Engine noise/Alternator whine

I have a customer coming in tomorrow that says he has engine noise.  When I did the original install I made every precaution to avoid this.  All the basics: signal wires opposite side of car as power, keeping power wire away from belts, used good RCA's.  Anybody got any ideas of something I might have missed.  It is in a 2003 Galant.

did u run the remote with the rca's?  ive seen this cause a problem before.  check your ground, matter of fact, ground it somewhere else just in case ur connection was a little bit loose.  maybe his equiptment is crappy, that can cause it too!

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I hate hearing in advance what a perceived problem is.  I'd rather just look at it at the time and save myself those hours of wondering!  See if he has a sound electrical system under the hood.

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Build the box so that it performs well in the worst case scenario and, in return, it will reward you at all times.

I have had a problem in the lancers with the headunit grounding. The dash grounding is not real good and had to ground the headunit to the chassis of the car to get rid of engine noise.   Check that out.

yea i forgot about that, mitsubishi has a funny grounding system.  run a ground directly to chassis from the headunit, see if that works.

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I have got what sounds like an alternator whine but it only comes on badly when the cassette unit of my in dash Sony is being used and then it is only really bad when I turn the air conditioning on. And unfortunately the idiot installer put the tweeters at the top of the door posts about three inches from my ear for maximum impact of any such noise. (and then couldn't figure out how to get rid of the noise so threw his hands up in despair, leaving me to figure it out)

This is a 1984 Silver Spur and he put the amp in the deisgnated position directly next to the battery in a cavity below the floor of the trunk in my car which might be making it worse. (but I suspect that the problem could be cured and isn't with the positioning of the cables or of the amp, given that everyone else seems to use that positioning and routing for their installation)

In desperation I tried putting a Pyramid NS21 20 amp high suppressor Isolation transformer just between the phono imput and the amp, not being sure what such an item would do to the quality of the sound, which is pretty lousy in any event with practically no bass whatsoever(Pioneer amp). But for the moment I am trying to get rid of the whining noise prior to seeing what I can do about the actual sound quality. I am faintly aware from my HiFi days that you shouldn't put anything in the line between the sound source and the amplifier which is some indication of how desperate I am to get rid of this noise. And in any event I had an AudioCap subwoofer which I kept below the seat half way between the head unit and the amp which I thought would take care of the bass before it stopped working so I am trying to find somewhere to get it repaired at reasonable cost at the moment (not easy in New York City where no one expects anything like this to be repaired any more: But its low flat design SEEMS to be the only unit/placing of a subwoofer I can utilise so I will worry about THAT later as well)

Is there some trick to using these suppressors? Must it be nowhere near the amp or nowhere near the battery or something or is this just a lousy suppressor (or a faulty one)? The instructions don't say anything about it needing to be grounded or anything so I tried just hanging it loose on the floor of the trunk to see what effect it had on reducing the whine and as I say it made the sound completely unbearable.

Licensed to Quill

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"He that would keep a secret Must keep it secret

That he hath a secret to keep"

PAC products may have the solution you need...maybe someone reading this forum will notice your car is a Rolls Royce and will have knowlede of its grounding system.  I suspect it may be common ground with some newer type floating ground equipment installed.  Your post is at the tail end of a thread that identifies the car as a Mitsubishi, so it may not be as widely seen as it would if you had started a new thread titled 'Silver Spur alternator whine suppression'.

There are new flat subwoofer drivers available, too, and could be one to replace the old one you can't get repaired.  There was a thread two or three weeks back that addressed those, that I recall.

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Build the box so that it performs well in the worst case scenario and, in return, it will reward you at all times.

Does the RCA wires that you installed have the grounding wire attached to it ?  If so, ground this wire and it will help.

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Jeff
Velocity Custom Home Theater
Mobile Audio/Video Specialist
Morden, Manitoba CANADA

Hi Stevdart

Many thanks for your reply but I cant find any references to flat subwoofers by using the search feature?? I would certainly prefer to buy a new subwoofer if I could find one which would fit under the seat rather than try to get a piece of electronics repaired in New York City where the rent and paperwork usually costs about twice the cost of the actual repair.

I did try putting the Pyramid suppressor in the area under the seat where the subwoofer went and although it did stop the noise which was created by putting it in the trunk where it is supposed to go, it DID introduce quite a lot of alternator whine which WASN'T present before!!

Try this thread for flat subwoofer info.  Try moving the suppressor again, you've got signal wires picking up engine noise.  And, is the grounding system in that Silver Spur common?  You will know if you look at one of the original speakers, it will have one wire connecting.  The chassis will be the ground / return signal.

Again, if you don't get responses from the experts here (which I assure you I am not!), post your original info into a new thread.

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Build the box so that it performs well in the worst case scenario and, in return, it will reward you at all times.

Thanks anyway: I think I will have to re-post as I cant find any flat powered subwoofer with enclosures which is what I think I need. The Alto looks great but I suspect there isnt any casing made for it: It looks from their publicity as if you have to fit it into small spaces rather than put it under seats?