Hello there. So I have had my car wired for roughly 7 years with a couple different amps, the current setup has been installed for roughly 3 years. Never had an issue. Out of no where, my stereo began getting the alternator wine and it is driving me crazy. What could cause this to just come out of nowhere without anything being changed or adjusted? The RCA's and power are ran individually. I am using a shielded Stinger RCA cable with typical wiring. Can RCA's go bad?

 

Yes rca can go bad. Heat and cold will take there tolls. Could be a bad headunit, car battery or alternator. I would run off the rca and headunits or amps. Go thru and make sure all your gorunds are tight.

 

It could also be a choke/filter or an internal connection in the amp took a dump. Lead free solder they use anymore is better for the environment but more prone to cracking, which would cause a failed internal connection (I've had to fix many broken solder points over the years)

 

First thing's first, go through all your grounds. remove them, make sure you still have a bare metal to bare metal connection on all of them. See if it goes away. I've had a lot of alternator whines that were bad grounds.

 

As Wrx-Killer stated, double check your grounds, rca's. What a lot of people don't ever thing about is your plugs and wires (when was the last time replaced). When your wires start to go bad the resistance inside the wire can make a wine through the stereo. If all of your grounds look solid, you've double checked your rca's, I am willing to bet it is your spark plug wires.

 

Shoot, didn't realize it could be such a wide spread issue! I forgot to mention in my original post that it does not always wine, only occasionally. I have tried to find any relation for when it does but it seems to be at complete random times. I am planning on picking up some new RCA's this up coming weekend to see if that helps anything

 

Sounds like a ground loop.

 

Had the same issue and turned out to be bad RCA wires and i ended up rewiring the whole thing from the beginning (new adapter wires, rca wires, and remote wire)...Also make sure you have a good ground that goes to the body of the car. As for your alternator, def it get it checked out and lower the gains on your amp. I rather have low clean bass rather than loud distorted...idk just a preference.

 

Ign. noise, is diff. then alt. whine, ign. noise is always a tick or buzz, increasing in speed as RPM goes up, alt. whine is always a whistling that changes pitch as RPM goes up.

If you have speakers that are not running off an off-board amp, [deck power] unplug the RCAs from the amp(s), [do this with system off] tur HU on and see if there is still noise, if not, then as mentioned you have a ground loop, most commonly caused by bad solder connections in the amp, as mentioned, temperature cycling and vibration will take a toll on any electronics in a car.

Before doing anything, as mentioned, check your grounds, do not jusr eyeball them, redo them. 94