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Old Oct 12th, 2005, 09:13 AM   #4 (permalink)
sr20dem0n
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So that's a little more power, but still nothing to be concerned about really as long as you aren't clipping the amps or playing test tones. Most music peaks about 10dB above the average, so if you set your gains so that you don't clip on the peaks, that means that on average your amps will only be putting out about 1/10 of their rated power, so around 45-50 rms in your case at full, unclipped output with music. The key word there is unclipped, because if you start to clip them the power can increase dramatically, and it's a very good sign that your amps are too small for your listening habits.

What probably happened that one night is you were just sucking more current than the alt can provide at idle so it was coming from the battery, which ran it dead. This could have been caused by a few things. First is that the alt can only put out a small fraction of its rated current at idle, an 80 amp alt might be able to do 20-30 amps at idle. If you had your lights on, A/C on, etc that will easily take about that much current, leaving nothing for the amps (that is if your car was on at the time, if it was off then go to the next point). Also, running a car battery dead is very bad for it (unless it's a deep cycle). If you've done this before, you might have killed a few of the cells inside the battery, which will reduce its capacity dramatically, making it much easier for it to go dead again in the future.
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