Ok so heres the deal I hooked my system up and I have 3 capacitors (I only have so many because two were given to me for free) I have 1 1.0 farad and 2 0.5 farad capacitors. Well I went to drive the car for the first time this morning after adding that stuff and my throttle cable got stiff so I pulled over and checked it and and the damn thing was SMOKING! So I shut the car off and spent 2 hours trying to get the rubber that had melted to the inside of the cable to break loose. Well in the process of doing that I touched the cable to the intake and got a spark! So I got a screwdriver and started checking it out and I was getting sparks everywhere. I thought I had a serious electrical problem but finally I said the only thing I have changed is this system so I unplugged the wire and what do you know the sparking issue is GONE. I think I jumpered my capacitors wrong because I looked and I have no wires mixed on positive and negitive and my system was working just fine. The rubber cover on the cable melted obviously because there is a metal sleeve it slides in and it was generating a spark inside of there everytime it moved and it just finally melted from the heat of the current. So heres how I have the caps hooked up now.

The 1.0 Fared has the main line coming into it and also has the main ground going to the body and I have a + and - wire connected to the + and - on one of the 0.5 farad caps and then a + and - going from that cap to the other 0.5 farad cap and the wires going to the amp are also coming out of the 1.0 farad cap.

I have a feeling I have something screwed up. I doubt I have too many farads in the caps because I have seen like 10.0 farad caps before. But anyway I believe the caps are causing the short due to how I have them hooked up. So if any audio techs or something that has done this could tell me what I did wrong to cause this weird short please let me know.

P.S. The main power wire is disconnected for now until I figure this issue out. I dont need to melt anything else down because my Throttle cable is now totally trashed but barley works and it is stiff as hell.

Thanks in advance for any advice and I do apologize for the long post I just want to make sure I have a fully detailed problem. I also did a search and couldnt find any info related to this.

Man i'm not an audio expert but three capacitors sounds like overkill to me. One farad is usually enough for regular non-competition car systems. IMO just run the 1 farad capacitor and ditch the two 0.5 ones. Also be careful when messing with any capacitors. Most people think they are meant to be installed and just used as-is but your supposed to charge them slowly prior to install and discharge them before removing them.

ok I figured that was over kill. I am an idiot when it comes to hooking them up I just let the power wire spark but I do know the dangers in doing that. I am just going to take the two 0.5's out. I tried running a seperate ground for each cap today and the amp but all I got was a the amp not fully powering on. I think I need more ground wires in the engine bay. I am going to order a ground wire kit. I broke the ground wire going to the cat and I only have the one from the body to the intake in the engine bay so I believe that is also one of my problems.

Well I took out the two 0.5 farad capacitors and just hooked up the 1.0 farad and ran seperate ground wires for the cap and for the amp and it fixed my problem. I actually have two grounds running to the cap just because I already had extras hooked up for the other caps so I just decided to hook up a second ground for the remaining cap. Subs sound great in that car.