First to answer a couple of questions.
2000fordstyle, I am using the "T" harness and the adapter harness from the "T" to the sub. You may be benifiting from using the coax (shielded) cables to your Alpine HU and running the sub power and ground somewhere far away from the HU. When I use the small handheld AM radio to locate noise, it sings all the way up the harness to the HU. If I disconnect the harness at the sub, obviously, the sub doesn't sing to the AM radio anymore, but also, there is no noise along the harness, either.

fastasl, I currently have the HU to sub ground disconnected. I have tried a separate ground for the HU several different times when trying other things (and also trying the original HU to sub ground hooked back up). I am not getting a very significant response either way. Yesterday, I did see some benifit to removing the HU to sub ground.

dale1999f1504x4, The static that I get is consistant. The only thing that makes it change is moving the harness and disconnecting the sub.

I did work a little more with it today. Sorry to say, I don't have any improvement over yesterday. The strong to medium power FM stations have enough signal strength to reject the noise being produced by the sub amp. I still can't get it quiet enough not to bother the weaker signals. I think that I am going to play around with removing the power and ground supply from the harness and run them to the fuse box, via the floorboard, and shielding the signal wires that go between the sub and the HU. I'll let ya know what I find out. I just wish that my sub was quiet like some of them apparently are.

Regards,
Mike

 

Hi Rob,

Thanks for checking back with me. We appreciate your troubleshooting efforts. Your results, and those of the others with this product, point towards following "Mike's" advice, as he has put considerable time and effort into finding and resolving the problem. Unfortunately, we do not have anything else to add, but Crutchfield will offer to have you return the purchase for a full refund should you so choose.

I am very sorry that I don't have better news for you. Please reply to me with your consideration of this situation.

J.T.
Crutchfield Technical Advisor
techsupport@crutchfield.com
www.crutchfield.com

 

Mike,

Even Crutchfiled is putting it on You
I mean dam, that's it, they got no answers for us ????
Anyone know where we can get an answer on this ???
or who or how to get Clarion Involved


Mike when you say it must be shielded, what exact wires are the main problems, Ground + Power ???

Any other advise is appreciated.
Would a cheap antenna booster help or make it worse ???

Is it worth a try ????

Would Lead make a good shield and what exactly should I wrap ?? I sell big sheets of lead at work, is it worth a try ???

 

Rob,

I worked a bunch more with it today. I am not having any more improvement . I have tried using shielded, 4 conductor cable for the speaker signal wires in the harness with no improvement. I have also used one of our alternator whine eliminator kits (inductor and a cap) to decouple the power line at the sub with no improvement, either. The only thing that I haven't done is to shield and isolate (remove from harness and route to the fuse box or elsewhere) the power and switched signal line (the blue wire). I am very, very, very dissapointed in the sub because of this problem. I like the way it looks and sounds (CD's and stronger stations), but I am very close to contacting the rep that you have communicated with, about returning mine. I have a lot of hours into this and I am very tired of tearing it apart and putting it back together again (dash and sub). I hate to disappoint you guys, but this needs a good systems engineer to work on this (the guy that was helping me is very good, but I can't ask him to put the type of time in on it that it would take).

I am not sure, but the lead might make a decent shield. I think part of the problem is that even if the harness is shielded, it is still "conducting" the RFI noise right into the HU. The clamp on ferrites show some varible improvement in reducing the transmitting of the RFI, but it was still sensitive to harness location and didn't help some of the stations. An antenna booster "might" help with bringing the weaker signals up enough to reject the amp noise. It may cause more problems also (additional noise and overboosting the stronger signals). If you have access to one, try it and let us know, but I won't advise you to go out and buy one.

I would really like to know what is the difference between some of these subs (or maybe it is in the truck). All I know is that I have a few weaker stations that I can tune in (even with seek) and the station is clear and the stereo light is on. The T harness is hooked up but unplugged from the amp (or I will have the fuse out, doesn't make a difference), as soon as I plug the sub in, the station goes to crap (lots of noise or completely lose the station). I like the the statement of the FCC regs in the Clarion instructions saying that this device will not cause any interference and will accept all interference. I don't think that mine is complying.

Anyway, I'll sleep on it a couple of days and see if my attitude changes, and maybe I'll work on it a bit more. I don't have much hope for it, though. I wish I had better news. Looks like there should be no problem for returning them, for the guys that have noise. It will probably take some talking to Crutchfield to convince them to take back my modded one, if I decide to give it up.

Later On,
Mike

 

Mike,

You put more work in this that anyone could ever imagine. Doesn't it suck that it sounds so good with the CD and yet there's static in the radio. I thought of the Alt. Noise Eliminator, I even wondered if the NGK TR6's played a part ???? But that type of noise would have gone away with what you tried. I also had the radio in and out a hundred times this weekend. I thought I was getting somewhere for a minute, because I took the opposite approach and seperated all the wires the most I could,
and took all tape off all harnesses and tried to see if that would help. With the radio playing and the truck on I got the static to stop on EVERY STATION, put it all back together, took it for a ride and the static was back. &%$#(@$#%)@$&%)@&$@)%.

