Adding an amp and mid speakers to my 242

[Advance]

Power connector on Fusion HU was cut. RCA’s severed. Where do we get a replacement?

 

[Shookie]

I’m sure you can order online or direct from Fusion. I just replaced my entire unit and it came with new cables.

 

[Shookie]

Getting started today!

 

[Shookie]

Worked pretty much all day Saturday and Sunday.... not quite done with everything but am close. Took my time, wasn't in a rush but is taking longer than I thought it would. I took lots of pictures and will post a bunch. Hopefully this helps out someone in the future because pictures of other upgrades certainly helped me.

First thing I decided to do was move my batteries. I've wanted to do this a long time to take moe advantage of the storage space. The before picture is above in the previous post.

After


Once I got that done, I started looking at the wiring to the switches. I never saw anyone post what the back of the switches look like, so here it is.


I made up my cables and attached a new positive cable (AWG 1/0) from the House switch to the House battery. Let me say, the KnuKonceptz cables were heavy duty, good quality. Wasn't very easy to get into the lugs I bought but I managed. Here's what it looked like prior to mounting the switches again.


I decided to move the position where the switches were mounted. There was also a crossover for the tower tweeters and horn relay mounted to the right of original switch location. I moved both of those further aft to the side panel alongside the port engine. Here's the before.


Here's the after. You can also see the 150A breaker and pos/neg bus bars I added.


Last thing for this post..... be careful working around your batteries in tight places. I had the ground wire hooked up and accidentally touched the positive terminal on the house battery. Needless to say, some sparks were flying and it scared the shit out me for a second.....

 

[Shookie]

A few things with the Fusion head unit. Some of you may recall I replaced with entire unit because my volume knob broke off. In hindsight, it was kind of a good thing.... Yamaha cuts all of the other RCA connectors off and their harness doesn't have all the wires on it.

Here's what the factory harness looks like


The blue REM wire is not part of the the factory harness. Since new cables came with the new radio, I was OK. Otherwise would of had to at least buy new cables. Cheaper for sure, but at least I had them! The factory harness is on the left and the "new" one that came with the Fusion unit is on the right.


Got the RCA cable hooked up (KnuKonceptz Karma cable). Only hooked up temporary right now just to test everything and make sure it all works right.

 

[Shookie]

Wanted to get power to the amp so I was able to test each speaker as I re-wired everything, just to make sure it all works before I put the speakers back in. The JL MX280/4 comes with AWG 8 wire co that's what I bought from KnuKonceptz. I really think their AWG 8 is oversized because it was noticeably bigger than the cables on the amp and I could net get it in the lugs I bought. After 10 minutes of trying, I got a punch and made the lug opening just a bit bigger. This worked very well and was so much easier.


Cables hooked up

 

[Shookie]

Next was the fun part.... cutting holes in the fiberglass. Again, it was such a stress relief having seen other guys do this on 2018 242's. Just easier on the mind not worrying about cutting in the wrong spot and stuff not fitting. On the port side, here's where I decided to put it


Took a picture behind that area


I didn't have enough painters tape so skipped that. I don't know that it really does much anyway. I drilled a pilot hole to start and then with a 5" hole bit, I started in reverse to get the hole started. Absolutely no issues with the fiberglass at all. I had my shop-vac with a wide attachment directly under the hole. Honestly, it caught 95% of the mess. Had very little to clean up. I sat on the hose while I drilled to keep it position.


Voila!


I put some tape around the opening since I knew I would have my hand/arm in here pulling wires to the new speaker and up to the bow speaker.


The speaker fits! Whew


I proceeded to cut the starboard side. There was a huge difference in the thickness of the fiberglass. I get that the molds aren't perfect and there is some variation, but I was surprised. I didn't measure both pieces but did take a pic. Port on the left, starboard on the right of course


The captain speaker mounted

 

[Shookie]

Started getting dark last night. Have all of the speaker wires (KnuKonceptz Karma 14 gauge) run to the bow and the starboard side is complete. I have to finished the port cabin wiring today and then get the amp mounted and the cables cleaned up, tie wrapped in place, etc. Heading out to finish it up now......

I did remove this panel in the head. Had it way easier to get the speaker cable up the port bow speaker. The panel against the outer hull doesn't have much room between it but I got the cable behind there and reinstalled the panel. Was working with a flashlight at this point so was where I ended up.

 

[Shookie]

Another full day working on it yesterday and am done.... to recap,

I ran the power and ground around the front of the battery storage to keep it separate from the speaker and RCA cables. There were a couple tie wrap posts in there thanks to Yamaha but I needed to come up a way to secure the cables the entire way. I have some industrial Velcro that I decided to use. I put a couple strips of it under the ledge and then wrapped the other part around the cables. Should hold well.... if not, I can change it later.





Then I needed to start thinking about where to put all the cables and to support them. I left a foot or so of extra cable on each and those KnuKonceptz 14 gauge wires take up a lot of space. I thought about using some kind of hook mounted up high between the hull and cockpit but I didn't have anything laying around my garage. I found this plastic cable thing I had and cut it in half. The pictures will make it more clear..... I think it worked very well.




It keeps all the cables up out of the way

My guess is there will be some comments about the wire nuts. Since I wired the speakers in parallel I had to connect 3 wires together a few times. I didn't buy any connectors ahead of time so for now I just used regular wire nuts you would use in your home. Put some shrink wrap around the bundle and then wrapped some electrical tape around each one. Not a permanent solution and I'm going to look online for something more appropriate. Appreciate any suggestions from you.

