new HU bad? Horrible whine when warm

[broken08]

Just put a new clarion vz401 in my 01 land rover discovery. It worked great on a couple 1 hour trips. Then on day 2, after running the engine about 5-7 minutes, it would start slowly building an increasing background hiss which after another 2 minutes or so gets super loud, and then won't even stop unless I fully mute the audio. The buttons also become less responsive and eventually stop responding. The unit eventually resets itself after a few minutes of this. It doesn't matter what mode I'm in. When in this failure mode, it's very sensitive to any other electrical noise in the car like lights and wipers. Also, if I run it without the car on it seems to work fine indefinitely.

It sounds like an internal problem, especially since the touch screen stops functioning.

So some thoughts, if it's not an internal failure: I also have an axxess aswc1 for the steering wheel buttons. I also have a wireless backup camera receiver sharing the power and ground of the stereo. The stereo is only using the harness ground at the moment. I did disconnect the camera and aswc with no change, however they were still power wired in.

Also the unit never feels hot at all.

I have a new unit coming on warranty, but I don't want to install it if I am doing something that might break it.

TIA

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[audiobaun 5,000+ posts]

You may have been able to reset the unit itself?Kinda sounds like a bad ground issue though

 

[broken08]

I did try master reset. No change.

It feels like a ground problem when its acting up, but that doesn't explain why it works the first five minutes. Or longer on a cold day.

 

[loudenuff]

I did try master reset. No change. It feels like a ground problem when its acting up, but that doesn't explain why it works the first five minutes. Or longer on a cold day.

electricity conducts best in cold weather. if there's resistance there will be more resistance once it gets hot, that was the case in my mr2.

 

[broken08]

So does anyone think it might be a bad head unit?

 

[The Camry]

If you think its a grounding problem. Take out your rcas. Just run your radio or cd or a pure source. play it. Still have a problem? if not, you can ground your rcas easily.

if it still does it. try regrounding the black ground wire to a good ground. most cars HU grounds are terrible, tiny wires, and ton of other car electronics can be hooked up to the same grounding bolt which can cause diff problems.

you said you have a few things sharing the ground wire. If your ground wire isnt big enough to handle all that, youll get alot of feedback. Try having the HU ONLY ground to bare metal through a solid 12 gauge wire. If that works then you know your other devices are creating problems. Alot of car audio feedback/issues is about trying one thing at a time till you isolate the issue.