I decided that it was time to add to the ambiance when out on the boat so I am installing a stereo unit. Purchased a Fusion marine stero system and connected it up but the damn thing wouldn't work.
I am no electrician so it is highly likely that the fault is with the installer rather than the unit but I did check with the multi meter and I have 12 volts getting to the unit as far as I can tell. So to my untrained assessment it has power and should work.
The thing I wasn't sure of was the "ground" wire. Would that not being connected to anything stop the unit from working? I was working on the assumption that even without that connected if there was power to the unit it should work (or at least turn on).
Should be two power connections, one for the actual power and one to save the presets. The earth line obviously needs to be connected! I have seen posts on other forums about Fusion units not working. Apparently some people have had to return them but this sounds like an installer problem!
In a car the body of the unit would most likely be mounted in a steel frame and this would be the earth return. In a boat where its probably mounted in timber or plastic you will need an earth line connected to a suitable earth bus bar and this leads to the earth on the battery.
Agree with Ramona. Connect the earth wire to your earth bar and you should be away. On another tack, I bought a 12v TV from an eBay site for about $180 but it came with a cable that couldn't handle the power required. The TV requires 4 amps and the cable looked to be about 3 amp. The TV turned on but wouldn't do anything. Be aware. I got a 6 amp cable and the TV works brilliantly. I can now watch Blackadder DVDs while I mess about on the boat.
Thanks for your pointers guys. Those tips along with some other web research, I believe, will have the problem sorted. The forum has once again proved to be a valuable and helpful resource.
In a boat there is no EARTH, you only always have 12V plus and minus, connect these two wires the right way round, and she should be a goer. In 30 years of fixing electronics I have see plenty of stereos that were wired in the wrong way round. This will blow the external fuse or ruin the unit by frying some tracks or the protection diode inside.
I connected the unit again on the weekend and all seems good ie it was working and producing sound.
The comments about frying the unit are a bit concerning so just to be clear;
The unit has 3 wires all labled ("Positive" Red, "Ground" Black and "Memory" Yellow). My research suggested that the "memory" wire was simply to allow the unit to retain things like preset stations when it was switched off. I wasn't too concerned about this and so had intended to not have this connected at all but the unit wouldn't work without it being connected to the live power source. So that is what I went with as it seemed to do the trick.
My electrical wiring is a little agricultural and was done about 25 years ago using parts from local hardware store and some fueses etc. As far as I can tell my wiring goes something like this.
From + terminal on battery to a fuse, then to a switch, then to the + wirte on the stereo unit. From - buss to the "ground" wire on the stereo unit.
There is also a couple of batery master switches (one for each battery) that when I am ot on board I turn off which is why I had thought I wouldn't worry about connecting the "Memory" wire because I thought that would mean that the power to the unit even when it was switched off would be also cut off therby negating any power to the memory wire.
Negative bus bar is in the view of the rear of the switch area, electrics ruin your day if they are not connected right good luck with your endeavours.
