Little Stereo Install Help Please

[steelerguy]

So I swapped out the original Kenwood Tape deck in my 1990 sport nautique with an ALPINE CDM 7835. I simply cut the old wire harness and replaced wire for wire, the new. I used the same old inline fuses also.

My questions are:
Both the Red and Yellow power wire go to one wire thats connected to the KEY switch. When I turn the sound up the Yellow 1amp inline blows.

The old deck had 3 wires for the front and 3 wires for the back speakers. A postitive for each speaker and shared the negative. Should I change this and run new wire + - to each speaker?

Could this be what is causing the fuse to blow?

I would hate to run a new power wire to the deck cause I like that it works now with the key off if the ignition button is pushed in.

Also, Where can I pick up those fancy power blocks / splitters

[Hollywood]

Re: Little Stereo Install Help Please

I would hate to run a new power wire to the deck cause I like that it works now with the key off if the ignition button is pushed in.

You can still do this as long as the red is wired to that switch and the yellow to the battery.

[Mikeski]

RE: Re: Little Stereo Install Help Please

Older decks yellow just powered the clock and memory, on newer decks the red is just a turn on wire and all the power comes through the yellow. You will most likely need to run a 14ga wire for your yellow with a 10amp fuse.

[steelerguy]

After MIKESKI's comment I looked the manual for my Deck and confirmed that I should be using 15amp inline fuse. Did that and it works fine. Now onto the some more questions.

1.When I toot the horn it shuts the deck off and resets it. Whats could be causing that? No fuse is blown.

I read a couple days worth of info from various sites about other peoples stereo installations. Every thing from to what to do and what to stay away from. The concensus seams to be Low end equipment is OK to start with but dont expect the greatest sounds. Well I can attest to that but after a new addition to the fam I dont have the Bling to go all out. So this is what I did.

I went to the near by SONY outlet and picked up an amp and 4 speakers.
Walked out less $160. My old speakers were toast so this is better than what I had. (see pics)

2.Can someone varify that my amp is wired correctly. I am using RCA's from the deck (rear) and spit them into the 4 channels on the amp.

3. Also my deck when turned past volume number 23 the display starts to pulse. What is causing that? 26 is about as far as my speakers can handle.

4.Another thing I set the base to -3 on the deck cause the new sony speakers dont like base.
and thats fine for now. If I want bass i will introduce a Sub. What can i do to eliminate bass from the speakers in the boat?

5. Lastly there are two switches on this amp LPF and HPF What do these do and how should I set them?

As for wiring, the deck is powered from the Key terminal and the amp is power from the battery,grounded to the engine where the battery terminates.

Tomorrow I will start the boat to see if I get any dreaded engine noise.

AND OH YEAH! I know my accessories adapter under the dash is cheesed up but Im not ready to commit to drilling 1 inch hole just for my Sirius install.

[Mikeski]

A couple comments...

Just don't use the horn...LOL. But seriously it's probably on the same circuit at the deck power, you may have a loose + or - wire causing the voltage to drop when you toot the horn. If this happens I can almost guarantee that you are going to have some very ugly alternator whine once you get out on the water.

Looked for an online owners manual but didn't see any, do you have the manual for that amp? Some 4 channel amps have a switch to internally jump the inputs, your might not. If it does then you don't need the Y adapters. HPF and LPF meah high-pass filter and low-pass filter respectively. Basically high-pass filter means that the amp cuts the bass frequencies from the speakers. Unfortunately it appears that they only allow HPF on the front and LPF on the rear as this is the typical case in a single amp car system. So, you are SOL for using the built in crossovers.

In general it sounds like your system is sufferring from some anemic factory wiring issues. I would suggest you think about running a pair of #6 or larger wires directly from the battery (with inline fuse) to power the stereo system. As you add components your issues will continue to worsen. Bite the bullet and do it right now, you will be rewarded by a stereo that is more reliable and sounds better.

I think there are fairly cheap alternatives that will work better for your amplifier needs. I ran a HiFonics ZX6400 last summer to power some of my system, it or several others would probably work much better than the Sony. What is powering the boat speakers? I would not use the deck to power anything. I would get a 4 channel amp that would allow you to run everything in HPF at 150-200hz, this will get rid of the bass that is causing the sony speakers to distort. Next get a dedicated class D amp for the sub, it's going to be difficult to get it to sound good without the sub. The class D will be a little easier on your boats alternator.

All in all the install looks good.

[steelerguy]

Another question. Could I effectivly run 6 speakers off this amp. Two Tower Speakers on the rear channel utilzing the crossover then run the four boat speakers off the other two channels? Does this change the ohm load from 4 to 2. I know nothing about ohms just read that its best to stay at 4.

[Mikeski]

You can wire the 4 boat speakers in parallel, this will drop the impedence down to 2 ohms, run them off the two front channels and switch on the HPF. Run the tower speakers off the rear channels and switch the LPF off. Run another pair of RCAs from the deck and you will have fading between the boat and tower. When you get a sub install a 100uF capacitor inline to each tower speaker to cut the bass, this will allow you to run bass boost without hurting the tower speakers.

[steelerguy]

what about wiring them in series?

also
I will work on setting up all the speakers to the amp another day. Today I got the tower speakers working well. I took the RCA splitter out. Wired the Power wire from the deck to the battery. What I dont like is my volt meter and temp gage dance to the music.

Do I have to move the Yellow and ground wire back to the battery also?

If so now I have no fail safe way to turn the radio off. I must remember to turn it off manually vs just pushing the ignition and accessories buttons to the off postion.
additionally with the memory wire hooked the battery there is a better chance of a dead battery if I dont use the boat for a while. Now i know why there are audio pro shops :idea:

[Mikeski]

Your speakers will run best as described in parallel, you do not want the impedence going over 4 ohms.

You need to run good power wires from the battery. You can probably hook the deck's yellow and black leads to the amp's power wires. You can still use the factory red wire if you want it switched as it was before, the new deck's red is really just a turn on wire anyway. This should solve the dancing gauges problem.

The leads coming from the battery should not cause your battery to go dead but you might want to pull the fuse for winter storage.