Need Help With Stereo Wiring

S

Solesurfer

New member
Hello everyone,
I recently went to upgrade my old JBL MR-17 stereo to a Sony DSX-M55BT, primarily for having bluetooth capabilities.
In my haste, I forgot to take a picture of how the old JBL stereo was hooked up and now I have a little dilemma.

I have a red and yellow wire coming from my boat. The yellow wire attaches to what I think is a ground plate on the back of my switch panel. The red wires seems to go to the accessory switch on the panel. Below are pictures of where they connect behind the switch panel.

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Out of the radio(with the manual's explanation) I have:
Black = To battery or ground distribution block
Red = ACC, To the +12 V power terminal which is energized when the ignition switch is set to the accessory position,
if there is no accessory position, connect to the +12 V power (battery) terminal which is energized at all times. Be sure to connect the black ground lead to the battery first.
Yellow = BATTERY, To the +12 V power terminal which is energized at all times

The only configuration I have that works is:
Black to yellow from boat
Red and yellow to red from boat

This powers the radio when I turn the batteries on, but when I turn them off, the stereo power is shut off and the memory goes out. I understand I'm not connecting a wire that always has power so the stereo can remember the time. The old JBL always kept the time and this was never an issue. I can't figure out what the right combo is, without it not working or blowing the fuse on the stereo(already went through 3, lol).
I do have a multimeter albeit I don't 100% understand what I'm doing. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you,
Tom
 
If you want to keep the stereo powered to keep the memory, you'll have to connect the yellow wire from the stereo to the positive terminal of the house battery (bypassing the battery cutoff switch). Of course this keep a minor load on your house battery when everything is supposedly disconnected, but that's a choice you need to make. I can't really think of any other reasonable solution without adding unnecessary (IMO) complexity to the situation.

I'm sure the drain is designed to be minimal, and if you have your boat laid up for storage for any period of time, you should be trickle charging the batteries anyway.
 
Also in your other thread.

For me, I don't want ANY drain on my batteries that I do not have SWITCHED on. So, I wouldn't worry about the time being right on the stereo, but that might mean you also won't have the station memory, which in my case I have a few that I know the number to, and some I have written down and dial manually. Yup, that's a pain, but not nearly as much as when you go to start the boat and the battery is D E A D from a parasitic clock power drain.

Some Stereo systems (used to - at least) have a way to maintain that memory stuff with a 9 VDC "transistor" battery.

Just read Gary's post. And he is right, you should be keeping a smart battery maintainer on for long term storage.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

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Newer receivers use flash memory for the settings and station presets and don't need constant power to sustain the memory?
 
garyf":2l9pzowt said:
If you want to keep the stereo powered to keep the memory, you'll have to connect the yellow wire from the stereo to the positive terminal of the house battery (bypassing the battery cutoff switch). Of course this keep a minor load on your house battery when everything is supposedly disconnected, but that's a choice you need to make. I can't really think of any other reasonable solution without adding unnecessary (IMO) complexity to the situation.

I'm sure the drain is designed to be minimal, and if you have your boat laid up for storage for any period of time, you should be trickle charging the batteries anyway.
Click to expand...

Apologies for my lack of knowledge, but do you know how I could test with a multimeter to see if one of those wires is connected to the positive terminal.
In storage or at the dock, I'm always on a trickle charger.
 
Solesurfer":1jtgyg8x said:
Apologies for my lack of knowledge, but do you know how I could test with a multimeter to see if one of those wires is connected to the positive terminal. In storage or at the dock, I'm always on a trickle charger.
Click to expand...

No need to apologize - we all have our strengths and weaknesses and we all started somewhere.

In your pictures, I see a yellow lead highlighted and a red lead highlighted... are you certain that yellow lead is coming from the back of the stereo and therefore the yellow lead that the instructions talk about that should be connected to the positive side of the battery? There is more than one reason I ask (1) it *looks* like the yellow lead you've got highlighted is connected to a bus bar with a bunch of black leads, which would suggest that it's a DC negative bus bar. (2) Be CAREFUL because yellow in the marine world *IS* officially used for DC negative... so it's possible that the yellow lead is the connection from the negative terminal of your battery to feed that negative bus bar and not coming from the stereo as you think. If it is the negative feeder from the battery, wait until the 4th to connect it to the positive bus because you'll have fireworks. :shock: :lol: Just KIDDING, don't do that! Make sure you have a good trace on that wire (or any wire) before you do anything.

As far as checking where you've got power, you can just set your multimeter for DC Volts, select whatever range you have available that is greater than 12V and connect the black lead to the negative bus and the red lead to the positive bus. Try it with the battery switch to "ON" or "1+2" or whatever you have... then try it with the battery switch off.

It might be a good idea to get someone more knowledgeable to help out. I don't mind helping in here, but it's tough to tell for sure from pictures what we're dealing with and I'd hate to bum-dope you.
 
Somewhat confusion these days is that in "12 volt DC safety wiring" the ground or negative is yellow, instead of black.

You should be able to identify the ground or negative bus bar by assuring there is 12 volts between what you think is ground and a "hot" 12 volt lead.

Gary gives you excellent advice.
 
This all reminds me of when I redid the interior of my boat and adding a rooftop AC unit. Decided to rework some of the DC wiring.....black is always ground. Weeks later as I was doing the wiring, AC, for the air, I'm looking at my breaker panel and think it's wired backwards. Even mention it to the sales guy when I went to buy another breaker to install for the air. Guy says as long as everything is wired backwards it should be fine since it's worked for the last 16 years. Can't argue with that since the AC side of the house has always worked ok. As I'm installing the breaker it hits me!.........AC black is hot!!! I'd been working DC so long it completly slipped my mind. Felt really dumb.
I'm currently replacing some side marker lights on my trailer. DC right?! So, I have a black and white leads off the marker lights so I wire black to ground. Get it all installed and test it to find out nothing works!?!? Take it all apart and test it to find out the marker lights are wired with white as ground. Go figure.....Even when I'm right I'm wrong :roll:

James
 
Molly Brown":17r1vpww said:
... I'm currently replacing some side marker lights on my trailer. DC right?! So, I have a black and white leads off the marker lights so I wire black to ground. Get it all installed and test it to find out nothing works!?!? Take it all apart and test it to find out the marker lights are wired with white as ground. Go figure.....Even when I'm right I'm wrong :roll:

James
Click to expand...

In the good ol' days that wiring on your trailer probably worked fine with the original lights. Not so much today with LEDs.
 
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