2005 Toyota Camry Le Alternator

hey guys i own a 2005 toyota camry le 2.4l 4cyl car. Im pretty soon going to put in a sound system for my car and worried about my alternator frying becuase of the current draw and the extra battery in the back. On the alternator itself it did not say how many amps the alternator is. On some sites they say 100amps for a refub alternator, so does that mean in my car i have a 100amp stock alternator? also i emailed excessiveamperage.com for a price quote on a new custom built alternator and they said they could not build me one becuase my car alternator uses a "stator".

Provided your stereo is correctly installed, fused etc you shouldn't have any problems with the stock alternator. My Australian gen 5 has a 100A Bosch, which is heeeeeaps for a stereo, i'd imaging the US one is also 100A. In any case the alternator is very rarely a problem in car audio installations, unless it has tens of thousands of (real!) watts in an old car with a tiny 35A alt or similar. On a modern car like a gen 5 you'll be fine.

... they said they could not build me one becuase my car alternator uses a "stator".

That was a pretty lame excuse. Every motor or generator (alternator) has a stator.

Anyways, in most cases you should not really have any issues with putting an audio system in your car. I would say your alternator would be around the 100A mark as Asteroid said. Lets say it was at night, you had your headlights, high beams and fog lights on. You would still have approximately 900 watts spare for use. You would need to have a constant power drain from your audio at a power level higher than this to cause excessive drain on your car charging system. At this point, it will start to use power from your battery. To have a constant power draw for audio at above 900W in your car would be quite intense though.

mines going to be around 1000watts, and im planning to get an extra battery, but worried about the extra strain on my alternator.

1000W is not much at all. In my Corolla I had a 1000w amp and a 200w amp, combined I measured a bit under 90 amps of current draw. Now remember this is absolute peak current draw, when playing music your system will only hit peak current draw for a mere fraction of a second (coinciding with the loudest part of the music). The average sustained current draw is a tiny fraction of that. Your factory electrics will easily cope with a stereo like that. When I had the system in my Corolla it used the standard 16 yr old alternator (which was somewhere around 50-60A). I did have a very large (single) battery in it being a diesel car and I used very thick 1 AWG cabling. This helped alleviate the voltage drop when my system peaked, which will be the main problem you will have. As car electrics only run at 12 volt, you will suffer from voltage drop when current draw increases (look up Ohm's law), this will cause the lights to dim and may damage your amplifiers in extreme cases. It can be alleviated by using larger cabling (which has lower resistance than thinner cabling) and having sufficient battery power to keep up with the stereo. Running a second battery in the boot is an excellent idea but probably isn't necessary at this sort of level.

i'm not much of an electrician but in my 04 le i have a 1000 watt amp for my subwoofers and an 800 watt amp for my midranges and currently have no problems whatsoever with my stock alternator so i imagine you shouldn't have any either.

With 1000W RMS for example, this is an average over a period of time for a measurement. At times power draw may be slightly higher, at others it may be lower. This is all taken into consideration though when you are running everything at its absolute maximum.

Say your stereo has a volume scale from 0 to 50, you will find that a majority of the time, you are not going to be running it at the full 'level 50'. You average power draw will be less than the full rated power for a majority of the time.

If your power requirement exceeds what the alternator can supply, the battery will supply the extra power to compensate. Once your requirements are reduced again, the alternator will then feed any extra power back to the battery to charge it up again. In most cases, this cycle is only brief and should not harm the system. It's only when you are constantly drawing above the alternator rated power that you can cause extra wear and tear. As I said though, for most consumer audio cases you should be fine. If you are running constantly at 1000W RMS in your car, it wouldn't take too much time before your hearing would start to be affected.

As for a second battery, at those power levels it isn't all that necessary. It would only be of use if you plan on running it for a bit with the engine off. Just do the 'big three' if you are that concerned. This would consist of increasing the wire gauge of: 1) alternator positive to battery positive, 2) battery negative to chassis, and 3) engine ground to chassis.

you'll be fine, do the big 3 upgrade, and as long as you're not skimping on amp wiring kit (use 1/0 gauge) you'll be alright, as someone else mention music is dynamic so your stereo won't be pulling constant current. A deep cycle battery like the Optima Red/Yellow top will be helpful if you like to play your music with engine off, that way when you drained the battery you can recharge without killing it.

You should have gotten a hybrid -- no alternator at all to worry about... ;)

well if i called the toyota dealer, will the be able to tell how many amp is alternator is? im guess all year 2005 toyota camry le 2.4l has the same alternator right? im planning to run a 1500watt amp for my 2 subs.