Engine whine and ground loop fixes... take two

[Team MAF 10+ year member]

Im getting noise now and its pissing me off. Just randomly itll sound like a storm in my trunk, with noise/whine. I will turn my H/U on and off and it fixes it. Sometimes it happens, then sometimes it doesnt happen during driving.

Rca cables are shielded-away from other wiring(ran on other side of car too)

Speaker wire could be ****, idk, also the wire is ran around my batteries/power cables.

It also made noise like this upon first hookup with a single sub free air'd in my backseat. Makes me want to think its something with the amp now.

 

[johnmarker01]

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[luvinthebass 5,000+ posts]

Im getting noise now and its pissing me off. Just randomly itll sound like a storm in my trunk, with noise/whine. I will turn my H/U on and off and it fixes it. Sometimes it happens, then sometimes it doesnt happen during driving.
Rca cables are shielded-away from other wiring(ran on other side of car too)

Speaker wire could be ****, idk, also the wire is ran around my batteries/power cables.

It also made noise like this upon first hookup with a single sub free air'd in my backseat. Makes me want to think its something with the amp now.

make sure the wire is on teh metal of the rcas if it's not all the way around them then the noise will reappear, it's a bitch i know.

 

[standard85 10+ year member]

when you loop the copper wire around the rca's and ground them to the pioneer radio chassis, you can still use those rca outputs, right? And when you do this it connects the right channel of the rca to the left channel of the rca, does this create any problems, that the rca white and red are being connected with this copper strand? thanks.

 

[DjiNN 10+ year member]

So how do you guys ground the rcas when the outputs arent right on the back of the headunit? :Like my RCA outputs off my pioneer have 8" cables so the connections isnt right on the back of the deck, how would you ground them still?

You would do it like this ...

 

[smiley2186 10+ year member]

is this only for pioneer decks or is it good for other deck also, i have alpin 9856 do i have to ground the rca?

 

[IDSkoT 5,000+ posts]

I'm not sure if this has been written up, but I don't feel like reading 10 pages to figure it out.

There is another way to do this other than wrapping the wires. I tried this, and it helped, but never fully solved the problem.

What I did was get 4 lengths of wire (One length per RCA channel), strip enough to wrap around the RCA once, and come back around, clamp the wire to the RCA shield with any sort of clamp (or just hold it) and solder it onto the RCA. Once this is done, repeat on all RCA channels.

Then, simply wrap your RCA's in electrical tape, so the wire is flush, and wire them all to the HU. This way is a sure-fire way to erase all engine noise from a blown pico fuse.

What you can also do is buy a female-to-male RCA "extender" and do it somewhere further down the line. However, either way doesn't really matter.

As for Ground Loop Isolators, as said before, they simply "mask" the problem. The problem being a blown micro-fuse on the inside of the unit. I'm not sure how Ground Loop Isolators work when a surge of power is sent back through the RCA's, I'd have to test it. However, to "fix" the problem, you'd have to open up your unit and solder in a new fuse. (I believe the "fuse" is a .5amp mini resistor. You can find them at Radioshack or any other electronic's place)

There are two other ways to fix the problem internally.

1: Solder a piece of metal (it could either be a small piece of sheet metal or just wire) from one side of the fuse to the other side. This acts a direct connection and will stop the engine noise (or so they said, I've yet to try it), but will go around the fuse. I.E. if another surge of power comes through your RCA's, or they're grounded, there goes your unit.

2: Create an external fuse. You do this by buying a simple inline fuse holder. Something that looks like this. However, it doesn't have to be that. That claims 10-AWG wire, which is wayy too big. I would use any inline fuse holder with 16AWG or >. Personally, I'd try to get an AGU or mini-AGU fuse holder seeing how a lot of MAXI fuses don't get to the .5 amp resistance levels. However, you do the same thing as the "jump" in the first step. Solder the wire to one side of where the pico fuse is supposed to be, then solder the wire on the other side. So, if you ever blow the fuse, you can easily replace it with out tearing the unit apart again.

