It is possible that your battery is bad and
the units that are presently working have a wider range of possible
operating voltages than the stereo. Your depth finder may be able to
operate on 9 or 10 volts, and the radio may require 11 volts minimum
to work. Different devices may have different thresholds below which
they will not function.

********

Good point.

Thanks for the outstanding information everyone... I will try out a
couple of things this PM and return with my findings :)

Boats are not like cars. Boats do not have a ground system in them as the
body is not metal. You need a ground wire from the battery and a positive
wire from the battery and a positive wire from accessory (or wire both to
positive battery). You must have a ground from the battery. Any piece of
metal will not be a ground.

--
Tony
my boats and cars at http://t.thomas.home.mchsi.com

-
"T39" wrote in message
ups.com...
Thanks for the outstanding information everyone... I will try out a
couple of things this PM and return with my findings :)

Take a meter and check for voltage between your power line and ground line.

"tony thomas" wrote in message
news:%WTfe.68268$NU4.41598@attbi_s22...
Boats are not like cars. Boats do not have a ground system in them as the
body is not metal. You need a ground wire from the battery and a positive
wire from the battery and a positive wire from accessory (or wire both to
positive battery). You must have a ground from the battery. Any piece of
metal will not be a ground.

--
Tony
my boats and cars at http://t.thomas.home.mchsi.com

-
"T39" wrote in message
ups.com...
Thanks for the outstanding information everyone... I will try out a
couple of things this PM and return with my findings :)

On Tue, 10 May 2005 01:15:39 GMT, "tony thomas"
wrote:

~~ snippage ~~

Boats do not have a ground system in them as the
body is not metal.

You have to have a ground system or anything that requires DC won't
work.

Later,

Tom

"T39" wrote in message
oups.com...

wrote:
Should I just connect ground to any metal part of the boat or is
there
anything in particular I should be looking for?

Does your boat have a grounding strip or buss? Did you pull out an
existing radio? If so, reuse the same groung location. If all else
fails, the engine contacts the water through
the shaft, etc.

I don't know if it does. What does a particular grounding strip or
buss look like? I didn't pull out an existing radio, I actually
created a (rather big) glove compartment in which I have mounted the
radio.

Run it from the negative side of the battery, then connect it to the black
ground wire of the radio and also to the metal chassis of the radio. Maybe
the radio chassis has to be grounded as well?

Jack

The multi-meter definitely put me on the right track. It turned out
that the ground wire was causing all the problems. My hot wire was
good, but when I traced my ground wire back to the negative end I found
a big break in the wire. The reason I didn't find out about this
earlier is because it was behind all the gauges and stuff where it was
tore up. I had to literally take everything apart to find out where it
was messed up.

I replaced the ground and things are working great now. Thanks a lot
everyone for your help. It is greatly appreciated!

why not try them both on a bench with a battery?

Thanks for the follow up post - it's how a lot of us learn.
Something I learned from listening to Click and Clack on Car Talk radio
years ago, is that when screwy things happen and there doesn't seem to be a
consistency to an electrical problem, it's almost always a grounding
problem.

"T39" wrote in message
oups.com...
The multi-meter definitely put me on the right track. It turned out
that the ground wire was causing all the problems. My hot wire was
good, but when I traced my ground wire back to the negative end I found
a big break in the wire. The reason I didn't find out about this
earlier is because it was behind all the gauges and stuff where it was
tore up. I had to literally take everything apart to find out where it
was messed up.

I replaced the ground and things are working great now. Thanks a lot
everyone for your help. It is greatly appreciated!

On 9 May 2005 06:35:28 -0700, "T39" wrote:

I have a 69 Glasspar Cutlas and I am trying to build in a DUAL Marine
AM/FM/CD receiver, but when I hook everything up the unit will not
power on.

Its the rectifier.