I'm getting what sounds like an electrical whine when i rev my engine with or without load..

Any ideas what might be causing it? Goes away when i shut the Head unit off.

Oh, and I dont know if this is a related issue, but when i rev it by blipping the throttle, whent he RPMS comes down it comes down to almost only 3 bars and feels close to stalling out.

 

The whine is caused by the alternator... as the engine revs up it creates more current and that is affecting your electrical system and inducing that whine in the stereo.

Did it do the stalling out before you installed the system? Does it do it when the headunit is off?

 

Did you route your power wire away from the RCA and speaker wires?

 

^^^ That's exactly what I was going to ask. A friend of mine installed his RCA's, remote, and power on all one side and the more gas he gave it the louder the whine got... (this was on his 325ci)

And about that... leave it alone. Stop bliping it just to see it almost stall. When it does it naturally the ECU believe it or not teaches itself to stop doing it and corrects the problem. Just try not to "make" it drop like that. Just let it happen naturally.

 

Hm.. no the RCA and power wires are all in a big rats nest under the amp rack.. I guess this must be the problem. Also the RCA wires just look like heavy gauge speaker wire..

Would shielded RCA wires help with this?

I actually dont know how the wires run through the car though, but i expect they will all have to be close to each other at some point since they all end up at the amp?

I just bought the car from a board member, awesome guy and awesome car at a great price but i've been trying to clean up the system.. all the RCA wires were not hooked up right there are two amps one is a 4 channel for the speakers and one is for the sub but the lows were hooked up to the sub amp and the sub wasnt working at all

I've spent most of today trying to clean it up but there's still a huge rats nest of wires which i need to clean up. Also i think the coil in the sub is blown because the amp is powering up but the sub doesnt bump at all, but i hooked up another speaker to it and that one is working so my guess is the sub is out..

Since the sub wasnt working, i ended up completely removing it as well as the 2 channel amp for the sub from the car. All the wires are still in the car though (Power and RCA) as i only unhooked them on the amp side. After i did this, the whine went away though. what would this indicate?

As far as the idle dip, i've found it is normal from asking about it in the other forum section.

 

Power cables on one side of the car
RCA's on the other

make sure you DO NOT use the factory head unit ground
make sure you ground the amp to a good ground

 

You should re-run all the wiring to make sure its right and then use a much better ground. The whine is coming from the wiring but considering you have have mess you'd better just start over and make sure it correct. Having a "rat nest" under the amp is a hugh no no.

 

Where is a better place? I saw dark's pic but couldn't tell for sure which bolt he meant.. the one that holds the plastic piece on? (well one of them that is)

 

I guess i have a project ahead of me now

The ground is good. Its bolted to the chassis near where the spare was. (the amp is in the spare location)

 

Double check and make sure there's no paint between the bolt and the car. You might need to scrap/sand the paint down. I know that sounds messed up but check it just the same. Its worth the time before you take everything apart. It would suck to redo everything only to leave that and have that be the problem in the first place