Good L$rd that took some time... in any case, I wanted to thank you all and give an update on my obnoxiously loud car stereo.... I couldn't have done it without you guys edging me in the right directions...

2 10" Infinity Perfects with 1.5" MDF boxes
800 Wrms Mono block (Audiobahn)
800 Wrms 4 Channel (Phoenix Gold)
2 Farads of Capacitance
2 Audiobahn 3 ways (65 Wrms a piece)
2 Infinity Kappa 52.5i's
One really big dumb gold battery connector
and
a Premier (pioneer manufact.) P860MP (6.5 V preouts)

no wires visible in cabin, everything neatly organized... a triumph for the non mechanic audi owner! So yeah I know it's overkill, but what the heck... you're only young once! Thanks all I appreciate it... let me know what you think! PF

 

cool man, how about some pics. and if you dont mind me asking, how much did you spend?

 

So I knew I forgot something major... so from start to finish... about $600 (the deck and install is an additional $400, but is a gift to me from several family members). I did some hardcore ebaying and pulled some SWEET deals. I got my boxes free and just borrowed a saw-z-all to do some mods.... wire (12 awg and 20 awg) was a buck a spool (~200 feet a spool) and my wiring time. If I did it retail... I estimate it to be worth about 3-4 times what I paid. So I feel good about it. I'll try to get pix... but my stupid camera is down, so it might be a bit.

 

12 and 20 guage... what on earth did you use those for? 12 guage is good from your sub amp to your subs... but that's about it. 20 guage is small for EVERYTHING but maybe remote.

What guage are you running from the battery? You should have at the least a very high quality 4 guage, or a 0/1 guage into a fused distro, and 4 guage into both of your amps.

 

so the 12 I tripled up to my battery (at an amp rating of ~22-43 amps depends on the strand count so using the low end...) per cable, I can safely hand 66 amps on the low side, which is within tolerance. I'm drawing ~57 amps from the batt and have a 60 amp fuse in line. The 20 awg is actually 18 (sorry, my bad, I had a long day) I used for the remote line and for the front two speakers's lines. so three wires from batt then fuse then another 3 wires (with caps in parallel with ground) and then the terminal block. Terminal block then shoots 2 12 awgs to each amp. The whole thing is reversed, but almost identical, for ground. From amp to sub I used the twelve as well. I'm sure it's all within tolerances, but shoot me a msg if you got any other q's! PF

 

I dunno, just seems wierd to "triple" 12 guage wire... Just buy 4 guage. Haha!

 

i wouldn't run anything smaller than 8awg for a power wire. and the 18awg speaker wire you might want to think about swapping out with some 14awg. i don't know a whole lot about stereo installation, but i've put 4 systems together and i'd never use less than 14 awg anywhere in the system. i usually do a 4awg power wire, 4awg ground, and 12 awg speaker wires...my remote wire is the smallest one at 14awg.

 

Well remote can be small, like 18 - 20 guage... Speaker wire I usually use 16, power ground is 8 4 or 0 depending on the application.

For your application, like I said... no less than 4. Or **** quality 0.

 

A) 4 awg isn't a dollar a spool and B) my 3 - 12 awg's have more strands than a 8,4, or 0 awg wire, which means less skin effect which means less degredation solely due to the wire. the 18 awg, i'm not worried about, it's all about what the wires can handle in terms of amperage.... so unless you're talking noise issues, if it can handle the amps, smaller wires = less to cram into the car. I'm just using my industry experience, if someone else has differing thoughts, I'm totally open, It's always possible to miss stuff! PF