Suggested battery bank

[shepherd92683]

I am going to get a soundqubed 4500.1 and may end up running it at .67 ohms. I have a mechman 250 and a kinetik hc2400 in the rear currently (d3400 up front). I will add another run of 1/0 power also. Do I need a negative run to the rear and how many batteries is suggested to use at this load?

 

[kickass audio]

I would get maybe something comparable to 2-3 XS power d3100's in the back. Maybe adding another kinetik will be good for you. With my setup I run a little bigger amp, the DC audio 5.0k and have it at .5 ohms before rise and have it running off 4 xs power d3100's and an s3400 under the hood with a mechman 250a alt. You could run a dedicated power and ground going from front to back if you desire. I myself did not do that. I have a single run of 1/0 OFC going from the front batt to the rear batt bank, I did the big-3 upgrade too under the hood and grounded straight to the underside of my frame. For the rear ground, I made use of one of the tie-down hooks and bought a longer bolt for it at the hardware store and have it setup so the ground goes from the battery bank to the bolt on top of the tie-down hook, from there I have another little run of 1/0 going from the bolt that sticks out underneath the back of the truck where the tie-down hooks are bolted in and I used a nut and lock washer to secure the ring terminal in there and bolted it to the frame. I used a tap and die kit to drill the hole in the frame and then thread the frame a little to make it work for me. I did have to make the eyelet of the ring terminal a little bigger for bolt but that is no deal when you have a reamer to cut the hole larger. I know other members on here ran the ground to the inside of the panel that covers the rear quarter panel and then made a hole in the body there and ran the wire straight through it and grounded it to the frame.

You could probably get away with your current electrical so long as you aren't turning up your subs when at idle. That will stress the crap out of your alternator and will definitely get your voltage to drop.

 

[shepherd92683]

Currently on my AQ 2200 I drop about 1 volt at full tilt with my clip indicator going to the brighter red. I did the big 3 with Sky High 2/0...yes 2/0 lol. I want all power possible to run as easy as it can through those wires. Maybe some say overkill but I say I did it how I wanted to and it only cost me about $30. No big deal!

I also opted not to buy Sky High's ring terminals and did have to buy 4/0 ring terms for the wire to fit. Amazing wire, very glad I went with it. I wish I knew about it when I bought all of my Stinger HPM almost 5 years ago.

 

[kickass audio]

I have some stinger in my truck, not bad wire just not that big for the wire itself like skyhigh or knu. It is a PITA to move around so I cheat and throw it on the back roof of the house to get it nice and hot and then install it. haha. Anytime you clip you will definitely get voltage drop. If I keep my amp right below clipping with the SMD vu-din I have 0 voltage drop. If i just start to get into clipping, the voltage drop is still barely noticeable but it is there, like .2v. How did you tune your gain on the amp? just by the clipping light on the knob?

 

[shepherd92683]

If it doesn't clip it's very minimal maybe .2-.3. I found out my head units distortion points from a member on SMD that used a DD1 on his. I used a combination of the bass knob on the amp, the dmm method, and matching input sensitivity voltage to head unit voltage. It seems like my amp has no balls until it hits clipping so it usually clips some but that's normal for music to do that.

Also when I set the gains I used test tones. 40hz for subs but I can't remember the freq's for mids/his. Maybe 500hz, 1khz and 10khz.

 

[shepherd92683]

I finally got the SQ 4500.1! It is a beast as expected. For the wiring, I did add the 1/0 run of power which was mandatory. I did not do a 1/0 run of ground. I also moved my grounds in the back somewhat. I had the rear battery grounded to the frame through the floor and moved it to the seat belt bolt. I also grounded the amp to the battery which is not where it was grounded before.
The voltage drop is much better than it was even at full tilt it only drops about .3-.4 and on a hard clip about .6-.7. I expected a bigger drop since I doubled power but clearly the extra 1/0 run and different grounds helped more than expected.
At this point I see no need to add any more battery's. What's the point when the drop is minimal? It just seems funny to me because all of the 'gurus' say no less than 2 or maybe even 3 rear g31 battery's. My front battery is 3 years old and the rear is 4 years old.

