depends where its at, i just had a friends dad help me with mine and it ws deep so it was pretty hard, luckily he knew what he was doing so he got it done in like an hour
yeah, depends onthe car. mine was on the very bottom. had to take out cruise control stuff, power steering and all kinds of little module boxes that were in my car, lol, pain, takes about an hour to get it out, hour and a half to put it all back together. friend has a pontiac sunfire, right there on top, 5 minutes to take out, 5 minutes to put back in, lol.
wire, bigger the better although 4awg should be fine. i ran 1/0awg.
On top is like a 30 minute job tops, an thats the way it was with my 87 model caddy but i just put one in my 96 an its towards the bottom front an i had to take out the Radiator an hoses an hookups for that, the cooling fans, an i also had to take off the lower front exhaust manifold (had to take that off just to be able to get the last bolt out because it wouldnt come all the way out without that being out of the way)an a few other small things so the whole job took me about 4 hours
But yes you ar going to need a fuse for the extra wire thats going to have power running through it ( the alt to battery wire )this fuse should not exceed the max capable handling of the Gauge wire that you use in ur case 4 gauge so a fuse no bigger then 125
for a 200A alternator, the install should be easy. replace the engine to chassis ground, alternator to battery, nd battery to chassis ground lines with 1/0 AWG wire. that'll handle up to 225A without a problem. the wire going from battery to amplifiers you can base on the current the amps are drawing.. use 1/0 if you have big amplifiers.
so if I use 1 awg wire or thicker i will need no fuse right? and by grounding to to the chassis do I just run the 1/0 off of the (-) to a bolt on the chassis right?
And about grounding, yes, Mitchell. But make sure to have a well-sanded, bare metal ground, on a main part of the chasis, avoid parts that are welded. Ideally, the floor pan of most vehicles is excellent. Or, you can even just go to the stock ground point, with a larger gauge wire. But this in many cases, is just a small screw and a nut, without a whole lot of contact.
Best to just make your own. Remember, you dont have to replace your old stock wiring, instead you can just add to it.
