Wiring a stereo.

[LionsFootball]

Hello, I wired up a kenwood stereo in my boat. It had all the speaker connections, the black ground, and a red hot wire with 5amp fuse coming from the boat. The wiring harness off the stereo has a red power wire and yellow power wire. I hooked up the yellow off the stereo to the red on the boat and it will eject and take cds but that is it. The boat did not come with a wire harness to plug in so I direct wired to the kenwood harness. Any idea on why the stereo will not fully power up? If you need more info please let me know. Thank you!

 

[Silvertip]

Both the red wire for the stereo and the yellow wire must be hooked to 12 volts from the boat harness. On modern stereos, speakers are not grounded. What you might consider ground is a "return". Big difference. So make sure the speakers are not wired directly to the metal chassis of the stereo. Did you also connect the ground from the stereo to the ground on the boat harness? To summarize this, Red wire (+12 volts) from the stereo goes to +12 volts on boat harness. Same for yellow wire from stereo. Ground from stereo to ground from boat harness. Speakers to speaker wires from stereo. Do not connect speakers to ground.

 

[LionsFootball]

Okay, got it. Red and yellow together this time, black to ground. Works now. Thanks!

 

[gm280]

If I'm not mistaken, the red wire can be switched for powering the radio on and off, but the yellow wire has to keep +12 volts on it to maintain the memory circuits on the head unit. And that includes stations, clock, presets, tone selections and things like that.

 

[Silvertip]

That is true but why add a separate switch for the radio when it already has a power button. The yellow wire keeps the station memory powered so if you insist on a separate switch then yes, the red wire goes to the switch. The yellow wire must see power 24x7 to avoid loss of station memory.