Micro farad capacitor install

So I've been having problems with my aeroforce gauge freezing up at startup. Seems like it could be a voltage spike. Aeroforce recommended I install a small micofarad capacitor to the power line of my gauge and was wondering if anyone is familiar with these small capacitors. Do these have to be secured down or can I tape it to the wire I'm splicing into? If i just tape it it will probably move around a little while driving, does this matter with these little capacitors?

 

cut wire, insert into heat shrink, solder each end, shrink the heat shrink, done.

 

I mean after I solder in the wires and heat shrink can I just leave it hanging off the side of the wire or do I have to mount it sucurely.

 

Im pretty sure that resistor is tiny, should be fine to let hang out.

 

So many things wrong above.
1. If you are filtering spikes in the power supply the capacitor must be wired in parallel.
2. A resistor is a completely different component.
3. Farads are a measure of capacitance, a micro farad is .000001 farads.
4. Electrolytic capacitors (typically used for power smoothing) are are polar, they must be connected properly, they cannot be reversed.

 

We used to use a capacitor tapped into the power supply of older radios and run it to ground to filter the "noise" to ground. I can not remember the uF or volts though. Damn Old Timer's.

 

Yup, I'm a retard. Sorry about the misinformation, not sure how I managed that one.

 

Thanks for the replies all. I was instructed by Aeroforce gauges to install a 220 uf microfarad 25v electrolytic capacitor (very small) on my Analogic gauge because at startup the gauge would go blank. It worked fine with the key on engine off.

When starting engine due to spike in power the screen would freeze and go blank. The small capacitor I used has a positive and negative side. I simply spliced the positive wire of capacitor to gauges power wire, and grounded the other end of the capacitor to a common ground under my dash. I used electrical tape and taped the capacitor to the wire and zip-tied it down. Everything is running smooth. I have my Analogic gauge reading my A/F, oil temp, oil pressure, and boost/vacuum.

 

So you used the capacitor in parallel and not series? Also, it is a very small capacitor so it might not be advisable to install it the way you installed. By only slicing it and attaching there might actually be a small amount of capacitance that gets developed within these joints.

pcb assembly services

 

What are you talking about? Parallel is the correct way, series will block power and only allow fluctuations in voltage to pass. Parallel is correct.

 

Did you have any luck resolving your issue with the gauge? Any chance you can post pics, looking @ a dual gauge setup and @ $400+ don't want to have this kind of issue...

 

It fixed my issue and everything is working good here's a pic with the flex pod. On the left is my Aeroforce analogic guage which can read up to 4 sensors and my AEM boost gauge on the right:



This is the analogic gauge which does not hook up to the OBDII port. It reads up to 4 sensors. It worked fine when I only had oil pressure and oil temp hooked up. When I added MAP sensor and A/F sensor is when I started having the blank screen problem. I read on the aeroforce forums that they recommended a capacitor to someone who had the same issues so i contacted them and they recommend I do the same. It works great now..

They are quite expensive and on their forums it seems they have a few problems (blank screen issues) with their aeroforce scan gauge which hooks up to the obdII port. I'm happy with my setup.

 

Glad you got the gauges working as they are expensive. Thanks for that pic that's a great looking setup with the gauge pod! that looks like the white readout which I'm looking to get. Some of the youtube vidoes show that at night that black background as more blue looking. Can you tell me if that background looks black or more blue? thanks for any info I'm really torn trying to decide on the white or red readout...

 

That is a cool looking set up. Just out of curiosity is there a reason you didn't mount them on the A pillar instead of your dash gauges?

 

When I found out about the flexpod I just liked it better having it all centralized in one area.

The background is more blue than black, but you can invert the colors for the background and display numbers meaning you can change the background from black to white, and change the readout data from white to black etc....