Boat stereo problems

We put a new Clarion stereo system in our boat in May. The equipment is actually located inside the bathroom so it is out of the weather. We used it 5 times. We didn’t use it for two weeks and when we tried to turn it on it no longer worked. We looked at connections and fuses with no luck. We bought a new Kenwood stereo and installed it. It worked perfectly everyday for a week while we were on the lake. We pulled the boat home. It sat for two weeks. We launched it last night and……the stereo won’t work again. No lights. No sound. Nothing. The key is on. All other accessories work! Any ideas?!?!

Does it light up at all?

Can you use a voltmeter and see if there’s any power getting to the unit?

Is everything else working the same?

SR

It does nothing. No lights. No sound.

Everything else in the boat works. We will try using the voltmeter this weekend. The puzzling part is this same thing happened to the last stereo a month ago. I’m thinking ground wire?

while the boat is sitting,do you have a battery maintainer hooked up to keep the batteries charged??
the reason I ask is chargers or maintainers have diodes and rectifiers in them to convert a/c current to d/c current.
radios dont have much in them for protection against an a/c current influx of any amount and they will go bad from it,have the charging system tested for this.
a bad alternator will do the same thing but I am thinking it would have failed while the boat was being used if the alternator was at fault,have it checked while you are at it.

if your radio has a keep alive memory wire hooked to the main power harness,this is how the a/c current is getting into it if the charger is indeed bad while the charger/maintainer is hooked up as it provides power continuously to the radio so it wont lose your settings.

Have you tried to hook it directly to the battery(or any 12v battery) to see if the radio still works?

We have not tried that. Will try this weekend. Thanks

We have not tried hooking directly to a 12v. Will try this weekend. Thanks

Thanks so much for this reply. We lost both these stereos without using a battery maintainer. We only use the battery maintainer during the winter while it is being stored.

Any other thoughts?

Is the stereo hooked to the main starting battery or an accessory battery? If stereo clock function was hooked up and it goes to a secondary battery, it runs the battery dead.

I may be in the minority, but I have had the “clock backup” hooked up on our pontoon for at least 7 years, and it sometimes sits for 3 weeks at a time. It draws so little that I have never had it cause a dead battery.

Ralph Wiggum wrote:

I may be in the minority, but I have had the “clock backup” hooked up on our pontoon for at least 7 years, and it sometimes sits for 3 weeks at a time. It draws so little that I have never had it cause a dead battery.

I agree, there should be so little draw that the battery should hardly even notice it over a couple weeks. Also this does not seem to be the case since everything else is working properly.

Tammy, did you ever connect it directly to the battery?

We checked the stereo with a voltmeter. It shows power going to it. We did not connect it directly to the battery. This makes us think the radio is fried! I also tried the reset button on the stereo. Nothing.

Is is a marine stereo? Even in a protected area, I’ve fried several non-marine stereo. We switched to a marine stereo, and it’s been flawless despite being dripping wet on more than one occasion.