Stereo DIED please help

[\/\//\KE B()/\R|)ER]

So let me start by saying that I am not an audio guru and may not know all the in's and out's of stereos.

That being said i know enough to try to fix this problem.

So we took the boat out for the first time this year. Had a custom stereo installed 2 years prior so it worked perfectly for 2 years.

We had the system professionally installed and they added a sub, 2 amps (one 2 channel and one 4 channel) and two tower speakers. They replaced all 4 of the inside speakers with high quality stuff.

Anyway whatever they did made the boat sound great. We had no complaints with anything.

So this weekend we get the boat on the water and turn the radio on....works fine.....turn the volume up past 15% and everything cuts out. No music nothing. I can turn the radio off and then turn it back on and it will work until that exact same loudness.

No initially I was thinking that one of the amps must not be powering up and thus causing the system to shut off once it reaches a certain volume. This is where I need some guidance or thoughts as to what could be wrong.

I checked the fuses on the amps and they all looked good. I found a rest switch for one amp and reset it but that did nothing. I checked all the connections as best i could and they looked fine.

Lastly nothing has changed since last season when it worked. It was sitting in the garage untouched.

The only thing that I can think of is the tower was taken off.....tightened up and put back on. In the process the wiring for ONE speaker was disconnected. So when the radio worked....at the low volume only one of the tower speakers worked. This seems like 2 seperate issues however. Unless i am wrong i dont see how the one tower speaker being disconnected could cause the entire system to act up.

Any help would be much appreciated.

PS - if anyone know of a good shop in Vegas/Henderson that we can take the boat to that would be great as it is in storage out there for the season.

THANKS!

[Geoff Standish]

///KE B()/R|)ER, in disconecting the one wire did you tape the ends of the wire? My guess is the two wires are touching and causing a short. Once you reach a certain volume the short is enough to trip out the system.

[\/\//\KE B()/\R|)ER]

Thanks for the tip Geoff..........i did not have any tape for the wires but that does make sense.

The whole weekend I was telling myself that I knew it was going to be a no brainer fix for the problem.

Hopefully this was all it was otherwise it will most likely be more expensive to fix.

Additionally if this is the problem then I am going to have to re-feed the wires through the tower. How is this done?

Thanks for the help

[Brit Rider]

could be that there is not enough charge in the batteries and the alternator is not effectively charging the system. I would have it checked; if it's a simple fix it ain't gonna be expensive and at least it will save you crawling around the boat trying to fix it with limited knowledge.

Any car audio shop should be able to fix you up.

[tmbrown]

I agree with the first response... as volume increases, so does voltage and liklihood of shorting if things are uninsulated and near each other. 2nd... my truck started doing that, and when I went snooping to figure out why, I found that somehow so much corrosion accumulated around the fuse that full power wasn't making it to the amp... even with gold everything. I found this quickly using a voltmeter and checking voltages at the amp and turning the stereo on. I suggest trying the same. Also, try disconnecting one amp at a time and seeing if the remaining ones keep clipping. And, the other suggestion about power can be correct as well - it may be dipping too low. Old batteries can do this. Also detectable with a voltage meter at the amp.

Good luck!

[\/\//\KE B()/\R|)ER]

so i finally went back out on the boat and fiddled with the stereo. It turns out that everyone was right and the frayed wired was touching itself and shorting out the system.

As a temp fix i electrical taped the pos and neg sides of the wire and everything worked fine with the exception of the tower speaker that the broken wire fed.

So basically I now have a tower speaker that needs to be re-wired.

Anyone know how I would go about doing this? About half way up the tower there is the frayed end of the wire that is attached to the amp. Im thinking the easiest thing to do is buy a new wire and connect to this wire and then feed through the tower to the speaker.

There other end of the frayed wire (the end that is connects to the actual speaker is in the tower, as the end is still plugged into the speaker. So i suppose i could pull it out and red feed it.

If there was a way to fish out the wire end within the tower and reconnect to the other end that would be easiest but i dont know how.

So.....is this something that I can do myself or should I take it to a shop? I feel like this is not a difficult task for someone with the right equipment/experience.

[\/\//\KE B()/\R|)ER]

This is somewhat brutally ironic...

So as you can see the original post was made almost exactly 1 year ago. I resolved that issue with the tower wire and refed the frayed wire through the tower and the stereo worked great for the rest of the season.

Fast forward 1 year and the same stereo setup. We took the boat out for the first trip and noticed that the tower wires were slightly ripped again. This seems to be a problem with the tower is folded down. We rewired that elbow of the tower so that there are now plugs....so when we fold thew tower down we unplug first and then it wont stress the wire.

So we got the boat out and everything worked great for day 1. Day two we are out and stero blasting....then all the sudden the entire system goes silent.

Unlike the problem last yr where the stereo would work at low volume this time we get nothing.

Checked the wires and fuses and all the normal things but didnt find anything. ....

I took some pics of my setup to see if anyone can direct me places to check and I will post those soon.

Thanks for the help.

[jonyb]

Does the battery have enough charge?

[\/\//\KE B()/\R|)ER]

not sure....i took the boat out again this past weekend and here is what happened. The last trip nothing worked. I took the key and turned on the electirical this past weekend and sure enough the stero kicked in.....very surprised.

At this point I had all the speakers running except the tower speakers (4 inside speakers a sub and 2 tower speakers on 2 amps).

Everything worked fine. I ran the boat for half a day with only the internal speakers working and everything worked great.

We stopped for lunch and I hooked the tower speakers up. On a low volume the entire system worked great

Took the boat out for some sets and cranked the stereo so the boarder could hear it. Everything worked great for about 1 song and then boom. The entire system goes silent. I tried disconnecting the tower speakers and still nothing......no radio no cds no audio period.

I have been planning on adding another battery (blue top) with an isolator.....but wanted to diagnose my current stereo issue before adding more complexities to the system....

Again I have had this same system running on the same battery for 3 years and no problems......i guess the battery could be losing its charge over time? However Im not an stereo guru but should the alternator be supplying the battery enough power for the stereo once the boat is running?

Thanks for the help

[jonyb]

That doesn't sound like a battery problem. Be more specific with teh equipment you have: Brand and model of amps, speakers, etc....

You could be losing power to the amps. When this happens you need a multi-meter to test the power/ground/remote wires at the amps to see if you have voltage. At rest it should be around 12V, and while the boat is running you should have 14V.

There could be a number of problems here and it'll be hard to diagnose, so I'd say if there's a local shop or someone locally that's good with this stuff it'll save you some time.