Head Unit Upgrade

[MarioD]

Hi,

I am planning to upgrade my head unit on my 2016 Bennington 22ssx. My current head unit is the stock Sony head unit and I upgraded the speakers to the 4 Skar audio 6.5" speakers. I would like to install the Sony dsx-m80 High power head unit that has 45W RMS per a channel. Does anybody know if I would need to run a new power wire from the battery to the head unit or can I use the existing wire from the stock radio? The new head unit requires a 15 amp fuse. I saw in a past forum that someone said their boat comes with a stock 15amp fuse. Does anybody know if my model boat comes with that too? I would really like to just install this head unit using the existing wiring and not have to run any additional wires.

 

[White Laker]

Not really technically correct, I usually look at the size of the wire that is existing, and the size of the wire of the new item. If you compare the two and one is dramatically larger than the other then you know what you’re dealing with. For example if existing wire is large and the new wire is small and skinny you know that you are OK. If it’s the opposite don’t do it or dig deeper for specs of the system.

 

[DejaWiz]

180W at 12V is 15A of current draw, so I'd measure the radio/head unit wiring to make sure it's at least 12AWG, if not the slightly larger diameter 10AWG.

Make sure to measure the gauge of the actual wire inside of the insulation and not the overall diameter including the insulation, since insulation thickness will vary vastly between manufacturers (or even production runs from the same manufacturer, depending on their own manufacturing tolerances).

Third column (15A), critical circuit type, 15-20 foot wire run is probably the feasible scenario: