After doing a ton of work overhauling my system and adding some things, I now have a couple small problems.

1) I get some engine whine, but only from the front right speaker.

2) When I turn off the radio or the car, I hear a small "pop" from the rear of the car. Hard to tell if it's coming from a speaker or sub or something else.

As far as everything I did, here is a list, in case it helps troubleshooting:
--Replaced + battery terminal
--Removed old power and ground wiring
--Removed old amps and replaced with a Soundstream D'Artagnan
--Ran 4g power to the trunk
--Mounted amp, processor and other items on a rack in the trunk
--Installed Alpine remote mount nav, xm navtraffic and bluetooth
--Extended front speaker wires to the trunk

Any ideas on how to fix these 2 small problems?

 

how are your grounds?

 

I have a 4g ground from the amp connected to a Stinger 4g SGT4NPT Dual Foot Grounding Terminal right next to the amp. It is screwed into the sheet metal of the trunk floor, but now that I think about it, I didn't sand the paint first. Do you think that would fix it?

 

Sanding could definately help. Although Ive never been a fan of those footed grounding blocks. I would personally go direct with a ring terminal.

 

I have some 4g ring terminals, but I figured since the foot has a wider "footprint", it might be better. =)

Shows how much I know (or don't). heh

 

Its all good. Im not a fan for the simple fact its more crap added on. Although companies market these very well for funtionailty and cosmetics. Dont feel bad, many have fallen into this.

I always use rings and even sand/grind them down as well as the car.

 

Try that, and the D'artagnan may not have a soft turn on/off built in, that could possibly be a source of the pop... double check your speaker connections on the right speakr thats whining...

 

Well, I sanded the ground locations and switched to a ring terminal for the amp, but still didn't help. When I disconnect the right front speaker, the problem goes away, so I guess I'm gonna have to redo the entire wire, which is gonna be a pain.

BTW, does it matter if the 4g power wire runs alongside speaker wires? I can't remember if they can interfere with each other or if it's a myth.

 

It's a myth. Definitely sounds like that speaker's problem is isolated to the run of that particular speaker wire.

 

Have you tried swapping RCAs and see if the problem changes sides?

 

Not yet, I'll try that tomorrow.

 

That should eliminate alot of potential causes. If the problem follows to the other side, then you know its not a speaker lead,speaker or the amp, but rather the something in the signal path or the signal itself.

 

nothing beats puttin a ring terminal on and bolting it to the seat belt harness. Besides th ground point you used is it not good at all. I tried the same ground my selfand i know for a fact i had whine.

 

Actually direct to framing does or even a nice plane of sheetmetal as well. Grinded down and bolted through. The seatbelt harness is usually hit or miss, theyre typically gooped up with locktite which will introduce more resistance. It holds very well, but isnt a good conductor.

 

yep was going to say switch the RCAs see if the pop/whine moves.

what headunit are you using? my old JVC (well it was brand new) from the day installed used to pop when shut off... and ive seen others experience whine with the occasional pioneer for whatever reason...

 

Don, you are right but the metal in the back is very thin especially in the tire well where i grounded it too, so what i did was i took the seatbelt out grinded the triangular plate down to bare metal, and also grinded where i was attacthing the ring terminal down to bare metal works great for me. But i guess others might h ave problems though. Typically i look for something that has thicker metal before i ground to something.

 

Well, I'm now extremely frustrated about to just give up and take my car to a shop and pay whatever it takes for them to figure it out and fix it.

I've tried 3 different grounding locations for the amp, including trunk sheet metal sanded down, rear seat bolt and rear seat belt bolt. I've tried a whole new speaker wire, swapped tweeters and passive crossovers and nothing has helped. I swapped the FL and FR RCAs and the noise still comes from the same speaker (FR). But if I remove the RCA, then no noise, so I'm not sure what that means. I'm inclined to think that something is bad inside the amp on that channel, but I have no way to tell, as far as I know. I have no idea if it's possible to bench test an amp for a problem like this.

Is there any kind of noise filter I could just put on the speaker wire itself?

 

Swap the left and right speaker leads on the amp terminals. That will tell you if it's something on a particular channel on the amp.

 

it very well could be, i had a phoenix gold amp 1200.1 that would cause whining as soon as i plugged the rcas in. So it could be the amp.

 

Did that and the problem stays with that particular channel on the amp.

 

have another amp to try?

 

I still have my old Sony amps, so I suppose I can try one of them. I don't think the terminals are large enough for 4g wire though, heh.

 

Well, looks like the channel on the amp is bad. Put the old Sony amp back in ... no noise at all. *sigh*

Any recommendations on a place in the SF bay area that repairs amps? =)

 

What kind of amp?

 

Soundstream D'Artagnan 5.1

I emailed Soundstream and this place - http://www.justrepairs.com/ - Anyone heard anything good or bad about them? The amps they have screenshots of seem pretty nice - http://www.justrepairs.com/examples_amps.html