I will post pictures and a more in-depth walk through if you guys want.

Just PM me.

 

[endofdays89 5,000+ posts]

i just did this and it worked......... i was getting horrible whine from my pioneer deck and it completely took it away just by wrapping a wire around all the rca inputs on the hu. It only takes a minute and is worth it if you have any noise that is bugging the piss out of you.

 

[conmetal]

I had to join to show my appreciation for this thread. I have been installing aftermarket audio for 15+ yrs, however I have never met the demon I just conquered with your help. For the most part I've been a die hard JVC man, but only because it was my first and I stuck with the line for 15yrs (upgrading every 2.5yrs). Funny that I ditched JVC thinking it was a headunit issue when it was really my Suburban's factory amp that was the culprit.

Based on my needs, friends encouraged me to try Pioneers. I was skeptical due to the low end Pioneer items I remember being sold at flea markets as a kid, but I ended buying a DEH-P5000UB. I've been nothing but satisfied with it up until 2 wks ago after a trip to petsmart with my family and (2) labs. I'm not sure what happened, but one of the pups bumped the subs and the system grounded out. The funny thing was that none of the wiring was touched or tampered with. The amps wouldn't even power on at first. Thereafter, regardless of where I grounded my amps I had terrible humming and popping. I was horrified as I always took pride in my self installed systems with crispy clean audio from high to low. In addition to this, I was blowing fuses every 5 minutes. I was certain that it was a ground issue, but starting to lean towards the distortion. I checked all of my RCA's, replaced the power and grounds, including a ground strap kit, without any luck.

After multiple google searches with various word combos, I found this thread. I had never had an issue such as this, so of course I would of had no idea to ground the RCA inputs to the H/U chassis. I was about ready to buy a ground loop eliminator and even break down and take it to an audio shop. I'm sure they would of charged me a full install to attempt solving the problem. I'm still shocked that it worked, because the humming was extremely loud with an occasional pop and hiss. Something so simple caused me a headache for 2 wks.

So, I'm assuming there is an internal fuse within the H/U which causes this issue? Is this fix long term or should I consider returning it for factory repair as it is still within the 1yr warranty?

Sorry for the long read, but again THANKS TOO MUCH (as my 3yr old says)! I feel like I've been visited by Santa Claus........

 

[GeddyLee]

Well I have been suffering with this same issue since June of this year. I only discovered this site a few days ago and read up on the fix for the Pioneer HUs. So today I had time to try the grounding of the RCA's and it worked almost perfectly.

Here are a couple pictures of my Pioneer 6000 HU with the ground wiring installed.

This trick cut the noise down to almost nothing. I can only hear a slight whine when the volume is turned down between 0-2 on the HU. I would say its a success!!! I have my radio back!!! //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

 

[Enellz 10+ year member]

Yea had the same thing go wrong with my pioneer 6000. Drove me nuts for weeks

 

[GeddyLee]

Hey Enellz,

I use to live in Louisville. Went to Trinity HS and UofL before moving to St. Louis in 1992. I was just there seeing my folks over Thanksgiving. I was suppose to be there this weekend for Christmas, but I had stuff at work come up so I could not make it down.

You got lucky, only driving you nuts for a few weeks. I had to go almost 6 months before finally discovering this link! Lucky bastiage!

Go Cards!

 

[element96x 10+ year member]

anybody do this with the deh-4000ub?

 

[denverdan]

i need help i have a pionner deh p30001b headunit just intalled after my alpine was stolen happy with the stereo but now i get popping sounds from my subs everytime i turn my car on and off or switch functions from am/fm aux and cd.my subs also makes a slight brief rumbling when i first start my car but only momentarily, had 4 diff. shops check it out and there stumped please any and all help is greatly appreciated already bought a new amp thinking the amp was faulty switched to new and inproved rca cables to no avail thanks

 

[element96x 10+ year member]

I grounded the rca's on my deh4000ub or 4100 whichever, and the noise is completely gone thanks for the pics geddylee