stereo wiring

[QuickMick]

I just installed my new stereo, which worked for about a day. lol. now i dont have any power to it. oddly if an exposed speaker wire hits the hot wire the faceplate lights up. i did accidentally hook the hot to the ground and visaversa..... would that have blown the fuse? any tips?

[mitiempo]

Do you have a wire or 2 wrong? And every join sealed so they can't touch?

[14432]

You should be able to tell if the fuse is blown by looking at it. If you wired it wrong the fuse probably blew. If you have an in-line fuse, remove it while you're wiring the unit. Your statement about the speaker wire & hot wire causing the display to light up is a little confusing but you should avoid that type of wire contact altogether

[bwindrope]

I've wrestled with my speaker wiring off and on for years now. You would think it would be straightforward, and indeed it is, except that all my wires are led to my electrical panel and once there are near impossible to trace to their origins. My approach to this has been to move wires around until I can isolate the bow port speaker and then stern port speaker and so on.

I have it close, but not perfect, and my stereo itself is old and needs replacing anyway. I just had to post to sympathize with stereo difficulties. In my experience, it has been more obtuse and hard to fix than replacing my rigging piece by piece or replacing my engine mounts. Go figure.

[ezatsea]

Originally Posted by QuickMick

i did accidentally hook the hot to the ground and visaversa..... would that have blown the fuse? any tips?

I did this once years ago and it did more than the fuse, it fried the unit itself.

[Pub911]

sounds like the exposed speaker wire is providing ground and causing the faceplate light (at the least) to complete a circuit. That's a least a sign of life. The unfortunate reality is that you're going to have to go slowly, one wire at a time and figure out where you stand. Disconnect everything first and then be sure you have a good negative ground, next connect the primary positive wire to a suitable supply. Verify the connections with a voltmeter at a point on the radio's wiring between the connection you just made and the unit itself. If you get a solid 12v reading, try turning the unit on. If it responds, you may be in business. If not, it may not be broke, but your stuck unless you find a blow fuse internally. And that's a very product-specific problem.

So if it's a new unit, maybe it 'came out of the box that way'

Good luck.

[hellosailor]

" i did accidentally hook the hot to the ground and visaversa"

Wouldn't explain why it worked for a day and then stopped. Usually there are a limited number of wires to work with: One negative/ground, one "memory" constant positive, one "switched" positive that turns on the whole radio, and then either four or eight speaker wires.

Check the first three and any external fuses, you may just have a loose contact or bad connection. Then check all the speaker wires--depending on the design of the radio, they may not be interchangeable and swapping them around can blow things out, make sure any polarity or crossed pair issues are straigthened out, i.e. "these two" to "this speaker" for each of the speakers.

It is possible the radio was defective out of the box--that happens sometimes. But first, check the wiring.

[QuickMick]

i wired it all at home, all brand new. i was doing a 'test run' worked for a day, given that all the speaker wire was connected, i ididnt want to snake the wire through cabin until i knew it all worked so i wouldnt have to pull it apart.
soooo, in 'test run' i just set the +/- on the main terminals on the harness. when i left that day i pulled em off. the next day i did ye ole visa versa trick....

[southshoreS24]

sounds like a ground problem. trace your ground and make sure the connection is good. since you did hook the wires up wrong test your connections and inspect the wire to see if maybe it fried any wire or insulation and is now shorting out somewhere.

[hellosailor]

Ah, you did the reverse polarity on the second day and killed it then and there? Yes, that can totally kill a stereo. Or, just blow a fuse IF the radio was designed with reverse polarity protection. Some are, some aren't. If you can't find a blown fuse (and it might be internal) then the odds are you killed it. Still, they might fix it as a warranty matter.