 

[kickass audio]

How were you testing the voltage drop? With a multimeter? If so they are not that fast at responding to voltage drop from music. You need something fast like the SMD vm-1. Trust me, I put one in my truck and you can see real quick how much it dances around when I idle and play music verses playing music while the engine has some speed to make the alternator produce more power. I also have a vu-din installed so I can see how loud I can get the door speakers and subwoofer (they have independent volume controls) before it distorts/clips. Just with my door speakers and tweeters I can get the voltage to drop from 14.9 to 14.6 and its only a sundown sax 200.4 amp for the door speakers and tweeters. With the subwoofer and door speakers at the limit before they start to clip, I can get it to drop down to 13.4v on certain notes but it typically sits at 14.3 and 14.6v. Only the high notes draw a ton of power on my electrical. I bet if I didn't run my dc 5k at .5 ohms, it wouldn't have any drop at all.

 

[shepherd92683]

I only have a stinger meter to see voltage. A vm-1 would be nice but I'm not shelling out the cash for one. Overall I'm very happy with the way it has turned out. Now I only have 2 things left to do-1) fix the new rattles that appeared and 2) get it metered. I'm hoping to have broke into the 50's but I have no idea. Do you know what numbers yours hits kickass?

 

[kickass audio]

My system sucks for numbers. I hit 146.6db on the dash at 49Hz. I maxed out at 151.7db at 49Hz at the port. I built my box to 5 cubic feet tuned to 30Hz because I like the super low notes. I love how it sounds but it sucks on the meter. I wish it was louder but it takes up too much room as it is.

Stinger meters are slow as hell for reading quick voltage drops, that's why I like the vm-1. Their meters are expensive but I swear by them. I at bare minimum would always use the dd-1 to set gains and the cc-1 to set crossovers along with a vu-din to watch volume levels. The stock battery gauge is pathetic for moving when there is voltage drop. I was tempted to rip it out when I redid my cluster to go from non-dic to a DIC cluster but I ran into problems when doing that and didn't want to be up any later than I was at 4am to fix it that night.

For deadening, the roof is a big start. My roof sounds like crap with high notes. Low notes rattle it too but the higher ones are like a thunder clap it's so bad. I already snapped one of the cross braces off right above the rear seat from it flexing so much. I so far only have the rear hatch deadened and am debating if I want to do the roof or let it go. My frame on the truck was repaired once and I have another rust hole starting on it so I am really thinking to just drive the truck for a few more years and then hopefully find another envoy in better shape than mine and swap everything over to it or just suck it up and buy a tahoe like i always wanted.

 

[shepherd92683]

My box is 12.5 cubes and @30hz also. I love the lows too but I didn't pick that number. That's just what the guy that built it picked lol. I know the stingers suck, really suck, but a vm-1 isn't on my radar for now.
I deadened my roof a couple years ago. HUGE IMPROVEMENT. What I did was I glued several pieces of flat steel across the roof and dynamatted over it when I was done. My roof was so bad before that I didn't even like to turn it up anymore because it was so loud inside the cabin. I would highly recommended doing this. The back hatch I think is the biggest nemesis for me at this point. I've deadened what I could on it but it's damn near impossible to do the whole thing the right way.
What are you running for subs?

 

[kickass audio]

I hear ya, I ran without the vm-1 and vu-din for years before I installed it on my truck this summer. I have yet to do my roof and it needs it badly. What I did to help it a little is make it so the roof brace is at the rear most position and then the other is right behind where the rear door ends at the C pillar.

The rear hatch wasn't that bad for me to do. I did slice my hand up pretty good sticking my arm into the panel to get the deadener to stick but I ripped off the panels, removed the control module in the lift gate, removed the license plate area completely from the inside (it is held in with 4 hex nuts and removes from the outside so you can reach in through there but be careful, you can disturb the rubber seal for that and make it leak into the gate for water). I then cut several pieces of damplifier pro and rolled it onto the panel.

I only have a single sub. I am running an Ascendant audio SMD 18 (it's the first version of the sub, not the newer version) and it is a dual 1 ohm coil. I have it running at .5 ohms resting on a DC audio 5.0k. I run a sundown audio sax-200.4 for the mids and highs and then have 4 XS power d3100's in the back and an XS power D3400 under the hood. I have all 1/0 OFC wire except for the sundown amp which isn't that critical to have OFC to me, performed the big-3 upgrade.