Detailed 2016 242 LS $1k Audio Upgrade

[Mainah]

Not an expert just a back yard hack who learned to do things right from his grandfather and paid attention.

-Ran through fuel tank compartment and repourposed standard household sump pump hose as conduit available from any hardware store and there is just one common size

-0 awg gave the ability to add everything else I have and if on the line I take the safer approach

- Someone here found the audiopipe block but with mini anl fuse which are better IMO. Was not that long ago just the the search function with keyword audiopipe

-I will have to dig up the rest later

 

[Dave burke]

Thx. Very helpful. No hurry on the rest.

 

[Honey Badger]

@Mainah did you run your power for the amp board directly from the battery or did you run it through an isolator/switch? Thanks again for the help.

 

[Mainah]

Ground directly to house battery negative post. Positive to inline fuse very very close to house battery switch and other side of inline fuse to the house battery switch (have to take it off to do that.

Good quality shielded RCA cables do make a difference. Think about it this way there is low voltage low ac current flowing thrown them. Cheaply made cables wont be shielded and may have a few contingious strands with poorly terminated connectors. Just the opposite for good quality cables. As for the insanely expensive RCA snake oil cables .... yes they do exist to part a fool from his money. I bought from knuknoceptz on mine

For speaker wire and connectors size will depend on load and terminal size I got all of my speaker wire from KnuKnoceptz and can speak to the high quality. Bear in mind their high quality 14 awg round cable is a bit difficult to strip but IMO worth the extra effort. these are carrying mid voltage ac current and even good 18 awg will handle the loads for the distances we are talking about but the bigger the wire the less resistance the wire is introducing. I personally will not use less than 14 awg for speaker wire.

 

[Dave burke]

Thanks Mainah.

 

[Dave burke]

One last question @Mainah (at least for now!) - do you remember which KnuKonceptz RCA cables you got? I was leaning towards the Klarity or maybe the Karma. Thx

 

[Mainah]

I went with the karma

 

[n8dogger32]

Ground directly to house battery negative post. Positive to inline fuse very very close to house battery switch and other side of inline fuse to the house battery switch (have to take it off to do that.

Hi Mainah, I didn't want to revive your old but AMAZING audio upgrade post but now that I'm within a week of implementation and ordering the wiring stuff I have a couple of questions for you.

Did you replace the existing wire from the house battery --> switch with the 0 AWG or did you add to it?

Any concerns about flipping the parallel switch with the 0AWG wire to the house switch but much smaller gauge between the house and starter switch and between the starter switch and starter battery?

Lastly, how did you make it around the engine bay/over fuel tank to the help in 20' of 0AWG?

 

[Nick Hughes]

Hi Mainah, I didn't want to revive your old but AMAZING audio upgrade post but now that I'm within a week of implementation and ordering the wiring stuff I have a couple of questions for you.

Did you replace the existing wire from the house battery --> switch with the 0 AWG or did you add to it?

Any concerns about flipping the parallel switch with the 0AWG wire to the house switch but much smaller gauge between the house and starter switch and between the starter switch and starter battery?

Lastly, how did you make it around the engine bay/over fuel tank to the help in 20' of 0AWG?

New 0-4g from house battery to the distribution block behind the helm. Don't mess with the switches, too tight to deal with, no advantage. And I like my stereo off, but the bilge on. You can run the wire over the fuel tank in some wire loom.

 

[n8dogger32]

New 0-4g from house battery to the distribution block behind the helm. Don't mess with the switches, too tight to deal with, no advantage. And I like my stereo off, but the bilge on. You can run the wire over the fuel tank in some wire loom.

Thanks, I actually just bought a circuit breaker to put in line from house battery to the helm. I am second guessing that and may do inline fuse+switch.

I need to take the tank cover off to see what's going on but are people running out the penetrations into the engine bay then up into the fuel tank area?

 

[Dave burke]

I ran an in-line fuse right to the house battery.

In terms of the wire, the hard part was getting it from behind the helm to the fuel tank area. I used fish tape. Once I was able to do this, I ran both wires with loom through a sump pump hose (got this idea from @Mainah) to the opposite corner of the fuel tank area. Then pushed the wires into the corner of the engine bay and then underneath the seat where the batteries are.

Pulling KnuKonceptz 0 gauge wire from behind the helm was hard, particularly the second wire. I’d definitely use wire loom to protect it. My boat is a 212 and I think the 24 footers have a little more space under the floor.

I took several pics and can dig them up if that would be helpful.

 

[n8dogger32]

I ran an in-line fuse right to the house battery.

In terms of the wire, the hard part was getting it from behind the helm to the fuel tank area. I used fish tape. Once I was able to do this, I ran both wires with loom through a sump pump hose (got this idea from @Mainah) to the opposite corner of the fuel tank area. Then pushed the wires into the corner of the engine bay and then underneath the seat where the batteries are.