The only thing I think "IS WORTH TRYING" is NOT USING the tee harness and trying to hard wire it. But I aint so good with that stuff so I need to know where every wire goes before I try.
But I will try if I have to. I think I may try a antenna booster too, got nothing to lose. Whats weird is it's not engine or ing. noise, it's a reception problem ????

I'll let you know If I figure it out, please do the same for me.

THANKS FOR ALL YOU HELP
Rob

 

Rob,
I think that may be the best bet....probably the easiest too, especially after what you have been thru... Try radio shack for an antenna booster..as they always tell you "if it doesn't work, bring it back".....JR
let us know if it works out........

 

Rob,

Hardwiring might be the answer. Thinking about it more, if we can get the noise maker as far away from the HU and the antenna lead as possible (amp board and sub harness). That is, if the noise generated by the amp board in the sub housing doesn't interfere with its' relative location to the HU (sitting on the trans hump directly below the HU). I think by what you found out from your experiments and what I have seen, the amp board at that distance from the HU may not affect reception (especially if it is enclosed in a shield, the "Bud" box that I made up). What I am thinking is if all sub wiring is removed from the immediate area of the HU. The hard part will be getting the speaker signal wires hooked up somewhere else. The green and purple pairs of wires in the sub harness connect to the + and - of the front speakers coming out of the back of the radio. I suppose that we could connect them up at the actual speakers, themselves. It would require running new harness wires into both doors or at least tapping into the speaker harnesses before they go into the doors. A suggestion that may or may not work (I have experimented with it) is to twist the entire length of the speaker signal wires between the sub and where you connect them up ("twisted pair" this can be an effective way to reduce/eliminate EFI/RFI from a current carrying pair of wires). The black wire in the harness connects to the ground wire for the radio chassis. This does not have to be connected. I have seen it cause additional noise in some of my experiments, so it is worth a try to connect this one to a good ground away from the HU (the "pig tailed black wire from the sub is a required ground). The yellow wire with the inline fuse holder is a constant 12 V source (battery). This can be connected to a always "hot" location in the fuse box (not the easiest, since the open positions do not have connections to them requiring you to connect to a location that is using a fuse. Make sure that you connect to the "feed" side of the fuse so that you do not put additional load on that fuse) or directly to the battery. The blue wire is a ignition switched 12 V signal that turns on the sub. This can go to a fuse/circuit that is turned on when the key is in the run and acc. position. Again, remember to connect to the feed side of the fuse (determined by pulling the fuse and checking to see which terminal that the fuse plugs into is "hot"). Thinking about it, this should be a very low current draw on this blue wire, so it could be hooked up to the fused side of an existing ignition switched circuit and probably not add enough current draw to blow the fuse. That way, this 12 V wire to the sub will be protected too. I think that is all of the wires in the sub harness. I have not worked on mine since my last posting, so no updates from me, yet. I was just checking to see if anyone else has found the magic combination.

Later,
Mike

 

Hey Mike,

Ok we may be on to something. I didn't fix it, but I made it worse, which might make it easier for us to figure out. I bought a Antenna Noise Filter "AND IT MADE IT MUCH WORSE" ???
A matter of fact now if you scan or search you only find three stations, and one is schitty. The 2 that work are the same 2 that always worked, BUT I LOST EVERYTHING ELSE.

It's non-electric, here's what the box says:
*Eliminates noise caused by poor antenna ground at the point.
*Antenna cable plugs into the antenna noise isolator then the antenna noise isolator plugs into the radio before noise amplification can take place.
*Maximun signal strenth is maintained from proper loading.

I have absolutly no idea what any of that means except it made it much much worse and the gadget seems to assure a good ground for the antenna. So if it made it worse (which it did) then THE PROBLEM SEEMS TO NOT BE ANTENNA STRENTH OR SIGNAL???

I am going to try this tomorrow after work. I will leave the tee harness hooked up and cut out the two power leads (one constant) (one keyed power) AND the ground. I will tape off those three wires now coming out of the tee harness going to the Sub. I will then take the three wires COMING FROM THE SUB and hook them to a differant power and ground supply. I will also of course take out that useless gadget

If that doesn't work, I'm stumped. But the fact that extra grounding to the antenna made it much much worse tells me we may have a ground problem. We may have to ""NOT HOOK UP"" the ground wire coming from the tee harness out of the radio to the sub ??? That "COULD" be picking up a short more than a ground some how ???? I will mess with it and report back tomorrow night @ 8 or 9

Keep me posted too Please
Rob