avic-z1

symptom: constant hum, static, horrible alternator whine

what i saw: pulled the unit out and saw that the ground wire on the main harness has been pulled loose and the end a big mangled. reinserting the mangled end into the slot doesnt help.

i also tried to take a non used wire out of hte harnesss and putting it to the groudning slot, also no help.

if i wiggle the main harness i hear crackles, static, and very occassionally, the noise goes away, but i cant get any kind of consistency on it.

also, while its humming, i find that if i ground the chasis of the z1 to the vehicle ground, it diminishes a lot, though doesnt go away completely.

nothing else was changed in the car...

any similar experiences? ideas?

i figure its either the harness is bad, and cant be fixed, or the power supply maybe? either way its some kind of grounding issue...

oh by the way the Z1 has been isntalled for osmetime.

i am suspecting that the loose ground wire that came out of the harness went and touched the 12volt side, whcih was how i found the fuse for the radio busted in the car's fuse box...

first off, clean up the install. dont have a mangled mess and you can go from there. If grounding the unit better gets rid of much of the noise then probably a bad ground, so just clean it up first.

wiring messiness is not an issue, trust me i do enough isntalls to see that.

its more ore less the location of the intsall, wcih isnt a normal double din location...there isnt much room at all and a lot of accessories are attached...

but regardless...what i wanted to ask is:

if the ground wire accidentally touched the 12v, and cuased a spark and blew the car's fuse, will this do something to the board of the Z1 so to cuase noise?

i am almost positive thats what it is, but wanted some confirmation before i bag it up and send it out to get fixed

sure. but why would you tolerate a messy job? whatya say you fix it just for the sake of doing things right.

sorry, i may have forgotten to add before

i did straighten out the wiring, but nothing has changed, i reran all the wires, neatly did everyhting... the key, as i stated, came down to the ground wire torn out of the plug...

do you have any info regarding anyone whos has had similar issues in the past? seeing that you do have 800 posts figure you would be a guru when it comes to this kind of stuff?

wow, 800 i didnt notice that right off. Im not a guru by any means, I play one on the internet but in real life I a nobody, hehe.

I dont know of any particular posts, not because they dont exist but probably because many people would really be able to call the problem as you have.

What you have described is possible, it could have cause the problem. wiring your speakers i dont think could do that, and since you have eyeballed the problem possibly as the ground that came loose I would go with that if i were you at this point. make sure its nice and secure and everything else is tighty and you should be set.

Try grounding the unit by attaching a wire to the actual chassis of the AVIC via a screw on the back of the unit. There is a threaded hole on the back of the unit that lends itself perfectly to this. If your bare +12v wire that bounced around before happened to touch the outside shield of the rca cables, that could cause some bad noise, but a noise filter may help.

thanks guys...

it was the bare ground wire that came loose, not 12volt.

i did attach a wire from the avic chasis directly to the car, it lessend the noise by quite a bit, but still very noticable...

i am thinking somethig happened inside..

well, i will send it to pioneer and see

Do you have amplifiers hooked up to your mid/high speakers?

My unit stopped producing sound when the radio fuse in the engine compartment was blown. When i sent it for repair, they said that it has a burned PC board ground.