Sinking Creek 4WD Association

1.) My Suburban...the radio will randomly cut out (no juice whatsoever) and not work for a few days, then cut back on. When running sometimes I can hear humming in my speakers that match RPM. With key on/engine off, you can hardly cut the radio up without it cutting out (powering off) and you can hear something clicking under the hood when it does it.

Truck has 2 amps and 2 12" subs from previous owner.

Also, seemingly related, one day I turned the key to start the truck, it turned over, but didn't catch when I dropped the key. I immediately hit it again and nothing. Battery had zero. Cleaned terminals and got it to jump and the radio was dead. Came back the next day and acted normal...goes out about once a week now.

Any ideas? (Other 12v gremlins that aren't likely related: Window switches only work at drivers door, power mirrors aren't powered, hazards don't work, half of the dash lights up about 1 time a year for 20 minutes and then stays dark for another 365 days, and the low beams appear to be about the same brightness as a AAA maglight.)

2.) Not a truck, but my motorcycle. Turn signals used to work fine, then I used a trailer lighting converter (5 wires in/4 wires out) to allow me to use my 1157 tail light bulbs as turn signals too. Took the single filament turn signals off the bike.

In any case, it still works fine above idle (more juice, headlight gets brighter) but at idle or key on/engine off it either doesn't blink at all or blinks really fast. I have a heavy duty electronic flasher relay that is supposedly not that sensitive to voltage/amperage differences, but it would seem it is...

Any ideas? The signals used to work at idle, so what did the trailer light converter do to change things?

on the suburban I would just start pulling fuses and replacing all of them, including the ones probably in wire to the battery for the amps.

On the suburban I would start checking grounds. The amp grounds are supposed to be as short as possible.
The noise you are hearing is alternator whine. Make sure your power wires and RCAs are not next to each other. They are supposed to be run down seperate sides of the vehicle. They make some sort of isolator to eliminate the whine from the radio I have never used one but did research them a little one time.
You may want to run a seperate wire for the radio power. Just find a keyed ignition hot wire with a test light and splice into it. Or better yet see if there are blank spots in you fuse panel and make a seperate connection just for your radio.

The thing about the whine is that it comes and goes with an audible "click". Like it'll get bad and then you'll hear a "click" and it disappears, so I doubt the wires running next to each other is the issue (you'd think that would be an all the time kind of issue).

I was hoping for some golden bullet, but short of that, I'm getting to the point where'd I'd just as well start over with the wiring of the radio/amps (I'd already planned on using the 2 hot accessory posts on my fuse panel...)

As for the bike, I've read of a few people having the same problem I'm having (key on/engine off = no or fast blinkers, engine revved = normal) and it was normally after they went to LED's (flasher isn't getting enough resistance?) but I didn't replace anything with LED's and really the flasher is still flashing a single filament bulb, so I'm not sure...anyone have any thoughts there? Seems like a simple enough issue, but I'm not sure what to do next.