Instaling an Auto AM / FM Reciever in a Boat

Hive,

I've got an old Duffy electric catamaran boat that I'm fixing up.

I'm currently fixing it's dead radio and here's what I'm seeing...

Question:  In terms of the assembly at the bottom left, do I need to keep the two fuses (only one is visible in this shot), transducer, and blue cylinder thingie or is all of that now included in a modern head unit?

In other words, what am I seeing, what is real, what do I need to do.

I have no idea what that is,  almost looks like a small pre-amp.

no modern stereo I've worked on has had anything outside the pigtail.

Yup. Thats old school. 

If you are doing a modern head unit and new wiring,  ignore it and run the new stuff per the manual. 

It looks to be hooked into the power supply and ground cables.  My suspicion is it's a homebrew ground loop isolator.  The other option is that it's a step down transformer if the rest of the electrics on the boat are not 12v.

As long as you have a clean 12-14.4v power supply, all other needed electronics will be in the chassis of any modern auto head unit.  I would recommend getting a marine unit though, as the wet environment will take out most unprotected electronics in short order 

IIRC, it's a choke.  In an old school car, you got radio buzz from the ignition, so the solution was spiral core wires and resistor plugs.  From there you had multiple paths to ground for the noise and shielded by 3000 lbs of steel.  When they installed radios in boats without the massive conductive/reflective materials to prevent noise, they often added those chokes to make a resistive ground loop and keep noise out of things.

I have installed several radios in boats.  Modern electronics already have all that protection built in.  They have to - not for noise reasons necessarily, but because they replaced analog/mechanical dials with digital displays that could be adversely affected by noise.

TL;DR - you don't need to keep that.

Ah... I see electric boat now.  I would check voltage as travellering suggested.  The electric motors might be 24v, 36v, 48v, whatever.  It might be a step down transformer to get 12v.

If that's the case, I might suggest a more modern (cleaner) switching power supply.

To all,

Thank you very much for your guidance.

I'll check the voltage and if it's not 12V, I'll leave it in or see if I can get a new one as the plastic case fell apart the moment I touched it.

I had already bought a cheap-o Sony radio when someone else suggested I get a marine unit.  The last radio was also just a standard auto unit and made it twenty plus years that I know of (Southern California = dry, mild climate) so I'll just see how this Sony does.

Thanks again,

Brett  

Ok.  If it ends up needing some kind of step-down, search for something like this on Amazon:

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks Curtis, super helpful.

There's a company one mile from my house that does nothing but take care of electric boats on my lake and I'm going to drop by today and start a rapport with them.

Knowing that a step-down is ~12 bucks in Amazon money will let me know if their prices are at all reasonable.  ~25 bucks or less = fine, help them stay in business & maybe get some advice but sucker pricing isn't how I roll.

I like how you think.

I recently did a similar thing.  I could have ordered some standard stained/leaded glass for my cabinet project, but I live one block away from a father/son custom stained glass shop.  $200 for generic online stuff or $350 from my local family business?  $350 it is.

Update...

The boat has a twelve volt system so the do-hicky must have been for noise suppression rather than voltage reduction.

I wired everything up without it and did a bunch of 360's at different & varying power setting with no noise (well, that's debatable depending on your opinion of yacht rock).

Anyway, thanks again to all those that provided guidance.

Glad it worked.  Sorry about the Yacht Rock.

Those boats need ZZTop and George Thorogood