From good to bad : amp swap

[Bumpin' Goalie 10+ year member]

Glad it's working!

 

[DarkScorpion 10+ year member]

ok, so spent the past hour or so troubleshooting this.
Before I turned the ignition on I did a test, no noise. I did a 4 channel balance/fader test just to be sure all was good there. I found that the signal into the front left speaker was quite weak compared to the front right. First thing I did was reverse the left + right speaker cable on the amp, the problem followed the cable to the right front speaker...problem in the speaker cable connection to the amp?! Unhooked & rehooked the cable several times, the problem was not with the connection on the amp side. So, I gave up on that problem & moved onto the bigger problem, the engine whine.

Starting with the earth, found a solid place for the cable and dremeled the paint clean off. Tested, nope..still loads of engine whine. BUT....I noticed it was mostly (or all) coming from the bum speaker I tried to fix earlier. Went to the amp and unhooked the speaker. Bingo, clean signal in the rest of the system.

So, the speaker cable is what's causing the problem & it seems it's only to one speaker. Now, as much as I hate to admit it, I think I'm probably a victim if my own lazyness....I may or may not have been as carfull as I should have been while hooking the new speaker cables to the OEM lines. When will I ever learn....

2 possibilites as see them are

1) as stated above, it's behind the head unit

2) the cable has become damaged somewhere between the amp & head unit.

Any other theories ?

I'm still confused as to why this did'nt seems to cause issues with my other amp?!?

thanks for help above.

Cheers

ok, another update...
I was wrong earlier when I thought it was speaker cable. After 5 hours I've finally solved the problem, it was an RCA lead.

Basically had the head unit out so figured I'd give it a go - had a spare lead so ran it from the head unit directly to the amp, voila!

Still not sure why it's the lead or how changing amps had made this problem come out. One thing is for sure, I didn't think swapping an amp would result in so much work.

Hopefully that that's the end of that!

If only all noobs were as methodical as you //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif Glad to hear your work paid off!

 

[eas 10+ year member]

found exactly what was going on...

when I installed the first amp, I pinched one of the RCA leads to the body of the car when I replaced the seat belt bolt. So, I think that caused a ground loop. I'm guessing that the power of the first amp was not enough for it to be an issue.

Now, to replace my awfull sony xplod woofer, alpine type R I think.

 

[jco1385 5,000+ posts]

n00bz take note. this is how it's done.

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/fyi.gif.9f1f679348da7204ce960cfc74bca8e0.gif

 

[Bumpin' Goalie 10+ year member]

Impressive that he figured it out on his own, without throwing a tantrum.

Welcome.