how do you charge a cap?

[87_crown_vic]

i have a cap i wanna wire up for my subs, but lost the instructions. how do you hook it up to charge it? as far as i know you are supposed to charge before you hook it up to the wiring for the amp.

[gadget73]

Hook the ground up. Connect the + lead to a light bulb, usually I use a taillamp or something handy. Touch the other side of the bulb to the + on the battery. When the bulb goes out, its charged. Connect the cap straight to the battery. Usually I just hold the bulb so that the center post is on the + terminal of the battery and hold the lead to the cap on the metal base of the bulb. Not fancy but it works without the spark show.

[85crownHPP]

slow charging isnt necessary, it just avoids the finish of the ap terminal getting damaged by the high amp arc.

I just disconnect the battery, connect the cap, then connect the battery

[87_crown_vic]

anybody have a diagram or picture as to how it is wired to the amp? i charged it, but it startedlosing its charge as soon as i disconnected it from charging the lightbulb way. i am guessing the cap is bad. when i get a different cap, how do i hook it to the amp? do i connect the negative of the cap to the positive, and then connect the hotline from the battery to the positive on the cap? i appreciate the help.

[85crownHPP]

The + post of the cap is wired right into the + positive feed cable to your amp(s)
gound the - post to the chassis with the same size wire as the amps ground.

In the pic, the red cable is coming from the battery, and the blue one (hard to see coming out the other side) goes back to power the two mono amps.
The silver cable is the chassis ground - I suppose you could wire the grounds for the amps into the other side of the grounded terminal, but it might affect the performance of the cap, maybe not.

[Blaze86Vic]

Yeah, I would wire it up dead and once everything is finished reconnect the battery. Other wise if you touch both contacts while you are working that thing is going to discharge. If you charge it before you wire it up it's not different that working on the electrical system with the power on.

[gadget73]

It will start to discharge as soon as you take power from it, so you'll want to hook it up right away if you charge it through a bulb. When I do mine (if I bother, usually I just hook it up tbh) I already have the power leads to the cap wired in to the + clamp, and its just a matter of pushing the terminal right onto the post as soon as its done charging. Takes less than a second so it doesn't really have a chance to discharge.