Pulling KnuKonceptz 0 gauge wire from behind the helm was hard, particularly the second wire. I’d definitely use wire loom to protect it. My boat is a 212 and I think the 24 footers have a little more space under the floor.

I took several pics and can dig them up if that would be helpful.

Thanks! I'll look into the sump hose. If you have pictures that would be greatly appreciated. I get everything in on Monday.

 

[n8dogger32]

Also, this hose plus wire loom or using the sump hose AS wire loom? They look similar

Home Dept Sump Hose

 

[Mainah]

I like using the factory house switch unless going insanely high draw. Nothing wrong Direct to battery with fuse or breaker if parasitic draw. I also used this run to feed a fuse block for small accessories off of the PDB I put in the Helm and figured shutting it all iff with just the factory battery switches would be easiest. If using the factory house switch and 0 gauge then go 0 gauge from battery to switch, 0 gauge from switch to fuse/breaker, and 0 gauge from fuse/breaker to helm. The reason for this order is you don’t want the switch to be come the fusible link if a short in the long run should happen. Melted switch would be bad. Granted this is an extreme case where the fuse should pop first anyway but just good practice to protect the switch in this case since battery already very close to the switch.

Generic sump pump hose kit is perfect for two zero gauge wires. Don’t know why I thought of it but had some old hose laying around and it worked.

 

[Nick Hughes]

Thanks, I actually just bought a circuit breaker to put in line from house battery to the helm. I am second guessing that and may do inline fuse+switch.

I need to take the tank cover off to see what's going on but are people running out the penetrations into the engine bay then up into the fuel tank area?

I use a 100amp inline breaker switch. I use that to turn off the amps.

 

[Mainah]

If you use a breaker beware of the cheap ones. I used one of those cheap ones between the house and my inverter for the custom kegerator I built. It liked to slow trip way before rated load. The good ones are just fine for this purpose.

I did use pre existing hole at back of tank compartment wall. Some folks have also gone all the way around the engine compartment and up the starboard side of the boat but more wire will be needed for that.

 

[Dave burke]

Here are some pics @n8dogger32. I bought my hose at Aubichon. Looks similar to what your pic.

pic 1 - ran fish tape from the fuel tank area to behind the helm and am about to pull the first wire though
pic 2 - first wire is pulled. Note that I put the wire loom on before I pulled the wires.
pic 3 - both wires pulled. First one was pretty easy, second was harder because the two wires keep binding against each other. Would have been easier without loom but I was worried about damaging the wires
pic 4 - sump pump hose attached. I actually had to use two pieces of hose because two wires with loom wouldn’t fit into one. I taped them together and think it looks ok.

apologies for all the pine needles. Lots of trees at our cottage and I did this in late September..
Here’s

 

[Mainah]

Appears that I never detailed it in this thread and think I posted it in my dsp or oscilloscope thread instead. I am wayyyy beyond $1k now. I now have three amps, a JL DSP, JL M880 towers, the Polk MM subs, and Polk mm 6.5s for everything else. The DSP to tune things with along with the third amp with enough power for the subs has me rocking clean, balanced, and very very loud now. I still stand behind the 1k upgrade as it took care of 90 percent of the need. I just wanted to go further for the frequent board sports we do.

After surfing and wakeboarding behind a few boats I can say Wetsounds rev 10s are quite a bit louder for board sports. When surfing the vocal distortion out of the HCLD is like being too close to concert speakers. The JLs sound much cleaner for surfing. For wakeboarding the JLs are not loud enough for me. We tend to wakeboard in tighter coves and at least the JLs don’t tick off those living on the lake nearly as bad as the wetsounds (confirmed with friends in one of those coves). We are out a lot early to mid morning and around dinner time for board sports so we like to be respectful. I am not knocking the JLs as they sound great and are plenty loud for everything but wakeboarding (can hear them just not as loud as I would like).

Happy to know this thread is still helping folks and seeing other folks passing along their knowledge. May the wire pulling go smoothly for all.

 

[n8dogger32]

@Mainah @Dave burke @Nick Hughes Thank you all so much. We do wakeboard but currently i dont need music while out there. We do mostly sandbar hopping in the Indian River down here in the Space Coast. We bought 2 10" free air Wetsound (Revo) subs and will very likely upgrade with an amp for the interior speakers in the near future. So while I don't need 1/0 awg right now that's what i'm running, with the distribution blocks and all. That way come interior amp time all i have to do is buy the amp and run speaker wire to the DB651s.

My circuit breaker is Blue Sea Systems which I've heard good things about and used one of their switches on my old boat for years.

Also it sounds like some used wire loom + sump hose and some put both wires in 1 sump hose with no wire loom. I think I'm going the the 2 wire loom route.

 

[Dave burke]

Sounds like a plan @n8dogger32. My other experience with loom is to make sure it’s big enough to slide the wire through easily. My was a bit tight and I had to cut it every 4 ft or so because the wire was binding. Not really a big problem as I just taped each cut once the loom was in place but it did take a bit of time with 22 ft of wire.