iLLbeRiTeBaCk

This one's mainly for the car audio experts. The ML car audio experts.

I'm a newbie here at mbworld so if anyone could help me out or throw me any feedback that would be GREAT. I've received suggestions from plenty of people but none from people who actually drive ML's and have actually done what I've decided to do. I'm having a custom audio set-up in my '98 ML in the trunk which includes enclosing the subwoofers as well as the amps and all that good stuff under plexiglass. I've run into an issue as far as powering the system. The car audio "specialist" who will do the install suggested I

1) Juice up the alternator for higher amperage output
or
2) Buy a stronger alternator altogether.

I know my alternator and probably most stock ML's have an amperage rating at 120 watts. I spoke to a service advisor today here in the Bay Area and he suggested I not touch the alternator at all, and recommended me getting another battery. He had said that changing the alternator or tampering with it could ultimately lead to frying the computer/brain of the car if it'd be incapable of handling the modification, which would run several thousand and I definitely do not want to do that.

So I need some advice on what I should do. Do I need to tamper with the alternator? Will a second battery be sufficient? Will having two batteries affect my alternator at all? HELP!!

55fanatic

What type of wattage are you running in there? Have you installed an optima yellow top? I believe Mercedes already uses drycell batteries but the yellow tops are pretty diesel. Also have you looked into any capacitors? They make some fairly large caps these days in order to fulfill that need 15Ferads usually does the trick...

Your going to want to avoid changing or modifying the alternator, add another battery if you need to, that would be the best way to do this...

iLLbeRiTeBaCk

I'm running nothing fancy. I've got a pair of '03 Kicker S12L5's which are 600 watts rms each. I'm going to be powering each of those with new Infinity 610a's because I have two of them. People have recommended I not use a separate amp for each sub, so I'll probably sell them or trade them in for a Kicker KX1200.1 amp. For my mid's and highs I've got the Polk MM6 Component set which are 150 watts RMS ( a pair of front speakers as well as tweets) I'm no super car audio enthusiast but I do remember the audio install guy saying he would install the subs so " it'd be 2 db's?", referring to the amount of space I guess?

So 1200 watts RMS from the subs and 150 watts RMS from the components.

I do have a 1 farad Monster Digital Capacitor but I'm hearing that definitely won't be enough. Any suggestions? Any good brands that produce more output?

As far as the battery is concerned there's an Interstate MTP-93 battery under there right now which is 850cca.

55fanatic

hey man, yeah 1F wont be enough I have 1F now in my truck and when its really loud I still have battery draw. When and IF I add the second 300w JL AMP for my BAs Im going to add another 1F cap.

Change the battery to an optima and go with a heavy duty cap... 5 or more Ferads and youll be all set, I think alpine makes a 5F cap... two amps for subs is Nasty... more effecient that way, lol