Electrical battle suggestions

[Heide264 10+ year member]

Been having a small electrical battle with a system in my 97 astro van I moved over from an older car. I know there are a lotta resources around, and I've done some reading, but I wanted to get some opinions on the matter before I start ripping more of it apart, don't have too much free time anymore to mess with it sadly.

Everything sounds great, except for an annoying crackle/popping sound, mainly when I back off the pedal after the rpms are a bit high on the car. It doesn't get worse with volume - always at the same level as the music.

I just re-grounded the amps to the car body behind the driver seat - I can take pictures if anybody thinks this is the issue. Didn't get much better or worse after redoing the ground from the seat bolt itself.

I have 2 suspicions:

1.) My grounds from my 2 amps first go into a distribution block, then into the floor ground. The 2 wires going into the dist block and the one coming out are all the same size as my power wire. Not too hard to fix, but I honestly don't think this is the issue personally, but looking for opinions

2.) I saw several posts about the rca ground fuse blowing in the HU. I have an old eclipse HU, and I have changed power connections a couple times while the RCAs were connected at one time or another probably. I could try doing the wire wrap routine around the jacks and grounding it, but it seemed that was mostly for pioneer units. I'd like to swap it for a newer pioneer unit I have (much better radio reception), but it only has one set of preouts. My sub enclosure has a passive filter, so I was debating just using a splitter and splitting the preouts... not sure if that is a terrible idea though.

Thanks, Let me know if any more information would help. Tried to keep the post reasonably short.

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[PrestigeSounds 10+ year member]

i would say run a new set of rca's on the outside of the car but you noted it only happens when your rpms are high....keep it in park and rev the engine maybe to the point where you noticed it happening with another set of rca's, see what happens. Identify, Isolate, Eliminate!!! Good luck....

 

[audiolife 5,000+ posts]

Grounds RCAs spark plugs and spark plug wires.

 

[Heide264 10+ year member]

Going to look at the spark plugs first. I have gotten a couple flashing check engine lights that clear after a bit, which I figured was a bad spark plug connection, but never bothered to fix it... pointing my finger at that first.

Then will go on to ground the RCAs if that doesn't fix it (that dash is a real pain to take off).

EDIT....

Alright, so been thinking about it. I have a spare pioneer hu just sitting around. Could I just tie a small lead from a fused dist block to the power/remote power, ground it, and try connecting that to the amps (RCA only) while the other hu is turned down all the way to see if that fixes it? If it does I know its the hu.... I can't remember if I'd need to connect anything else off the top of my head, but would probably be easier than jacking the car up or removing that dashboard if either aren't needed.

 

[audiolife 5,000+ posts]

I have ripped out whole systems before only to find out it was the plugs LOL

 

[Heide264 10+ year member]

Yeah I was basically about to do the same. Already have been messing with it for a year now. At least I'm really sure its well grounded now... I'll have to post a picture sometime for humor sake. I edited my post above, let me know if you have any feedback on it. Thanks again.