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nasty case of alternator whine through speakers, help

Old 02-22-2010, 10:12 PM
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I'd say that somewhere there's a marginal connection. I'd say it could be the alternator to engine block or block to body, etc. However, if running the extra ground to the firewall did is, that's great. I'm glad you got some resolution.

Steve
Old 02-22-2010, 10:23 PM
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A fellow member and i were just discussing a similiar alt whine in his truck. He had found that the ground wire on the battery post was the problem. the battery post was actually falling apart from inside the plastic battery case. It was an O.E delco though.

Hmm!
Old 02-23-2010, 02:59 AM
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Majority of the times that I've seen the problem lied in a bad ground.
Old 02-23-2010, 07:58 AM
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I know there are a lot of things in this thread you have read to do. But in my experience of professionally installing car audio through the years; I have found that when kenwood decks are teamed with certain amps you have the exact whine problem you are having. I guarantee that if you try another headunit from a friend that is not a kenwood it will disappear. They make a very good product but I ran into this personally on my own truck about ten years ago. I tried everything, then gave up grabbed a new cd 8051 eclipse deck out of our soundroom and everything worked perfect. I was using kicker sub and highs amp as well when my problem occured. Someone here will give me crap about what I just said but do yourself a favor and just try it.
Old 02-27-2010, 04:31 PM
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Originally Posted by lo&sloSierra
i thought the same thing about the technical service, it seemed to be a big a deal awhile back. i grounded it to the firewall and that cut it out. i guess the ground in the harness wasnt good enough having to run through the factory connector
Glad it worked out for you. I discovered that a long ground on the head unit is a bad idea when I was competing in SPL comps back in the 90's. We would have our head units on a podium, outside of the vehicle, and would get a nasty humm and motor noise. It was easily cured when we used an additional 12 volt battery in our podium (to only power the head unit) instead of going through a 12 foot umbilical cord back to the vehicle.

As another member mentioned, Kennwood HUs seemed to give us some trouble as well. The best one that we used in comps was always pioneer. For some reason, the signal was always the cleanest. We ended up running only Kenwood as they sponsor dB Drag racing and it is always good to support the sponsors!
Old 02-27-2013, 03:45 AM
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Originally Posted by Steve Bryant
If the ground to the firewall doesn't work, I'd try putting a 1000 MFD (1,000 micro Farad) capacitor on the alternator output terminal to ground next. It will be an electrolytic capacitor and will have a polarity (so + goes to the output and - goes to ground, I'd use the case of the alternator). I think that GM may even have a technical service bulletin on this topic.

Steve
I know this is an old thread, but in having a pretty bad alternator whine myself. I'd like to try adding a cap. I've googled for a 1000 mFd. I found this:

RadioShack - mobile phones, MP3 players, laptops, and more

I'm not really sure what voltage I need or if it really matters.
Old 08-07-2013, 09:23 PM
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Old 08-11-2013, 10:08 AM
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So did the radio shack cap work? Did you just ground the alternator through the cap?
Old 08-11-2013, 10:31 AM
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Zeake! How have you been? Haven't seen you in awhile.

Originally Posted by zeake
So did the radio shack cap work? Did you just ground the alternator through the cap?
Ironically, no. My whine wasn't coming from the alternator. It was coming from my sound processor. If it was coming from the alternator, I'm confident this would solve the problem.
Old 08-11-2013, 04:04 PM
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I think my kenwood head unit is the cause. I guess I will turn the gain on the amp down as I really don't want to mess with it.

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