Finished view of that storage area and switches/bus bars. I love having some additional space for storage where the batteries used to be. I forgot to take a picture, but I added a USB charger on the port side by the new speaker.

 

[adrianp89]

Looks good. For the wire nuts, you can replace those with crimp caps.

If you want to take battery wiring a step further, you can loom it all together and then use black screw zip ties to really make it look factory.

 

[Shookie]

To finish up in the cockpit area, I added a high water level sensor. Someone else recommend an Instapark sensor that's battery powered so that's what I used. I mounted the sensor down low where my float switch for the 2nd bilge pump is. I ran the wires (had to cut and add some extra length) up to the battery switch area. Keeps the alarm out of the engine area where it should be a bit easier to hear....???? Will see how it works.






Went back and did a little cleanup too. On the starboard side I ran a speaker cable (future when I add a second amp for the swim deck speaker), Remote wire and RCA's through an existing hole between the storage area anc cockpit. I had some leftover hose from my bilge install so I took a piece and wrapped around the cables so there's no wear around that hole in the fiberglass.

 

[Quad]

I won't be doing an audio upgrade this year, but after the trim tab installation, I have some final electrical cleanup to do - You've essentially executed my plan fully, including the bus bars, breaker, and moving batteries/switches. Is the floor under the battery trays plywood or fiberglass?

 

[Shookie]

So last, I had to get the swim deck speakers hooked back up. My plan all along was to use the existing wiring to those 2 speakers and connect them directly to the Fusion head. I did this and got nothing out of either speaker. Damn!

Then it dawned on me those were probably run in series (or maybe parallel) with other speakers.... went looking and the wire colors matched up with connections to the tower speakers. So since I had those wires disconnected now there was a break in the chain. I started looking/thinking to figure out a workaround and finally said screw it, I'll just run 2 new wires. Starboard side is super easy, about 1-2 feet of cable. The bigger problem was getting wires over to the port side. There's no hole in the storage area and I didn't really want to run another cable up and through the engine area then drill a hole.....

So I decided to look under the cleanout hatch and run a cable across there. I assumed it was open up into the sides of the hull, but wasn't sure. Sure enough, I was able to snake a cable through there and get it up the port opening. Not much to zip tie to down in the area and I'm not sure if anything in there gets super hot (this was my first time opening that hatch). I was able to secure the cable so it's not touching anything except the hose from the main deck drain.

Didn't get any up close pictures other than this.... yes I was drinking by this point.




Got the wires connected and everything worked!

 

[Shookie]

I won't be doing an audio upgrade this year, but after the trim tab installation, I have some final electrical cleanup to do - You've essentially executed my plan fully, including the bus bars, breaker, and moving batteries/switches. Is the floor under the battery trays plywood or fiberglass?

I honestly didn't check. I would assume fiberglass but I'm not sure. The vertical piece I mounted my amp on is plywood.

 

[Quad]

I honestly didn't check. I would assume fiberglass but I'm not sure. The vertical piece I mounted my amp on is plywood.

Good deal. I'll assume fiberglass and countersink accordingly.

On another note, where did you relocate the weird factory-installed fuse boxes that initially were next to the switches?

 

[Shookie]

So, how does it sound? Well..... pretty freaking good! So much louder, clearer, and just better compared to the original setup. The true test will be out on the water running hard but it will be plenty loud. When I first turned it on in the afternoon, my neighbor was on a conference call and people on the call could hear the music from his home office. I cranked it up for about 20 seconds . It was plenty loud and I highly doubt I'll ever have it turned up close to that for real listening.

No subwoofer, but I have to say all of the Polk's do a decent job of providing some low end. It doesn't smack you in the chest, but it's good enough (for now ). The JL towers really came to life with a real amp driving them. Those things scream!

I'll also add that I LOVE having the circuit breaker. I just kept the battery switches on and shut off the circuit breaker as I connected or disconnected a speaker. Kept me from having to get up and turn off the blower and silence any alarms. Really like that capability the circuit breaker/switch provides.

All in, this upgrade cost me around $750. The amp, 2 speakers, cables, circuit breaker, USB charger, bus bars, lugs, and a hole saw kit. Well worth the $$$.

After I was done cleaning up, the boss and I sat on the boat and had a beer. I was just glad to be done!!!

 

[Shookie]

Good deal. I'll assume fiberglass and countersink accordingly.

On another note, where did you relocate the weird factory-installed fuse boxes that initially were next to the switches?

Hard to see but I just moved them "around the corner" under the seat. No real change in wire length or anything so simply had to screw them back into the plywood separating that area from the engine compartment.

 

[Shookie]

Looks good. For the wire nuts, you can replace those with crimp caps.

If you want to take battery wiring a step further, you can loom it all together and then use black screw zip ties to really make it look factory.

Thanks I'll look into the caps. I can 99.9% guarantee I will not be buying loom and changing anything. It was mid 90's here all weekend and I don't want to get upside down into those small spaces anymore!

 

[adrianp89]

Thanks I'll look into the caps. I can 99.9% guarantee I will not be buying loom and changing anything. It was mid 90's here all weekend and I don't want to get upside down into those small spaces anymore!

I get it, I am currently taking a break from fixing more factory Yamaha problems.

 

[Shookie]

Was out on the lake last weekend and WOW, what a difference. WOT throttle and I could hear music clear as anything! One of my sons kept asking me to turn it up and I just smiled! Really surprised at the low end I get out of the Polk's. A sub would certainly be better, but for now it's good enough for me and a major, major improvement over the stock setup.

If someone is looking to upgrade for a reasonable price ($750), an amp and a couple extra cockpit speakers do the trick!