3G Pics

yea this will prolly get moved to talk.. sweet tho none the less!!

Lookin' good cheeks.

Nice, I was thinking of buying the same one, just in white.

I concur. This is more of a Talk Thread than Tech.

Do you have to fuse the line coming off the alternator?

I was gunna ask the same question, except that if that fuse in the pic is betweeen the alt. and the battery it is not needed... If the wire is ran correctly there wont be an issue with it shorting on anything, I can put up a pic or two later of how I ran my 1/0 guage wire from my 240amp alt to the battery. Im not 100% sure but I dont even think that the stock wire is fused. Also did you do the big three for the wiring, if not you wont get full potential out of that 3m alt.

Now that I think about it.... doesnt the "Big 3" require you to fuse between the alt and battery?

No the big three consists of (for instance with cheeks car) upgrading the power wire from the alt. directly to the bat. with a 4ga power wire, adding a secondary ground from the bat. to a solid area of the frame with a 4ga ground, and adding a secondary 4ga ground from the alt. to a solid area of the frame. Also make sure to leave all the factory connections alone, just add to them. In my situation, I have a monster sound system and a custom built 240amp Iraggi alt. so I did the big three with all 1/0 ga wire and I connected my grounds on the studs for the front sway bar between the frame and the sway bar mounts.
To show you how much of a diff. it can make... After I did the upgrades my voltage guage doesnt move at all unless Im really pounding my system hard (it still barely moves)or if Im just idling but a week after I did the upgrades I noticed my voltage guage started dropping all of a sudden from the m in normal to almost the n, well I looked under the hood to figure out what was wrong and the cheep ass side post battery connector that I used to fasten the ground to the back of the alt. had broken off. Once I replaced it with a new one the voltage was back to normal.

This is strait out of the "Big 3" upgrade sticky on sounddomain.

2) When fusing your alternator to battery positive wire, fuse it toward the battery end of the wire. As IMTfox points out later in this thread, the battery will explode if it's overloaded, while the alternator will only burn out its regulator which won't cause much damage except to the alternator itself. Exploding batteries are no fun!


I could be wrong but it seems like he wants the alternator fused but fused near where it connects towards the battery end on the alt wire?

I dont see how it would hurt anything to put a fuse there besides maybe a small voltage drop... Imo it isnt needed but I also have two yellow tops and my system is set-up for spl. I was told by the owner of the company that makes my alternator not to use one on my set-up because of the drop in voltage which equals less sound pressure.

Only way it can cause a voltage drop is if there is a resistance across the fuse. I will ohm one out and see if there is any real resistance but im willing to bet its minimal and you would probably see no SPL drop even if you did have one. This car has a very small stereo upgrade with no amps so no worries there. Off topic but how do you like your yellow tops? I have 3 Lunar amps ,alpine deck, Audio Control EQL, 8" W7 @ 33hz, and a set of Focal 165K2P's in my truck and Im really thinking of switching my self to a yellow top and the guys car im currently working on needs a new battery as well. Any real difference in the yellow vs the red?

For the general public, I would never recommend running any alternator without circuit protection. If someone wants to differ from that, fine, but I wouldn't condone nor recommend it to strangers on a forum.

JMHO.

Badlilstang said:

Only way it can cause a voltage drop is if there is a resistance across the fuse. I will ohm one out and see if there is any real resistance but im willing to bet its minimal and you would probably see no SPL drop even if you did have one. This car has a very small stereo upgrade with no amps so no worries there. Off topic but how do you like your yellow tops? I have 3 Lunar amps ,alpine deck, Audio Control EQL, 8" W7 @ 33hz, and a set of Focal 165K2P's in my truck and Im really thinking of switching my self to a yellow top and the guys car im currently working on needs a new battery as well. Any real difference in the yellow vs the red?

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There has to be some kind of resistence since the size of the fuse material wont allow as much current to go through it as a 4 or 1/0 ga wire( if Im wrong I apologise).
In the spl world any voltage drop is bad becasue it does equal a drop in spl.
I like the yellow tops but if I would have known about batcaps and kinetik batteries then I would have gone that route instead. The yellow tops and red tops cant drain and refill as easily or quickly as either of the other two.
Red tops are designed for high cranking amps for starting cars and yellow tops have more reserve capacity. both work well in car audio but yellow tops are more common.

HISSIN50 said:

For the general public, I would never recommend running any alternator without circuit protection. If someone wants to differ from that, fine, but I wouldn't condone nor recommend it to strangers on a forum.

JMHO.

Click to expand...

Your right, Im not going to condone it for strangers or the general public... it would be better to fuse it in most situstions, especially if you dont know what your doing because you can hurt yourself. I have a lot of experience in car audio and in my situation it can do more harm than good, also my wire from alt. to bat. is only about 2 feet long.

Thanks for the info. I may go with a yellow top for mine and a red for his.

That's one heck of a badass alternator :o

I'll be picking one of these up here really soon but all the threads like this with different opinions really makes it hard to sort through and decide who knows just what needs to be done and done right to make it completely reliable. I've already bought a new Optima, now i just need something to charge it.

The alt. on my car is actually off of a '71 460 out of a Lincoln Continental (i was desperate..lol)

The directions I had when installing my 3g said to run the new hot wire to the hot side of the solenoid. I never did see a real improvement after my install. Could this be the reason? Or should I leave it the way it is and just do the ground upgrades?

Silvers said:

The directions I had when installing my 3g said to run the new hot wire to the hot side of the solenoid. I never did see a real improvement after my install. Could this be the reason? Or should I leave it the way it is and just do the ground upgrades?

Click to expand...

Running your power wire from the alternator to the hot side of the solenoid will be just fine, but you MUST do the ground upgrade as well. There is a positive and negative side to any circut and both are just as important in order for it to function properly.

I agree with JT on running some sort of circut protector between the alt and the solenoid no more than 1 foot from the solenoid connection. This is the proper way to do it.

The factory wiring has a fusable link in it but is not heavy enough to carry the extra load of the 3G alternator. This is why you need to run one along with a wiring upgrade.

Also in the unlikely even of an accident it will pop the fuse instead of grounding out and possibly causing an engine fire.

You can do what you would like but this is they way I would do it. My $.02