Um I can see there is a lot of mis information here.
A capacitor is not a dead short when it's not charged I can assure you that.
A capacitor is some material of some unit of area seperated by a dielectric. In theory the cap should have no resistance but in fact they do.
When a capacitor is connected to a voltage source it will charge to the source voltage instantaniously which can draw a lot of current (if it's avaliable). in the case of using a car battery to charge the cap the potential to draw upwards of 50 AMPS Quesent current is possible, which could easily be above the ratting of the wires you might be trying to use and in the end actually melt the wires.
So a safe way to charge the battery and to limit current would be to use a series resistor connected to the voltage source and then to the Cap and then connecting the circuit to slow down the charge cycle and limit the current.
Charge Time
T=R*C
T is in Seconds
R is in Ohms
C is in Farads
Imax=V/R
V is in volts
R is in Ohms
I is in Amps
Power=V^2/R
P is in Watts
V is in Volts
R is in Ohms
So to safely charge your capacitor I'd say no more than 1AMP is a good
rule of thumb as a 12 gauge wire will easily be able to carry an AMP
so if your using a car battery the source voltage is 12V. now lets see what resitor will limit your current draw to one AMP
Imax = 12V / 12 Ohms
the problem here is the power dissipated by the resistor is going to be quite high using P=V^2/R, 144/12= 12 Watts
so you'd need a 12 Ohms 12 Watt resistor to safely charge the cap. which won't be easy to come by.
so we need to be a little more conservative and use a larger resistor to lower the power which will increase charge time.
1/4Watt resistors are really easy to find so lets see what's avaliable.
P=.25, V=12, R=? : R=V^2/P : 144/.25 = 576 ohms so double the value and look for at least a 1Kohms 1/4 watt resistor.
The quiesant current that will be drawn at initial charge up will be
I=V/R , 12/1000 = .012 Amps or 12mA this is a much safer limit.
The total time to charge the cap will be
T=RC for one time constant and it take 5 time constants to charge a capacitor to 95% of the source voltage.
so you're looking at T=RC : 1000Ohms * 1 Farad = 1000 seconds
for one time constant so total charge time will be 5000 seconds or 1.4 hrs.
|-------| (---------/\/\/\---------|
| |
|-------+Bat -Bat------------|
The capcitors symbol the | side is positve
+|(-
***** keep in mind do not hook this capacitor up backwards as it had to poles on positive and one negative, if you hook it up backwards you risk the chace of blowing it up *****
reference for symbols