Problem with HU remote on/off wiring

[Dave S]

Here we go, referring an old post.

First the story if you want to read it….humorous and this is the short version, if not skip it and go to problem.

Yesterday, I was linked up to another boat and we were jamming hard, entertaining the entire area for almost full volume for over 2 hours, then it started to crackle, uh oh I better start engine to charge secondary battery and click click-no start. 20 boats around and no one has jumper cables including me, but everyone has a battery, first we thought to just switch out my two batteries to get the boat started, maybe enough juice to turn it over? No start-someone shows up with jumper cables, tried that-no start. I was changing starting battery side and a new friend was helping and working on acc battery side. Switched batteries and click-no start, replaced one battery from another boat and click-no start, replaced second battery with an optima blue top from another boat, now have two fresh batteries that are not my original and click-no start. Ok, two fresh batteries and click-no start, maybe more serious problem? Every time I tried to start it, dash said 11 volts-I knew this wasn’t correct. We started checking all fuses and circuit breakers, all were good. Another friend poked his head in and said to the other guy switching batteries, why didn’t you hook up that wire? He forgot to hook up the main ground wire for the acc battery, hooked it up-read 12 volts and engine fired in a second, so 2 hours or more later back to jamming and wasted a freakin awesome afternoon with my head buried in the engine compartment.


Now the problem-

So I linked to the other boat through my WS420, so I did not need my HU. Turns out-linking through the WS420-stereo still works without HU and then key on ACC. But the only way to get head unit on is to have key in run position which I think ran my starting battery down since I left my key in the run position the whole time we were jamming, note we also forgot to turn off our main switch the night before and only ran the boat to our spot for less the 20 minutes so minimal charging before the dead battery. I really think my HU should be wired to the ACC switch on the key, but I am still having the problem with the ipod where every time I shut off engine and restart the ipod has to be unplugged and plugged back in to be recognized. Back to square one on original post-I am thinking of wiring the HU remote to an open ACC switch on the dash, anyone see a problem with this? At the very least wire the HU to the ACC on the key. Any thoughts?



http://www.tigeowners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12255

[chpthril]

An unused ACC switch on the dash may still be connected to the main starting battery, so the same problem will occur, but yes, you do need to relocate the H/U's red remote turn-on wire to something other then the key switch. This will fix the Ipod cycling. Determine which batteries the helm switches are powered by. If its the main starting, then run a new wire from the house battery to the switch you want to use. Now the whole system will be off the house and the main starting should be completely isolated.

Is the H/U's yellow B+ and black GND on the same source as the amps?

[Dave S]

I am not sure about your question, I originally thought no, because the HU would not come on in the ACC location on the key switch, but the amp, ws420 would come on and could be run with an aux input to the WS420. But yesterday the HU came on in the ACC location? Maybe I have been partially wrong all along in that the HU came on in ACC location? I always turned the key to run to listen to music in the past when parked because I thought the HU wouldn't come on in ACC. The WS420, amp, sub and tower speakers were professionally installed upon delivery to me.

The boat is in storage 30 miles from the house, so I can't really go check it out closer in the evenings-bad part about storage at our favorite spot.

Anyway, that part may be solved for now.

I would still like to look into have the HU wired to a separate ACC Switch in the dash that is wired to the house battery so the ipod does not reset everytime we turn the engine off.

[Dave S]

Also to add-I linked up with the same guy and a third boat yesterday and we jammed hard for 3 hours or more, started the boat twice just to make sure it would start-no problems-left 4-5 hours later after still playing music and started right up.

[chpthril]

I am not sure about your question, I originally thought no, because the HU would not come on in the ACC location on the key switch, but the amp, ws420 would come on and could be run with an aux input to the WS420. But yesterday the HU came on in the ACC location? Maybe I have been partially wrong all along in that the HU came on in ACC location? I always turned the key to run to listen to music in the past when parked because I thought the HU wouldn't come on in ACC. The WS420, amp, sub and tower speakers were professionally installed upon delivery to me.

The boat is in storage 30 miles from the house, so I can't really go check it out closer in the evenings-bad part about storage at our favorite spot.

Anyway, that part may be solved for now.

I would still like to look into have the HU wired to a separate ACC Switch in the dash that is wired to the house battery so the ipod does not reset everytime we turn the engine off.

A head-unit, much like an amp, has a B+ and Ground and is turned on by a 12V signal coming in on the remote turn-on wire. On the head-unit, the yellow is the B+ memory wire and is actually the circuit that the power consumed by the head-unit is drawn from. The small red remote turn-on really doesnt consume any power. its nothing more then a signal to turn the head-unit on, same as an amp.

So, if the stereo head-unit ran down the starting battery, it was the draw on the yellow wire, not the red wire on the key switch.

If you had the key in the "RUN" position, it was that load that more then likely taxed the starting battery.

So, the yellow memory and black ground wire need to share the same source as the amps and the red turn-on wire needs to be moved off the key switch, but neither for the reason of running the battery down.