Alternator whine when hitting gas after 3 years

[STC1709 10+ year member]

Ok so I have had my system installed for over 3 years now. And about a month ago I got that whine when you press gas. It's weird though because if I turn the radio off it gets louder but then when I turn the radio back on the whine dies down but it still there. Now this is the first time this happened since I installed it 3 years ago.

Power wire and RCA cables are run separately on each side of the car so thats not the issue. Ground wire is next to question but that is solid because I just checked it. Not loose and I remember when I first did it to make sure it was clean and sanded down and that was never an issue. I'm thinking it could be the RCA cables or the radio. The radio is a pioneer premier and it is about 7 years old. I know one set of the preouts doesn't work right on back and it has 3 preouts I am only using the 2 that work one set for sub one set of speakers. Lastly it may be the RCA cables. One of the sets I have has a 2 end female connector to make the RCA cables longer bc I needed length and bought it online to short. But if that was an issue then it would have been a problem from the get go not 3 years later. Lastly I thought it could be due to a low battery bc the battery is 10 years old but I checked it and the charge is 14.36 volts. I cant see how it has anything to do with how I wired it from the beginning or the way the ground is (because i doubled checked it and it looked fine) because if that was the case the whine would have started immediately after i installed the system.

So I messed around with this today because the whine has got really bad. I have not re-surfaced the ground yet because it requires taking the whole car apart but i came across a site with steps and i followed them and i think i made some progress. The steps are as follows:

1. With the system turned off, unplug the RCA inputs to the amplifier.

2. Start the vehicle and turn the system on. If the noise is gone then the amplifier and speaker wiring are okay. If the noise is still present, it is coming from the amp or the speaker wiring.

3. Turn the system off and disconnect the speaker harness.

4. Start the engine and verify that no noise is present. In a few rare instances, I have actually heard speakers reproduce noise without being connected to an amplifier. This noise was being induced by power cables that were very close to the speaker wire.

So I started by turning the radio off and the car off, unplugged the RCA cables then started the car and the noise was still present. I then disconnected the speaker input on both the fronts and the rears, started the car and the whine was gone. I then connected the rear speakers and started the car and still NO whine. I then disconnected the rears and re-spliced the front speakers b/c they looked kind of old, then I connected those to the amp, and the whine came back but it was very minimal then compared to before. So after doing this it tells me that the noise is coming from the front speakers. What I am not sure of is, is the whine because of a bad speaker connection in the fronts? OR is the front speakers running next to the power wire? OR could it be the ground that needs re-surfacing? To me it seems like the RCA cables and the radio are working okay and are not the cause of this issue.

ok small update here it is, 45minutes later and whine is really loud now. I am finding that when i turn the radio on full volume and let it play for a while, then turn the volume down the whine is EXTREMELY loud. Also whats weird is that if i open the drivers door just a little bit the white disappears, and as im swaying the door open and closed doing it slowly the whine goes away and comes back and does that back and forth. This is leading me to believe that there is a speaker wire problem with my fronts.

any advice or input is welcomed. thank You!

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[BassAddictJ 5,000+ posts]

double check every single wire connection...rca and power.ground side....

i thought my connections were solid as **** and after 2 years of heavy bassing my main 1/0 power wiggled out quite a bit from it's fuse block....make sure everything is solid...you even might go as far as resanding down the ground, might have some rust and crude on them....

 

[STC1709 10+ year member]

I'll start with re-sanding down the ground connection, if it was the rca cables though then the whine would have gone away when i disconnected them from the amp and it didn't.

 

[dbeez 5,000+ posts]

The door your swinging to get the whine to come and go has the issue the speaker wire is more than likely cut somewhere and grounding out causing the issue take that door panel off and inspect the wire you could also just unplug that speaker from the amp to verify its the culprit.

 

[disturbed471985 5,000+ posts]

Had same issue come to find out my tweeter wire had been cut over time from my windows going up and down and was grounding out. Cut wire spliced back in boom no more noise. Worth a look.

 

[STC1709 10+ year member]

The door your swinging to get the whine to come and go has the issue the speaker wire is more than likely cut somewhere and grounding out causing the issue take that door panel off and inspect the wire you could also just unplug that speaker from the amp to verify its the culprit.

Thats what i did i unplugged the front speakers from the amp and the whine as COMPLETELY gone, i had just the rear speakers connected. As soon as i disconnected the rears and connect the fronts then boom whine was back with a vengeance. I will have to re-do the ground then just rewire both front speakers.

 

[STC1709 10+ year member]

Sure enough thats what it was. first thing i did was re-sand the ground then i tried out the system and whine was still there. I took out the driver side speaker and re-wired the speaker to the component box, fresh speaker wire fresh connections and sanded down the connection on the speaker. Then when i went to test the speaker i noticed the tweeter wasn't working sure enough there was a short in the wire bc when i moved the wire a certain way it would go in and out, so i took the tweeter completely out and disconnected it, put everything back together and the whine is now GONEEEEE. *knock on wood* Thanks guys.

 

[disturbed471985 5,000+ posts]

It will happen again unless u do something to keep the wire away from whatever is cutting into it.

 

[STC1709 10+ year member]

It will happen again unless u do something to keep the wire away from whatever is cutting into it.

No i think my problem was the short in the tweeter. If you wiggled the wire close to the tweeter the sound would come in and out so when i took it out all together thats when i noticed a difference.