Music won't play - after putting batteries back in

[MIKEP]

what am I doing wrong? I have a 2015 Yamaha AR240 dual batteries. I put my batteries back in for the season. Boat starts and systems work except no sounds from the speakers. I have wet sound speakers, 2 amps and a sub. I connected both wet sound wires to the positive start battery. No sound when I try to play the radio or Bluetooth. The start battery is in the back and the house is in the front in the pic. I must be crossing something up. Please help it's driving me crazy today! Thanks!!

 

[tdonoughue]

A little hard to tell from the pic, but where is the negative wire from the sound system? If you have only 2 wires from the sound system, I would bet one is for the negative and one is for the positive (rather than both to the positive).

 

[Chip F.]

That's what I see both power and ground connected to the positive.

 

[MIKEP]

Yes I connected both wet sound wires to the positive start battery. The red coated wire I believe is the pos and the brownish wire is the other wet sound wire. I must need to connect the brown wire to the neg terminal. Correct? I wasn't sure where to connect the music wires...I guessed

 

[tdonoughue]

Probably, but I would not leave it to chance. Trace it to the other end (probably no need to physically trace it, but go look at where it is supposed to power). It likely goes to your amp and there you will find that the red one goes to the + and the brown to the -, then hook them up that way on the battery.

I say trace it because there have been times some dumb installer puts them reversed... Then you can fry an amp or a head unit. Not fun.

 

[MIKEP]

I just moved the brown wire over to the neg and it works. You guys are awesome!! Thanks so much! It works great now. Rocking out in my driveway now

 

[Bruce]

I have seen other members tape or wire tie the positive and negative wires in a bundle so they did not get mixed up. There often are spring time posts from membership who hooked up a battery backwards and hopefully only have blown fuses so we all need to be careful with the battery connections.

 

[Julian]

Yeah...a little time spent labeling or gathering the wires up when you disconnect them will save you big hassles when you go to reconnect them in the spring! I group them together with a twist tie and have a label on them (Batt 1-POS, Batt 1-NEG etc)

 

[tdonoughue]

...and then I label my batteries, too, because I hate trying to figure out which is the start battery if I need to jump or something.

 

[Matt Phillips]

When I remove my batteries in the fall, I remove the connections from each battery terminal and then loosely zip-tie them together (in a sense, the zip tie substitutes for the battery terminal). That makes it easy to install in the spring.

Additionally, when I upgraded batteries two years ago, I also went with a group 31 for the house battery...as that's where most of the draw comes from and has more capacity. My start battery is a 27 so there's a noticeable size difference between the two.

@MIKEP, above you said "Yes I connected both wet sound wires to the positive start battery." You should move the leads for your stereo over to the "house battery" otherwise your stereo will be drawing from your start battery...which you want to preserve for engine starting. Unless I read that wrong up above...

 

[Mainah]

Alternatively you can just connect all acessories direct to the hot or cold side of the battery switches depending on what it is. That way just the factory wires to hook up to the batteries.

 

[Noko]

Ever see a battery terminal turn cherry red? I have, Doh! Yep got the wires mixed up since I have two batteries. I should have taken pics of the wiring before I removed my batts. Now the boat is inside for storage so the batteries stay in but it can be a head shaker figuring out what goes where.

 

[2nazt]

Ever see a battery terminal turn cherry red? I have, Doh! Yep got the wires mixed up since I have two batteries. I should have taken pics of the wiring before I removed my batts. Now the boat is inside for storage so the batteries stay in but it can be a head shaker figuring out what goes where.

I've witnessed that, it caused the battery to explode out, not pretty. Also saw the after math of a loose terminal melting the terminal and the the lead through the plastic casing!

 

[MIKEP]

@Matt Phillips okay thanks. I'll move the stereo over to the house

 

[Mainah]

I really like wire lables or tags. Yes I am one of those annoying guys who regularly uses a label machine.

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