http://www.sounddomain.com/id/deaf_pride 1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme
It's not a Contour, but there are some people here that I hope could help me out
That is the list of the equipment. I have reduced the amount of alternator whine through troubleshooting, although I still have some left.
Positive and negative terminals were replaced with side post termiaals. Power and ground cables were connected via some 4 gauge copper ring terminals. Ground is about 6" long and attatches to the factory grounding point under the hood. Other ground point is in the trunk. It is a bolt where I sanded off all surrounding paint. My MM shows 12V there.
First time hooking this up... gain on amp was a little high... whine (engine off) was kinda loud. Turning engine on made things a hell of a lot worse. I took the car for a drive to a non-residential area for testing. Lowering the gain made a world of difference, but now the amp is really quiet. The gain could be turned up more as there is no distortion (minus the whine)... I got my fronts/sub gains set to where I like them, but again it would be nicer to have the highs louder.
I took the car home. After talking to my longtime mentor/guru CT, I followed his advice. I took a pair of extra RCAs, ran them from my truck's Xover to Jane's amp. There was absolutely no noise with both engines off, either engine on, or both engines on. Running this pair of RCAS from the h/u,
OUTSIDE THE VEHICLE, and to the amp made no difference in comparison to her installed RCAs.
So I'm doubting it's the grounding point for the amp; I have done worse groundings with noise. It's not the RCAs because I swapped out another pair and got the noise. This leads me to the head unit ground wire....
I disconnected the ground wire on the harnesses. THE DAMNED HEAD UNIT STILL OPERATED, but with an increasing amount of whine. I found a bolt in the dash, used a screwdriver to get to bare metal, and touched a wire from that point to the h/u's ground wire. The whine decreased almost to where I could not hear it. Turning the engine on created whine, but again not as intense.
This is where I'm at now.... I ran a wire directly from my h/u to the ground terminal on my amp. It sounds ghetto but it's the best I got so far. At this very moment there is absolutely no whine with the engine off. However, there is a reduced intensity of whine with the engine off. The h/u volume goes up to 35. When the volume is at 20 you can't even hear the whine. Again the gain needs to go up anyway. But raising the gain also amplifies the whine even more.
What could you suggest? I have considered running a ground wire directly to the negative post on the battery for the h/u. I am out of ideas
Tempe
