Sound Quality Degrades

[Saylem]

I have a 94 F150 with an after market JVC stereo that I bought from Wal-mart and 4 after market speakers. 2 6X8s behind the bench seat in boxes and I replaced the door speakers. Woth the door speakers I cut the connectors because they didnt fit and wired directly to the + and - prongs.

I found a good wiring harness and followed the wiring diagram, mostly like color to like color. Each speaker is wired to a separate color pair. Front left/right and back left/right. I do not have an amp so the amp wire and the antennae wire are taped off.

If the truck is off I can play through an entire album and it's fine, but while I am driving the quality starts to degrade so badly that I have to turn it way down or the bass is heavily distorted and crackly. If I turn it off and on while driving, after it comes back on it sounds fine for a few seconds then happens again. If I pull over turn the truck off and on then it is fine again. If i pull the stereo after it has been on for awhile its pretty hot but you can still touch it.

Any ideas? I am going to check the ground because I wired the ground from the stereo to the ground off the harness and the only thing I can think of is an improper ground.

Thanks in advance!

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[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

I suspect you have a wiring or connection issue. Explain how you insulated each of the connections (separately) and the method you used to connect the wiring (tape only, crimp connector, solder, etc).

There aren't any wires that are only active while driving unless you connected the a wire to something that is switched to ground when the car is driving (like a parking wire that is grounded when the vehicle is in drive). One test for that would be if there is a difference between neutral and drive (not moving).

Another step is to disconnect any harness wiring that isn't required (red, yellow, black and speaker pairs (white, gray, purple, green). The illumination/dimmer wires can be misused and cause a power supply issue (basically creating a short that doesn't pop a fuse but affects the power supply).

 

[Saylem]

I twisted my pairs then used electrical tape I have 4 speakers going separately to each speaker pair off of the harness. Each individual pair is taped thoroughly after being twisted together. I'm not sure what you mean by insulating the connections.