Got some bad news for ya; I ran my 17ft RCA pair from the rear battery tray up to the HU under the driver's side kick panel trim and have no trace of engine whine whatsoever in my HHR.

I'm willing to bet your "engine whine" problem is coming from where you are pulling power from.

Or...perhaps you should have bought a Pioneer HU!

 

the pioneer I have has whining noises coming from the front speakers. The rca's are not even hidden yet, just running freely from the center-driver side all the way to the back.

 

You might try checking your ground at every connection you made, then putting on some ground straps from the body to the engine block and so forth. Go around with a multi-meter and check for yourself, you will find quite a few crappy ground points in the HHR.
Every whine through the speakers I have found on my cars always comes down to a bad ground in the system somewhere. On my installs, using the stock wire in the radio harness for a ground is usually the culprit. I always put a wire directly from the aftermarket head unit to a good ground point that I make.
Rather easy fix usually, just sucks finding the problem.

 

Got some bad news for ya; Explain PNOY's whine He has a pioneer... Back atcha Mike

Seriously, I believe the problems occurs not with an amp pushing a sub, but when you have a multi channel amp pushing door speakers.

Mike you do not have an amp pushing the door speakers, you just have an amp pushing the subs. The engine whine must be high freqs that are picked up by the amp pushing the door speakers. Here is why I believe this is true:

When I was trouble shooting my setup, engine noise was only coming out of the door speakers. No engine noise was coming out of the subs. To confirm this I disconnected the rca's from the multi channel amp and the engine noise was gone. So after all my troubleshooting and rewiring I believe this only happens when you add an amp to push the door speakers with an aftermarket radio. If you only add an amp to push a sub, with the OEM stereo, you most likely won't get the engine noise...

Hope this helps

Ng

 

I also grounded my Alpine 56 to the frame instead of the harness. I believe this helped get rid of my engine noise coming through my door speakers.

Someone with some time needs to find all the factory ground points and I bet they are painted or not very good ground points. Like Trey said, I plan on adding some extra ground straps to my HHR later on. Hopefully this will help with the HHR shocking me during the spring!

Ng

 

i might try moving my HU ground to see if that eliminates the whine.

 

Let us know how they work. Someone else tried something similar with negative results...

Ng

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by mudbilly
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-eJD0Xpc...oise&i=127SNI1

I had good success with something similar to this with my old stang.


Well, it got rid of about 80% of the whine, it is still audible at idle and with RPM change, but i can't hear it at higher RPM,

I will try the suggestions below and see if I can get rid of it totally without the filter so i can get my $$ back.

I am REALLY getting tired of ripping the dash apart......




that is highly likely, I fished a wire thru the firewall and attached inside the main circuit breaket box, just grabbed any switched fuse.



I'll try this first as it would be the easiest fix,(i won't have to remove the HU AGAIN) because i will be re-wiring to fuse 21 in the passanger auxilary circuit box, like i should have in the first place.

yea, i used the ground wire that was used with the factory stereo, i should have known better since it was so whimpy......

does it make any sense to run it ALL the way back to the battery?

 

I already have a ground wire hooked up to the front of the car leading inside my center fuse box. I had this done first thing when I got the car because I knew I was going to add stuff to the interior. I'm going to connect my HU ground wire to that block to see if it eliminates the whine.

 

check this out.........Crutchfield has a great trouble shooting guide for whine...they talk about the same issues that have been discussed here, but they also have a trouble shooting chart for when you are certain that your power/ground and signal wires are all done correctly.....



if you go to this site, it is interactive, you can click on the particular solution and it takes you to the place where you can buy the component.

http://www.crutchfieldadvisor.com/le...ers_noise.html