alternator noise, help!!

[steely dad]

I have a 2001 mercury sable with a pioneer p4600 mp3/cd player. 2 amps, high and mid amp is a lanzar htg214 running at 4 ohms into 4 lanzar heritage 5x7's, low end amp is a lanzar htg434 running at 4 ohms into 2 lanzar 10's. I have been frantically trying to rid the system of that annoying whine when I'm accelerating and have only been able to lessen it. I have a 8 guage power lead along with the rca's and remote underneath the carpet on the passenger side of the car running to the trunk. i know the noise isn't coming from the amps since there is no noise after disconnecting the rca's from the inputs.I have put a ground loop isolator inline with the rca's which seemed to help and used a noise filter for the power and clock leads on the mp3 player. I have made sure that everything is well grounded and the system is connected perfectly. Is there anything I'm overlooking? Could it be some kind of flaw with that vehicle since the actual stock radio is mounted in the left side of the trunk? Could it be coming from all the wires being ran within close proximity to each other? Any help here will be infintely appreciated!!

[seans]

"I have a 8 guage power lead along with the rca's and remote underneath the carpet on the passenger side of the car running to the trunk."


run your power wires opposit your rca's. what is happening is when the current runs though the power wire, the rca's are picking up the noise from the current. to avoid this the best thing to do is seperate wires that carry sound from the wires that carry current. also cheek to make sure none of your rca wires are crisscrossed with any power wires and try to kept the power wires and rca wires as far apart as possible. i am sure as soon as you do this you should notice the noise is gone.
i hope this works, have fun

[steely dad]

Thanks for the recommendation, actually that was suggested by someone I talked to today also. I also had this very same problem years ago with a VW, I'm suprised I didn't think of it myself.

[Easy E]

Thanks for the recommendation, actually that was suggested by someone I talked to today also. I also had this very same problem years ago with a VW, I'm suprised I didn't think of it myself.

Are you running just 1 8ga wire for both amps in the rear? If so you are getting some voltage drop along the way. My recomendation is run another 8 ga wire, one for each amp... But that is coming from my who believes in overkill.

[Prowler573]

I have a 2001 mercury sable..............Could it be some kind of flaw with that vehicle since the actual stock radio is mounted in the left side of the trunk?......

Steely Dad ~

I don't have anything of any value to add regarding the alternator whine intruding into your tunes as my thought echoed that which has already been suggested - getting the interconnects run on the opposite side of the vehicle from the power cabling.....hope that cures your problem!
I did have a question, however, considering what you drive.

A buddy of mine has a 2001 Taurus (essentially the same car as yours) and while installing some aftermarket equipment we ran into some weird snags caused by the odd manor in which FoMoCo saw fit to do the factory audio in those cars.

Did you just run all fresh, new wiring for the head unit and the speakers? In the Taurus its owner ended up buying a replacement dash panel (direct from Ford - don't ask how much!) that had the climate control cutouts and a normal, rectangular, single-DIN radio cutout to replace the factory dash panel that held the stock radio/cassette and also a wiring harness adapter that ran all the way from the stock radio's "brain" there on the driver's side of the trunk to back up behind the dash for an aftermarket stereo. It ended up working fine, of course, but he paid dearly for that dash panel and wiring adapter as they got purchased direct from a Ford dealer here in town. I'm curious if you went a different route and if so, what? I know there's gotta be a better and/or cheaper way than the way we went!