********UPDATE!

So i went back over to my brothers house tonight, for his roomate to fix the alternator whine we discovered last night. just a recap of last night, we found the front door speakers to be shorting on the door itself. we didnt have any other spacers available, so we used a dremel to cut notches in the door under the connections to keep them from shorting. we then put electrical tape of them (the cuts in door and speaker connectors) as a bit of added short circuit protection.

tonight, to diagnose the alternator whine, we tried EVERYTHING! we used different RCA's, grounded the amps straight to the battery, grounded HU in different location, moved signal cables away from ANY power source, we even used jumper cables to get power from a different 12v source, and nothing worked. no matter what we tried, we still had a very loud alternator whine, and alot of hissing sounds. so we deduced that by using a different power source, that we could rule out interference from my power wires or my grounding location. it had to either be my amp, HU, or RCA's. in my old setup, i had no alternator whine, so we decided that i was the new RCA's or new amp. thinking about that for a minute, we realized that we had already ruled out the RCA's, so that left only the amp. with no other amp to hook up, we focused on the HU. after tinkering for a while with no luck, we turned to google. my buddy found a thread about pioneer HU internal grounding problems, and after the solution in that thread, it was filled with about 11 pages of people thanking the guy saying that it worked for them.

what he showed in that thread, was to take bare copper wire, and wrap it around the RCA outs on the back of the HU, and the connect it to a chassis screw on the HU. my buddy is gonna send me the link here in the next few days. so we kept looking at the thread, and thinking about it, and it started making sense. however, we never believed that it would work.

we set back out to the car, and pulled the HU completly out. we then did as described in the thread, plugged her back up, and WHAM!!! ill be damned if it didnt work!! no whine AT ALL! and very little hiss as well.

10 minutes later we had the car back together, and i cruised on home, radio blasting, loving every minute of it! i now can enjoy crystal clear highs and mids with the top down, with no distortion and great clarity! now i just need to get my mono amp pulled out and shipped back for return. once i get the new one back, i finally have the bumpin bass i set out in search of in the first place.

thanks to all in this thread who gave me advice, i really do appreciate it! this forum is awesome! neutured, you tha man!



****************End Update




So ive got bit of a prediciment. my old audio setup consisted of

polk db651s door speakers
pioneer deh4000p HU
and a pioneer amp pushing 40w x2 to the doors.
no sub.
This setup worked just fine, no issues at all.


yesterday I installed:

Knukonceptz RCA's to get signal to the amps.
new 4 guage power /ground leads.
polk mmc6500 components
polk 200.4 4 channel amp bridged to 2 channel @ 100x2
rockford fosgate t110d2 DVC 2ohm sub wire for 1ohm
polk 600.1 mono amp pushing 600 x 1
all wiring and connectors/distribution/ground blocks are from knukonceptz


power wire comes off of battery into 100A fused knukonceptz inline fuse holder, across firewall to drivers side, and into the car through the existing grommet below the Brake master cylinder.

from there, the power follows the existing wire harness down the door sill and up through the access hole (behind panel with vent behind seat) in the gas tank/spare tire area.

the RCA's go from HU, under pass. side dash, and down the door sill on the pass side, through the same access hole behind the passenger seat.

speaker wire goes from front doors, under dash towards HU, and then run down the pass side trans tunnel back to the amps. remote wire is run with the speaker wire, down the trans tunnel.

when the power gets to the trunk area, it goes into an knukonceptz fused power distribution block, where the wire is then run to the two amps in the trunk.

the amps are grounded in much the same way, except the grounding block isnt fused, and the grounding wire is attached to the factory strut tower bar on the passenger side of the car. all the paint was ground away so only bare metal shows. i used a crimp on ring fitting to attach the wire to the bolt.

bascially from there, it goes like anyother setup, speaker wire and RCA's are run to each amp, excpet that i used the remote lead from the old amp to turn on the 4 channel amp, and then attached another wire in the same terminal and ran it to the other amp so i didnt have to run a compeltly new wire from the head unit. i assume this is ok.

my issue with the system is that it powers on, makes a couple poping noises, and then both amps go into protect mode. the popping noises are kind of like what youd hear when you unplug a guitar cable from the amp with everything still turned on.

