I'm having major issues with my installation. 2005 G35 Coupe. First off, installed my rear 3 ways last week, all wiring, and my sub amp. Also installed my highs amp, but didn't connect to the fronts since they weren't in yet.

Power runs 2 gauge from the battery back to a fused dist block. 4 awg to my sub amp and 4 awg to the highs amp. Also have a 2 ga ground running about 18 inches to a ground block, and each amp runs to the ground block, at most 2 feet. I know this could be shortened, but not sure if it could even be causing my issue.

Rear speakers and sub have ran perfect for a week, no issues at all. Installed my front componets in the passenger door. Pulled the speaker wiring in behind the head unit and tapped into the factory wiring there. Once in the door I mounted the crossover and ran all the wiring. None of the wiring is pinched and all connections are solid. None of the speaker terminals are touching the car frame, no shorts in the door.

We powered up the system, and the components were screaming. I put the entire door back together, and as soon as I shut it, noise. The whole system started freaking out, so we shut it down and started trouble shooting. That's actually where we went in and made sure that there were no contacts to the frame. Shut the door, and it was working fine. Def sounded like a grounding issue, sub started hitting funny, I'm sure you've all heard the sound, extending way out, sort of popping.

Went to the driver side, installed with all the same provisions as the pass side, played fine until we closed the door. Same issue. Looked over everything, tore the head unit back out, checked all connections and no issues. Hooked up the amp unbridged, same issue. Started the car, and there was a serious, serious noise issue. You'd think i stripped the shielding off of my rca's and taped them to my power wire. And if you're wondering, they're ran on opposite sides of the car.

We straight ran out of ideas, so we just unhooked the speaker wire from the highs amp, putting us exactly where we were last week. Now the subwoofer wasn't quite right, hard to really hear the noise in a sub ran off a class D, but it's there. Really evident when it would miss hit, or hit or pop when there wasn't even a note. So rather then turn my whole stereo off, I figured that I'd just turn off my sub output and listen to my rear speakers ran off the deck. So I turned off the sub output, an it started mis-hitting randomly. That's right, rca signal was off to the sub and it was still beating away with nothing to do with the song. I just turned it off. I'm just flat out of ideas.

All I can think of at this point is when we pulled the head unit out multiple times today, we damaged the rca's. But two sets? And one that wasn't even an issue now is? I'm just flat out frustrated. Any ideas on what to look into?

 

It sounds like you've got some skills here, but sometimes it's something basic.

What headunit (stock bose could be a slight problem if your amps aren't capable of handling differential-balanced inputs)?
Take and post pictures of your grounding location, connection to the battery, and every distribution block.
Disconnect power wire at the battery and check for connectivity to ground.
Check every input and output and see if it has any connection to the ground.

 

Just had a thought, is your remote wire solid? If it's losing connectivity or set to auto-sense (particularly low-level inputs +auto sense power) it could be the turning on and off accounting for the popping.

 

I'm running a pioneer F90BT. Remote wire is a pretty standard remote, blue wire, 18 awg I believe, stranded copper. I don't believe the amp was turning on and off. I'll take some pics tom and post them up.

I have the non bose factory set up. On the frame/sheet metal at the base of opening between the trunk and cabin, there was a bolt that holds a metal clip on there where a relay is mounted. My guess is something for the taillights. I removed that screw and sanded all the paint off and used that for my grounding point.

Funny thing is, everything worked fine until we closed the door for the first time today. I'd question the ground if the issue went away when I disconnected my highs amp. But it didn't, the problem stayed. I'm gonna get in there tomorrow and snap some pics. But even though the sub isn't working properly, it's not adding all the noise to the system the way my highs amp is.

I gotta think it's in the rca's at this point. But, why would the doors work fine, then when you close the door the noise shows up? What would that have to do with interconnects? Man, I'm clueless here.

For the record. F90BT head unit, Memphis m3d12, directed 1500D, rockford r300 bridged to 150x2 @ 4 ohm, (and I tried it un bridged, problem still existed), rockford p1653's rear fill off the deck, and hertz hsk 165's for the front.

