire is negligible in this case.

See what you started superedge7. Now I'm gonna have to get a cap and see if I can get a 0 drop. LOL!

 

LOL!! I hope I don't have you pulling out your hair Rob
I don't know if you really serious about getting a cap, but in most of my experience I have only seen them actually doing more harm than good to the car's electrical system. If you are seriously thinking about a cap, there is basically only 1 scenario that it would do your car good, and that is if you would be installing it ONLY for the reason that you stated: To see if you can get 0 drop instead of 5/100. If you have other things like headlights dimming and such, then it would be better to get a small auxilary deep cycle battery wired with a batter isolator, and would be almost the same price as a cap, but be WAY more help to your electrical system.
If you would like to know more about the problems with caps, just ask me and I can give you links to may articles that conquer with my findings, otherwise go to this link that I gave you earlier http://www.eatel.net/~amptech/elecdisc/caraudio.htm and it will tell you this under "capacitors"

"The capacitor can not act like a battery. It only serves to fill in what would otherwise be very small dips in the supply voltage."

Let me know if you want more info on this. Have fun with all your electrical testing!!

 

No, I'm not serious about the cap...and I don't have any hair left to pull out(about to have my 16th anniversary) LOL!

I really don't have any electrical problems at all. These trucks have an excellent electrical system compared to all of the other vehicles I've had that I added stereo equipment to.

I read another thread recently about a guy wishing that other people could hear his stereo outside of his truck. I was thinking the same thing about mine until I realized that the acoustics are pretty good for a truck and the way they are built helps keep the sound inside and therefore sounds much better inside the vehicle (which is good for us because, after all, we are the ones that are paying for it, not the people on the sidewalk we are passing by!).

Anyway, thanks for making me think! Oh yeah, sorry about all the rambling in this thread, Formus!