Just purchased a 10' alpine sub, with a 1100 boss amp, installing in my 96 xlt. will i need to upgrade the alternator and will the system dim my lights?

 

Not sure what your power handling is going to be, but if it's something like 250W-500W RMS then I doubt you'd be having problems. There's other factors to determine the end result as well, like the rest of your audio and extra lights, etc. I'm assuming you've figured out the amp power wire size and fuse? With a 1996, you should be able to easily swap in a 3g alternator anyways, in case you needed to upgrade.

 

A 96 should already have a 3g alternator (if by any weird chance your alternator has an external fan, replace that fire hazard 2g and the required wiring to a 3g standard), what you might want to determine is which of them you have, because one of them delivers 95A and the other 130A. These are called small and big case, and it's easy to tell which is which, in the front face behind the pulley the case has 3 reinforcements which have either 4 holes each (12 in total) or 2 holes each (6 in total), you want the one with 6 holes (big case).

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