Starting Stereo/Electronics Upgrade Project

[NautiWeasel]

Very cool.

[jwill323]

Yep it should be pretty cool, gives you a suite of gauges on your MDF straight from the ECM. Also through the bluetooth app it is a pretty good diagnostic tool where you can read and clear fault codes. Throwing in a few more pics, these are the final amp and sub install with some better lighting. I changed the layout a little and added some trim pieces. Also added the Fusion remote on the swim platform where I took out the old Sony remote same as the one I did on the dash. Had to crawl to the far side of the engine compartment to pull out the old sony remote and for some reason that's so claustrophobic for me, wasn't too bad once you get over there but the crawl through the bilge and being stuck down in there is not my favorite thing! I'll have one more trip to mount the Foxes, might have a couple beers before that.

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[jwill323]

Fox gateways mounted to board and ready to install in the boat. Gateways just plug into the engines and the N2k network, N2k transmits engine data to the MDF and powers the gateways as well. It's a much simpler system then adding the Smartcraft and a lot less expensive. No one will ever see this once it's mounted so I had to take a pic and share it! That's a 12"x12" board just for scale.

Do you guys like this stuff? My wife thinks I'm over the edge!

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[Titaniumboy]

This is cool stuff.

Your wife needs to get with the program.

[NautiWeasel]

That looks like a clean setup. I like doing projects as well, and sometimes, my best ones are projects that nobody ever sees. But I know they're done correctly / clean.
My wife is similar to yours in that she cares if it works, but doesn't care so much what it looks like as long as it's not in her line of sight.

[Krob1114]

My wife thinks I'm over the edge!

+1

[jwill323]

So finally got the Fox gateways hooked up and they are awesome! Really great data on the Garmin and on the app.


Here is the board installed in the boat. I thru bolted the mounting board in 5 spots with SS screws and lock nuts. Its tucked up and out of the way but gave me a good route to run some wire loom which I wire tied up under the fiberglass lip the runs along top in front of the engines and pulled the signal cables out to the front of the engines to hook into the diagnostic ports. (that is not completed in this picture)

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Here is a quick pic my son took while running. He spent about an hour customizing the screens for me and the best one he did is the split screen in this picture. It has my GPS map, GPS speed, total fuel flow, RPM, temp, voltage, a little audio bar to mute, adjust volume or skip tracks on the lower portion (looks like i had the right track playing for boat ownership) and the main menu all the way on the bottom. He also set me up with 4 presets on the 1-4 buttons on the right. 1 for this split screen, 2 full screen GPS nav, 3 all gauges, 4 is all audio control.

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Here is a quick pic of what info you get on the Fox full diagnostic screen. 1 point on this if you go further into the app I was showing 3 of the same fault codes on both engines. These codes are for sensors that i do not have since the engines are smartcraft but the boat is rigged with all analog gauges so the faults are for sensors that do not exist. This is all ok and normal and the faults can be ignored. The codes were for a pitot speed pick up sensor and #1 and #2 fuel tank sensors. none of these exist on my boat so no problem!

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[jwill323]

I'll take a few more finished pictures next time I'm down I wanted to get out on the boat and was sick of working on stuff so this is all I have for you guys! A final point was that my analog gauges are off somewhat temp is about 10 degrees higher on the analog gauges and the RPMs are a little high on the analog gauges. last pic after I cleaned and conditioned the seats with the Vinyl Sauce, that conditioning sauce smells like summer and I quit working after getting a good whiff of that!

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[jwill323]

1 more pic of the boat since I never did put a pic up of the whole boat.

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[Mathis.323]

Hey everyone,

I'm really glad that I have found this topic as I literally do the same project but with Hertz equipment and a single amplifier.
I’d be really interested how you did the power wiring for the amps. Did you use the original power and ground wires? To me they appear a bit small. Our 323 isn’t equipped with an amplifier from the factory but they installed all the wiring and also the fuses in the main board.
Now, the power wires in my boat seem to be quite too small for my taste - AWG 10. Hertz recommends AWG 4! Thus, I am considering to pull the original power and ground wires, although I preferred if I could use them.

Thanks for your answer in advance and all the best!

Mathis

So I'm starting my stereo upgrade project on my 2007 323 and thought I would share some pics as I go along. I'll be upgrading the head unit, amps, speakers, GPS and some lighting. I'm also adding a NMEA 2000 backbone and possibly a smart craft to NMEA or Fox Marine system to integrate engine data into the new GPS unit (haven't decided yet on which system but leaning towards the Fox Marine for cost and ease of installation. Anyway, Im doing some removal of old gear now and building some sub-assemblies here at home to make the final installation easier on the boat. This is where I'm at so far:

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[jhnmdahl]

If Hertz says 4ga for their marine amp, I'd use it, unless you're 100% sure you'll never pull the peak available power through the amp. If you poke around on here a bit, you'll find plenty of other installs that ran new power for amplifiers too, such as my own:

viewtopic.php?t=4198

Feel free to start your own thread, and you'll get more people to chime in.

