Stereo working intermittently

[jkim1990]

All,

Just splashed a new to me 2005 300 Sundancer. Had spent last 3-4 weekends working on her in dry dock and stereo was working great.

After dropping her in and running around a bit, stereo quit working. Helm power button was lit and had no response from either unit or remote.

I tried turning battery switches off/on, helm power button for stereo and checked EIM breakers. Pictures of my breakers are below, not exactly sure how they trip/reset. Most of the breakers seem to have "knob" sticking out, stereo does not seem to. After some messing around, stereo powered up, not sure what I did (if anything) made the difference.

View attachment 24801
We were on the hook, as soon as we left and got on plane, stereo went dead again. :smt021 Tried same process but did not come back on this time.

When my mechanic put the boat in the water, they washed cockpit down pretty good. Maybe some water got in somewhere and needs to dry? I am traveling most of this week and perhaps a few days in the sun will cure all, trying to be optomistic.

Looking back on it, I did not check to see if CD changer would respond which wuold have at least told me if I had power at the unit.

Any thoughts on what else to try ? How to operate breakers or similar experience. Thanks, hate to call in electronics guys already....

 

[CliffA]

i have to be careful when i wash my boat to not get too much water on the gauge panel and/or stereo weatherproof housing....if i do i will get water in my stereo head unit...my head unit is located below the dash gauge panel.....then i have to remove the wiring plug from the back of the head unit and use a heat gun for a few mins to dry out the water in the plug and in the body of the head unit....i'm not 100% sure exactly where the water gets into the head unit during washing...i believe it is either from the water dripping down from the dash panel or from water being forced around the edges of the splash guard of the stereo weatherproof housing from the pressure of the water hose....this may be the same thing happening to your stereo....

cliff

 

[Bel_Mar_Pointe]

The EIM breakers will pop out when tripped and need to be pushed in to reset. They are covered by a protective boot with the reset button being inside the boot. It is hard to tell from your picture but it looks like your ACC breaker (third from top right) is in the tripped position. Did the stereo head unit actually shut off or just lose output?

 

[jkim1990]

The EIM breakers will pop out when tripped and need to be pushed in to reset. They are covered by a protective boot with the reset button being inside the boot. It is hard to tell from your picture but it looks like your ACC breaker (third from top right) is in the tripped position. Did the stereo head unit actually shut off or just lose output?

Thanks Brian - Stereo unit will not power up at all when this happens. All breakers seem to be pushed in, stereo still works sometimes, not others. Has to be a short somewhere, does not seem to be related to moisture/rain at all. I have an electronics guy coming to help me get GPS/radar system online, will add this to the list. Thanks for to all for responses.

 

[jkim1990]

Updates. Stereo is no longer working intermittently. It is not working at all... The most basic feature of a boat is the stereo, need tunes soon!

According to wiring diagram, stereo is fed through "stereo amplier" breaker in cabin DC panel. Circuit feeds stereo amp in vberth and then stereo head. Also power button at helm that must be turned on. I did a bunch of multimeter readings and other tests:

- Verified I have power on load side of breaker in cabin DC panel
- Power coming into amp, have not pulled wiring apart enough to tell if stereo head voltage feeds back to head from vberth amp location. Both fuses at amp are good
- stereo power button lights up and can hear some type of clicking like a relay activating
- EIM unit - Power on load side of 3A stereo breaker
- No power coming into back of head, there are two separate power lines coming into, one fused at 3 amps (or so) and one at 15 amps

Question
- How does helm power button activate stereo power circuit?

It would seem as I have power everywhere but at the head unit. Speculating something wrong between helm power button and head unit.

Can anyone provide thoughts on this circuit or anything I should test/something I a missing? (Will be traveling all this week so my responses may be delayed)

 

[ZZ13]

Updates. Stereo is no longer working intermittently. It is not working at all... The most basic feature of a boat is the stereo, need tunes soon!

According to wiring diagram, stereo is fed through "stereo amplier" breaker in cabin DC panel. Circuit feeds stereo amp in vberth and then stereo head. Also power button at helm that must be turned on. I did a bunch of multimeter readings and other tests:

- Verified I have power on load side of breaker in cabin DC panel
- Power coming into amp, have not pulled wiring apart enough to tell if stereo head voltage feeds back to head from vberth amp location. Both fuses at amp are good
- stereo power button lights up and can hear some type of clicking like a relay activating
- EIM unit - Power on load side of 3A stereo breaker
- No power coming into back of head, there are two separate power lines coming into, one fused at 3 amps (or so) and one at 15 amps

Question
- How does helm power button activate stereo power circuit?

It would seem as I have power everywhere but at the head unit. Speculating something wrong between helm power button and head unit.

Can anyone provide thoughts on this circuit or anything I should test/something I a missing? (Will be traveling all this week so my responses may be delayed)

Jason, I recently went through a similar debug solving a much more minor problem with my factory installed premium sound system in my '04 300DA. My system has the Clarion XMD3 head unit, a Clarion APX400 400W amp under the V-birth driving the four cockpit speakers and a Clarion APX200 200W amp behind the DC panel just below the head unit driving a 10" subwoofer mounted under the helm seat. I corresponded with Sea Ray when I was working on mine to find out wiring information. Here's how mine wired up:

- There are two power inputs to the XMD3. One is the main power coming from the switch on the helm panel (I don't know how they are fused - I will have to look at the XMD3 install manual which is on the boat). The other is for the memory circuit and is wired directly to the battery (so that switching off the power/breakers does not reset the XMD3).
- The stereo/amp switch on the DC panel only powers the amps +12V input, it has no connection to the XMD3.
- The XMD3 "turns on" the amps through a remote input connection to the APX400 and the APX200, when the XMD3 is powered on from the helm switch. If the XMD3 is not turning on then the amps are not turning on either (they have power through the DC panel switch, but need the XMD3 to switch them on to operation mode)

Hope that helps - sounds like you do indeed have either a bad XMD3 power input (maybe just the connector on the back of the XMD3 is loose) or compromised wiring between the helm switch and the XMD3, or the connections at the helm switch are flakey.

 

[Bel_Mar_Pointe]

"According to wiring diagram, stereo is fed through "stereo amplier" breaker in cabin DC panel. Circuit feeds stereo amp in vberth and then stereo head. Also power button at helm that must be turned on. I did a bunch of multimeter readings and other tests:"

As ZZ13 stated, this would not be the 'normal' wiring config. The cabin DC panel 'stereo amp' breaker only feeds the amp, which is powered on when the head unit is turned on. The helm 'stereo on' button to the head unit is where you should be looking.