with both amps in protect mode, the sort of alternate going back to normal, and then both go to protect mode. very small bits of music are played (if any) while this is going on.

i havent had a chance to really check it out today, cause im still sore from putting it all in yesterday. i can use any advice you guys might have, and will hopefully have a co-worker (used to install car stereo's) take a look at it on tuesday. id like to have it going by sunday cause im taking a 2.5 hour trip that will SUCK without some tunes.


thanks in advance!
James

CLIFF NOTES:
installed new door speakers, sub, and two amps to power them. with radio turned on, both amps flicker in and out of protect mode, and very small bits of music are played, if any at all. makes random popping sounds.

 

You'll have to reground.

I've made this point many times before (in all the other ground-loop threads): Do NOT use an existing bolt/screw. You need to dremel away all the 1028329019 layers of paint, primer, and rust inhibitor to get to the bare metal (not just 1 of 2 layers, there's like 8+). Once you get to bare metal, you should drill a hole specifically for this use - do NOT use an existing fastener. Welds do NOT make for good electrical conductors. The hole should be the appropriate size for the SCREW (not bolt...) - the ground connection is made through the screw threads.

Try it. Ya never know...I might actually know something about what I'm saying

 

thats kind of what i was thinking. thanks for the advice neutered.

i am curious though, i was using the same location for the ground for my previous setup (pioneer 2 channel pushing 40w x 2). that location worked fine for that amp. I am guessing that its not ok for the new setup (800w total) because of the power increase?

also, if you could show a picture of where your ground is, im a bit nervous about drilling a new hole in the frame that close to the gas tank.

thanks!

james

 

while I agree with everything NS has said, and yes, a ground can be
adequate for lower power but unable to carry the current for the new
higher power amps, if the amps go into protect at low volume with a
ground that was apparently adequate with your old amp, I wonder if a
connection is bad somewhere - perhaps at the battery end? check
everywhere you disconnected at install. Also, pull each amp individually
out of the system to see if it makes a difference. Easiest is to disconnect
the remote wire, but make sure you tape off the end, because if it grounds
you'll likely destroy the headunit's remote turn-on circuit!

 

oth and NS, thanks for the ideas. ive got some other things to try out and think ill be able to get to tomorrow night.

thanks again for the help guys! ill let you know what i find out.

james

 

I would go back and check all the wiring for some bare wire touching metal. It doesn't really sound like a bad grounding point, sounds like a wire is grounding out someplace in the car.

 

That would probably short out the battery or a fuse.

Since no fuses are blowing, we can be assured that this is most likely on the ground side.

 

he might be suggesting that speaker wire might be ground..
anyways easy way to figure out what it is, is just start unplugging things, unplug the speaker cables at the amp and see if it does the same thing.. and go on down the road, ie, rca cables and if that still does it then power.. or start with power, just work ur way until u figure the problem..

 

just to update, i just got back from my brothers house. his roomate was working on getting my stereo working. we found that the front door speaker connections were shorting out on the door frame. after taking care of that, both amps would turn on and run fine with out going to protect mode. we also found that the remote wire on the mono-amp was shorting to the ground wire (ground had a few wires on back side of connection that were sticking out of amp). once taking care of this, we still did not get any music playing through the sub. we put the sub signal cables on the 4 channel amp, it played low freq through the mains as expected. we put the sub speaker wire on the 4 channel amp, and it played through the sub as well. with everything hooked up to play though the sub and mains, only the mains worked. we checked all settings on HU and amp and couldnt get the sub to play through the mono-amp. we figure ive got a bad amp. also got a bad case of alternator whine through the RCA's, but have a good handle on where its coming from.

any advice on the mono-amp (purchased though ebay seller bigbuycity). any thing we can try to further diagnose the issue?

thanks

james

 

The Mono Amp is on though correct? you said both amps were running fine so i assume so. if your sub amp has a high/low impedance selector, make sure its on low. If it has a HP/LP filter make sure its on LP. IF it's a stereo amp your running in mono mode make sure your using the correct speaker outputs from the amp, and your stereo/mono switch is set to mono. It's 8 in the morning here and I'm out of ideas for the moment.