Kick Panel Crossover Noise
 

Has anyone else noticed high pitched noise from their tweeters when their crossovers were mounted in the kick panels?

I finally got sick of a high pitched whine from my tweeters while the engine is running. The noise was never present when the stereo was running on “ACC” or “ON”, only when the engine was running. Today I disconnected the input speaker wires from the crossover and found that the noise was still there. Obviously something was inducing current and causing the tweeter to whine. I removed the tweeter and re-routed the wire to the crossover so that it didn’t go near any other electrical systems and the noise was still there. Finally I removed the crossover and tweeter from the car and the noise disappeared.

As soon as I put the crossover back near the kick panels, the noise re-appeared. The crossover is acting as an antennae and inducing noise when it’s near other electrical systems in the car. Moving the crossover around the car with a short length of speaker wire connecting it to the tweeter I found that the worst noise was induced near the ECU however noise was audible when the crossover was in most under-dash areas.

Next weekend I’ll be re-locating the crossovers, there’s no way I would put them in the kick panels again.

Wowzers, I've never experienced that. I can't remember how long it's been since I used passive crossovers, and while I don't discount your experience, I've never even HEARD of that happening. Out of curiosity, what brand of speaker/crossover? I doubt I'll ever go back to passives, so it doesn't change anything for me, but it's just more to add to my reference library to help others troubleshoot. Hertz fronts and JL subs?

Speakers are Hertz HSK165XLs. I’m very surprised as well- I was expecting it to be a ground loop or noise induced from the fuel pump via wiring- not ECU noise through the crossover!