[jwill323]

What is the model of the amp you are using and what do you have hooked up to it? i was initially concerned about the wire gauge size on my 323 project as well. I have 2, 8 ga factory wires ran up to the amps each on 40 amp breakers. I think this is small but the fusion amps are class D (much more efficient than the class AB they replaced) and i tested both wires voltage draw with a clamp on meter with the system at full tilt and i don't think i hit above 25-26 amps pull on either amp and this was in short intervals, the average draw was probably closer to 5-6 amps. The way my system is configured it is all ran very conservative each amp has 4 / 4 ohm speakers and 1 4 ohm sub on each amp (the fusion amps are stable down to 2 ohms so really running them at 1/2 rated power so to speak) as of right now I'm not overly concerned with the factory wiring for the amps although im doing a battery upgrade this spring and may pull 6 GA wiring for the amps or maybe 4 ga just for my own piece of mind. I haven't fully decided on this yet but i ran the system all last summer and had 0 issues. I'm not sure what type/class the Hertz amps are but the class D does make a big difference on current draw. 10 GA does seem small to me but the thing to remember is that the dynamics of music is not a steady draw like a windlass or a starter, it comes in really quick bursts (dynamic load) so the cable is not loaded like some other loads might be. if the Hertz amps are class D you can factor in the efficiency and also not running the amps really hard will keep the draw lower too. The important thing to make sure is that the power and ground are the same size and the power wires are appropriately fused (breakered) for the wire ga and distance ran at the battery end, then your worst case scenario is popping a breaker or fuse if the draw becomes a problem (not that you want this to happen but you will know that you have a problem if you do).

[Mathis.323]

Hey, thanks to both of you for the fast replies. Let me sum up my intended 4 Ohm setup:

Amplifier: Hertz Venezia V5c (12v and Class D): 80 W x 4 (4 Ω) plus 330 W (4 Ω) https://hertz-audio.com/product/venezia-v5c/
Speakers (2 pairs): 75W RMS per speaker x4 at 4 Ohm https://hertz-audio.com/product/marine- ... hmx_65_ld/
Subwoofer: 300W RMS at 4 Ohm https://hertz-audio.com/product/hms-10-b4-ld-c/

Beyond that, I will use the RGB module by Hertz (https://hertz-audio.com/product/hm-rgb-1-bk-2/) to light up the speakers and power the new rgbw ambient light throughout the cockpit.

My struggle with the power and ground wires in the boat is that Hertz recommends 4ga wires and a 50A fuse, but Cobalt used those way smaller wires to power two amps and secured each power wire with a 40A fuse. So, although all my knowledge says those wires have to be too small, I want to believe the manufacturer that intended those wires for even more output than I plan to install (according to the fuses).

So, my idea is to connect the two power wires to a terminal block and then run a single power wire to a 50A fuse and then to the amplifier. What do you think about that?

If I pulled the original cables, do you know whether they are directly connected to the fuses in the main board? In the sketch in the handbook, there are the points "to amps" and "Amp power". Since the "amp power" appears to be on the port side in the sketch and I found the power wires on starboard, I wondered whether there is an extra terminal block on port.

All the best,

Mathis

[jwill323]

so the 2 wires provided by Cobalt for the amp wiring should be 8ga wires and per the ABYC chart they are acceptable for the 40 amp breakers they are protected by.

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Given the excellent build quality of the older Cobalts this always seemed like an odd place to cut a corner and do the bare minimum but that is indeed what cobalt did. Many people upgrade this during new amplifier installations. Also the 2 power wires run back to 2 40 amp breakers labeled "amps" located under the rear port seat by the battery switches and the grounds run to the main negative buss bar in the front of the engine compartment.
My thinking on not upgrading this wiring during my installation was the following:

The rated power of all of these amplifiers is often based on testing that in no way reflects the actual usage of them (this is often done at full range 20hz-20khz and ran up to the point of clipping/high distortion actual music is never full band and you would never listen at heavy distortion). If you figure that amps = wattage/volts you can see that on your amplifier is 650 watts at 4 ohms so 650W / 12V = 54 amps then since the class d amp is 80% efficent you can multiply that 54 x 1.2 so 65 amps. if you were running at 2 ohms that jumps up to 1010 watts / 12v = 84 amps x 1.2 = 101 amps!! so why does hertz only recommend a 50 amp fuse for this amp even ran very hard at 2 ohms?

lets look at your speakers, the Hertz 6.5" speaker you are looking at is 89db efficent this is at 1 watt of power and measured 1 meter away from the speaker. db increases by 3db for every doubling of power (Watts) so 92db at 2 watts, 95 db at 4 watts, 98 db at 8 watts and 101db at 16 watts. 101 db is very, very loud! lets assume that you listen at 101db all the time and the sub is similar in efficiency so 16W x 5 speakers = 80 watts of actual power being used. 80 watts / 12v = about 6 amps x 1.2 = 8 amps draw. This tracks very closely to what i measured in real life on my install. now the sub is going to pull more amps especially during bass heavy passages but like i saw in real life about 25 amps peaks at very high volumes and very heavy music. so in reality the rated power of an amplifier has almost nothing to do with its real world performance/use and your 650 watt amplifier is likely running under 100 watts. music is a dynamic load so it is never pulling at a constant rate.

You would not want to use the 2 8ga wires into a terminal block and up the fuse size since each individual 8ga wire would not be able to carry the amperage of the larger fuse and you could overload a single wire this would be improper wiring. you would be better off just using 1 of the 8ga wires on its 40 amp breaker and understand that you will probably never get close to overloading it (at the 4 ohm loading), but if you did it is protected at its rated current so worst case scenario is tripping the breaker and not melting a wire/starting a fire.

All that aside i will probably upgrade this amp wiring this spring when I do my battery upgrades and this is probably the best practice as a good supply of clean power is always the best scenario.

[jhnmdahl]

Good advice, JWill.

I ended up installing a new breaker (by the power switch under the rear seat in my boat) and 4ga power lines to the amplifier to drive a JL 600W amplifier in part because I wanted the ability to add a second amp and a sub without running new power from the back of the boat to the center console. It wasn't really all that difficult, and seemed like the right thing to do. My boat originally had a head unit but no external amp, so using the existing wiring wasn't really a feasible option.