draining the car's power

Hi guys, I just got a head unit, and now I'm thinking about speakers and an amp. But I'm worried that with all the power these aftermarket units will be using that my car will have trouble. Is this a valid concern, or can the battery and alternator handle the needs of this new equipment?

I think I want to install an amp, but I'm a little confused as to how I connect the speakers. As far as I can tell, I connect the amp to the reciever with rca patch cables, and then the speakers to the amp with speaker wire.

But the existing speaker harness connects to the reciever through the reciever's wiring harness. Do I leave that connection and splice in the speaker wire from the amp? Or do I disconnect and remove that connection and entirely replace it with the speaker wire?

Thanks for all your help guys.

How big of an amp are you thinking? A small one won't be trouble. On the other hand, if you're thinking of the sort of amp big enough to drive speakers that induce headaches at 100 feet and require wearing ear protection to sit in the car with the stereo at full blast, you might be asking for trouble. And not just with the cops.

Actually, something pretty small, just enough to sufficiently power the speakers that I'd get with it. I was thinking about a Profile California AP740 along with some Alpine 6.5 inch component speakers up front and some 6x9 speakers in the rear. As far as I know that combination is not uber-powerful. Any idea about the speaker connection? Thanks Slanter.

Ok you should be fine, most stock altenators can take about 800 watts before you run into trouble. So you should be fine. You will be running about 200 watts with that profile amp.

About connecting the speakers, I cut the wires from the wiring harness adapter, and run speaker wire to the front from the amp and so the CD player speaker output isnt hooked up to anything. That way you dont have to run new wire to all the speaker locations :)

Thanks for the help EasyE. That really helps explain some things I've been worried about.

Thanks for the helpful replies guys. Just a few more questions (I think, I'm sure I'll come up with more later). What do you guys think of Profile amps, like the one I mentioned earlier. Are they decent? good? crap? I'm just wondering if its worth my money to buy that one.

Also, I'm having trouble deciding whether or not to get the Alpine SPS-171A components and the SPS-690A, or to spring for the SPR-17LS and SPR-69LP speakers. Are there huge differences in performance between these?

Thanks again for all your help!

For what you're going to be doing, that Profile will work just fine.

And if you have the money, I would say go for the Type R speakers. If you don't want to spend that much, then the Type S speakers will work fine.