Alternator Whine/check engine light tonight.

[Invisible]

Soooooo Friday night I spent a couple hours hooking up my mini 300 wat amp( just ment to power my 4 alpine speakers ) and I had a noise problem with all 4 that was pretty shitty after I got the amp installed, so I changed my ground around, etc etc, got rid of it. But now I have an alternator whine, so I had this since friday, its annoying but you can only hear it when i have the volume down to speaking level or when its changing to the next song. Another thing, you can hear it go up as you speed up, and down as you slow at a light or a turn. So im on my way home from work tonight and I get the Check engine light, goes on once when im 2 min from home, goes off 2 seconds later, goes on again a minute later and off 2 seconds after that. When I pull into my garage the light is on and is staying on, according to the book its "Engine Electrical Light". I am just going to go out on a limb here and assume its to due with the alternator whine and the new amp. But here is where I am stuck, the RCA's are brand new, all seem to be ok and working without any problems. What is causing the alternator whine? From what I understand it would be faulty RCA's woulden't it? A tad bit confused, any help would be appreciated.

Note: The power cord goes right from the battery all the way to the trunk of the car, the only ground I have is in the trunk attached under the back seat bolt(we have 2 on each side holding the back seats down). I have also wondered, should there be a ground from Negative battery terminal too the firewall or to the block and to the firewall? Any thoughts on weather this could be my problem?

[Typhoonk]

You got some good ideas there.

Somethings to check.
1. Clean battery terminals and connectors
2. With car running, unplug RCA's from amp. Do you still here the alternator wine or is it gone? If it's still there you got a ground problem and should move the amp ground to a better spot (avoid bolts, and make ur own if possible). If the whine goes away, then try unplugging the RCA's at the deck (with rca's plugged in at amp), and see if you can hear wine (if you hear wine, your gonna have to move your RCA's to another part of the car). If not go onto to step three
3. Give you cd player a new ground, at the firewall. And if you can try another cd player or source (i.e. portable cd player or something), to see if it's the deck.

Ground, placement of wires, faulty equipment, or bad connections


good luck

[Invisible]

My first thought was faulty RCA's tried unplugging them and such and still to no avail was it gone. Although last night when I got home I turned the front and rear gain down and this morning I didn't notice the whine, but im still not sure that is the problem. I am thinking I will be moving my ground, also, for the stock ground that is ment for our stock stereo, I heard that it is not good to use it due to its length? Any thoughts? Also, if I make my own ground(sand down some paint in the rear under the carpet how am I attaching the ground to it? I noticed you said to avoid the bolts(mind you the bolt im using now was a temp fix due to the time it took me to run the wiring I just stuck it down because I had to be in Vancouver in under 45 min). I am also going to pickup some ground wire's sometime this week and ground the block,neg batt term and everything else because from what I understand it can make a world of difference. I am thinking the gain was set to high overworking the alternator perhaps(which caused my check engine electrical light to come on, this morning it was off and didn't come on, but I only drove for about 10 min to the store and back), but the gain was only halfway, which made me think that there must be a betterway? I mean this amp is tiny compared to other amps, its just a 4 channel 300 watt amp used to isolate my speakers from my next audio equipment install.

Also, thnx Typhoonk, out of the 20 people who viewed the thread, you were the only one to reply .

Edit: I also wanted to say, down the passenger side of the car I have my 2 rca's running down(2 due to the fact its a 4 channel amp with 4 inputs rather than 2),remote turn on wire, and one speaker wire. It got kind of cramped under the scuff panel after that and down the drivers side I have my 3 other speaker wire's and my power cable. Now I know that having the power wire near the RCA's is a big no no, but will it interfere with speaker wire aswell? I would think not, but I am no car audio expert by any means.

[Invisible]