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Battery and Amp Power/Ground Wiring


baadls1

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Don't have a malibu, but hopefully someone here can help as this community is more active.

I have a variety of stereo accessories I am routing power to a blue sea 5025 distribution fuse box. From there I am routing 4ga power and ground out. I assume power would best be sent to the my amp B+ distribution block the amps are receiving power from or should it go to common on my perko? I believe my amp B+ distribution should go back to my perko common post? Ground should go to the same battery as my amps are grounded to, correct?

My small issue is that I can only fit group 24 batteries under my rear bench seat, so I am going to add (2) group 29's under the observer seat. But what this sounds like is that if I want to continue to switch between starting and stereo batteries, I need to run power from switch terminal 2 to batteries and common post switch to amp B+ distribution block.

Batteries would ground at the block and and amps would ground at a group 29 battery.

Do I have all of this correct?

Edited by baadls1
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To answer your first question - Unfortunately, to answer this correctly, it gets a bit complicated.

Rule #1 - You want all of your audio to be grounded/powered by the same source to prevent a "ground loop" or extra noise. This can mean that you can ground your amp to either the distribution block or a grounding bus bar. (I assume when you say Perko common post, you mean something like this: (Blue Seas bus bar)

Rule #2 - Make sure your fuses / are big enough for the amount of amps you are drawing. If your amp is under 350 watts, it will need a 30 amp fuse and is safe to wire to your distribution block. If it is bigger than 350 watts, you'll need to run a separate wire with a larger inline fuse / breaker (example fuse / example breaker)

To determine how many amps your amp draws, take the watts / volts = amps... so 350 watts / 12volts = 29.17 amps (so you should use a 30 amp fuse)

Rule #3 - Make sure your wire has a large enough gauge for the Distance and Amps that you will be pushing power. Use a chart like this, which you'll need to measure the full distance (full length of + and - from the battery) that the power will be traveling.

Rule #4 - Install your fuses as close to the battery as possible (my amps all say 18" or less from the battery) on the positive wire.

Follow those rules and you should have an ok time! If not, there is a risk of fire, hot or melting wire, etc etc. I wish I knew all those things when I started! It would make my life a lot easier! (also - I buy my wire / terminals from genuinedealz.com, since they sell tinned wire / lugs / adhesive shrink wrap)

So to directly answer your question - if you use the right size wire and your amp is under 350 watts, then wire it to the distro block, otherwise find an alternative solution. Hope that helps!

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Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear with my setup.

On the helm side, I have my HU, 420SQ Equalizer, Exile BT and a remote turn on relay. Currently, I have all of them running B+ to a Blue Sea 5025 power/ground fused distribution block. I have 4ga power and ground wired to this.

On the port side, I have 3 Arc Audio amplifiers. These are all wired with 4g power/ground to fused/linked power/ground distribution blocks on my amp rack. The distribution blocks output 0g power and ground.

Now to my questions.

1) The Blue Sea 5025 fused distribution block. Where do I wire the 4ga power back to? The amp B+ distribution block? The perko switch (common post)? Does it matter since I believe they both end up at the perko switch (common post)?

2) The Blue Sea 5025 fused distribution block. Where do I wire the 4ga ground back to? The amp ground distribution block? The stereo bank negative (-) battery terminal? Does it matter since I believe they both end up at the stereo bank negative (-) battery terminal?

3) The amp B+ fused distribution block. I assume this goes back to the perko switch (common post) through a 300A fuse. Please confirm.

4) The amp negative (-) distribution block. I assume this wires back to the stereo bank negative (-) battery terminal.

I believe my stereo bank batteries wire together and B+ returns to the Perko common post while ground returns to the engine block.

i just simply want to avoid noise in this setup and want to make sure my major distribution points are wired back to the correct location. Not interested in getting noise and then having to re-route a bunch of large wire across my boat. ;)

Oh and the Remote turn on goes to a Relay, relay outputs to 2 buss bars, one on the helm side for the equalizer and one to the port side for the amplifiers. Pretty sure I got that right.

Thanks!

Edited by baadls1
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1) Amp positive distribution block

2) Amp negative distribution block

3) Perko common post

4) Stereo battery negative post

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