Before we were about done and checking the final configuration before giving up for the day, we turned it on one more time. With the door open, it played fine. Then we'd shut the door and pick up a consistant buzz. Russ turned the volume way down then back up a little, and the buzz went away after about 20 seconds. We tried this same thing 2 or 3 times with the same result. Tried it once with the door closed when we turned it on and it worked, and when I opened the door the buzz kicked in. Something crazy is happening here, I've never seen anything like it.

Before you ask if it's my wiring coming in the door, we pulled the speaker wire in behind the head unit, tied into the factory wiring there and tapped off the factory input to the mid and ran it to the crossover, then distributed new wire from there to the speakers.

 

I'm going to have to go with grounding location here.

Common place (and where I grounded) is one of the bolts that hold the rear seats in place.

Get those pictures up and it'll probably help diagnosis though. (or you'll see the problem when taking the pictures and fix it)

 

A lot of guys on DIYMA are talking about head unit grounding or an issue in the door. But I really don't see it. Even when I got in the car this morning, with the stereo off, I could hear the sub popping around some at startup. Gotta be grounding I'm thinking at this point.

 

Just talked to my friend again this morning that installed the navi. He told me that the metra kit didn't have a ground wire, so the navi ground isn't even connected. He figured that it grounded through the antenna since there wasn't a ground on the adapter. Anyway, I'm gonna take the navi out tonight and ground it. I'm really hoping this is my problem.

If it is, I'm surprised it waited until yesterday to show up.

 

The Metra dash kit doesn't have a separate ground wire.

The Metra wiring harness most definitely does have a ground wire.

You connect the black ground on the factory harness to the black ground on the metra harness, and then connect both of those directly to the body of the car for good measure.

If you still had the Bose amp being used, you'd connect the amp ground wire in with those other two grounds and ground them like in my 70-7551 wiring video:

 

Here's a video of the noise. The system powered up with both doors open, everything sounded fine at lower levels. As soon as I closed the door, this noise started. Lasted for about 10 seconds, then cuts off. If I open the door, it'll start again. 10 seconds, then stop. If I close the door, starts again and so forth. Seems to be coming from the tweeter only.

 

Here's a photo of what appears to be the black ground wire on the receiver side of the metra kit. We tried to wire in the new axxess steering wheel controller but we never programmed it as we're having too many other problems.



Here's the wiring leaving the pioneer unit. You can see where the black wire leaving going into the wire nut. I just installed that tonight. Previously this wire went into the crimp cap with the other two wires and crimped to the ground of the axxess unit. I cut the black ground coming out of the head unit and used a wire nut I had to tie it to some blue remote wire I had laying around. I ran this out the driver side under the carpet and grounded it under a bolt just under the carpet left of the shifter column. There were a few bolts under there. No help at all.



I then took the wire shown in the first picture and stripped it as shown, then tied a long wire to it and tried to ground it in numerous places, no change. The funny thing was, when that wire was exposed and I fired up the system, nothing but constant noise. Then I turned the car off, and we were wiggling wires around and looking for any issues. Turned the car back on, no noise. Stereo played ok at lower levels, that's when I shut the door and the noise came back.

I'm straight up lost. About to take this thing into a stereo shop and take a bath on labor for troubleshooting. My boy that helped me is pretty much through with it as well. I'm out of ideas.

 

Gonna try to do some continuity testing tonight, I'll follow up with the results.

 

why dont u jus screw the ground wire to the solid metal peice where the top of the stock head unit used to screw into . thats where i grounded mine. im not familiar with all that extra stuff ur doing with the ground wire

 

Well, you didn't show pictures of where you had grounded the amp at all, or where the stereo was grounded, or the distribution blocks, didn't report what the continuity tests turned up ... you didn't even mention in the video if the car was running at the time or not.

I'm still guessing that one of your ground sites is on the wrong side of a relay or just a bad ground period, but since it doesn't appear you're willing to follow the basic diagnostic steps, you'll probably just have to take it somewhere for repairs.

 

Damn this sucks. I had the same issue but one of my speaker wires when bent was throwing the electrical tape a little and the wire was touching the door. You sure when its closed none of the internal wire is exposed?

 

^ that's what continuity tests are for.

Hopefully he figures it out, because he's not giving us on the board much to go off of, since we can't eliminate the #1 candidate for this problem without the info asked for earlier.