Voltage Stabilizers

saw this message while googling, thought i might give my 2 canadian cents on the matter...

as shady as these may sound, and what i originally thought of them, upon closer inspection they may actually have some merit.

really the term they use, ''voltage stabilizer'', is just something that is generic that is given by the salesman with no electrical knowledge.

it seems all these things consist of are a bunch of capacitors. they say to put these in series with the battery i believe, so it would effectively be in parallel with the rest of the cars components. two possible advantages (from a theory perspective):

1) due to the nature that voltage across a capacitor can NOT change instantaneously, then yes technically it will keep the voltage that each component in the circuit sees ''stable'' since v1=v2=...=v for components in parallel.

2) another matter i have thought about is electrical noise (RF interference). i don't really know too much about this, but capacitors can be used in a circuit to actually reduce electrical noise. it mentions it briefly here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_noise


HOWEVER, i am still skeptical about these since they seem to be heavily marketed from these ebay and low-grade discount retailers...some testing would have to be done to really see what they do and make sure there are no negative effects...

- Aaron

there is a reason to it.If ur car is new ur warranty will get cancelled immediately and the cars are well tested before they are sent out.Do not buy something that will intefere with the electrical systems of the car as it may happen that u may not be able to start the car.

i agree. you do not want to void your warranty.

really even if these did work, you should not have any reason to use them if your electrical system is stock.

only if you are adding extra load to the system, or are having problems such noise interference on an aftermarket ignition control system, then maybe you might have reason to try these out.

i stumbled across this post as a result of searching for diagrams for a 12v - 12v stabalizer / regulator since noticing the engine performance of my car was far better the lower the voltage was, to a point, it seemed the engine was more responsive thru the whole range by simply having the heater fan on full. "odd" i here you say, and even " it must be pulling an earth through the fan or something". but no, ive isolated it to the input voltage to the engine management control unit. having then subsequently looked at the voltage range in the system it appears to be somewhat higher than id like as high as 15v at times. now i here you saying "your voltage regulator is no good" ( resisted using an expletive there ) but no, well not entirely, it appears alot of aftermarket/ pattern regulators are tending to put out a higher voltage. so it appears there are two cures to the problem. solder new brushes into the old regulator or stabalise the voltage on the management circuit more precisely. im tending to go for both cures. even with the oem regulator you will have a voltage swing and therefore a swing in calcultions the ecu is making.since the ecu will have internal voltage regulation how will this help i hear you say. well the fact of tha matter is its only regulating as a percentage of its expected input voltage, since in my case, and probably a lot of other peoples, the expected input voltage has changed the need for stabilization excists. hope this goes someway to helping understand the idea of voltage stabilization problem