SANTE 210 2005 - can't find a fuse to the stereo (well found one but it's not blown)

[hindsbeans@hotmail.com]

Hi Everyone,

Since firing up the boat at the start of the season, the stereo will not power on (most likely due to me being a rushed idiot when reconnecting the battery which resulted in me connecting one of the batteries the wrong way round-positive to negative and negative to positive).

I had the same scenario where the stereo would not power up before, about 7 years ago and the fix was to order a replacement (used) head unit. I did the same this time round (as the photo shows!) but it still won't power up.

I have checked the fuse shown in the photo (the photo was taken as I was lying on my back on the floor of the boat looking up) and it's fine, mutlimeter shows a circuit through the fuse.

Does anyone know where there might be another fuse for the stereo?

For reference, I checked for a popped circuit breaker under the dash but there is nothing listed there for the stereo. I also took a look at the wiring diagrams on one of the other threads but I'm not too familiar with wiring diagrams so I couldn't work out if there was a fuse in that.

I guess my next step would be to work back from the stereo head unit with the multimeter to check if it's getting 12v, but even that is tricky because I believe the power comes into the head unit via the black socket (top right in the photo) but when I open it there are about 5 or 7 pins in there so I don't know which one should show a 12v reading.

Any help greatly appreciated, as I'm somewhat stranded over here in Ireland where there aren't so many Nautique-gurus!

Thanks,

Peter


Update (21july2025): After doing more troubleshooting (see messages below) there are some errors in this original message so if anybody is reading this in future please make sure to scroll down through this thread! (I have not corrected any of the mistakes above)

[SilentSeven]

Not sure what main circuit powers the stereo but I don't think you need to know to troubleshoot. If works like my 2004 204, the stereo powers up when the keypad is in the 'accessory' mode.

If this was my boat, here's what I would do. With the dash in powered on in accessory mode....

1 / test the hot side of the fuse connector shown in the picture. If that tests hot, then you know there is no issue getting power to the fuse.
2 / with a good fuse installed, test all sockets in the black harness for 12v. At least one should show hot. It really doesn't matter which one as long as you have at least one hot.
3 / if test one and two pass, try running a ground jumper from the headunit to known good ground. It's not impossible you have a ground issue vs a power issue.

If test one fails, then you need to work backwards to figure out why you're not getting power to the fuse.

If test one and and two pass, then it's either a pin out problem with the harness/headunit or the headunit itself has died.

If you add the ground jumper and the unit works, re-work the unit's ground setup.

Good luck. I'm amazed these headunits are still going after so many years. I still have mine... I'd replace it but I have yet to see a good solution on how to replace the oval shaped remote dash controller. All the new ones are round. :/

[SilentSeven]

Also...here's what chatgpt reports as the harness wiring map. Some hallucination with the violet wires...ha! Still, this should help with harness testing.

Yellow should be always hot regardless of ignition state.

Red should be hot when in accessory mode.

Yellow	Constant 12 V (Battery)
Red	Switched 12 V (Ignition/ACC)
Black	Ground
Blue	Power Antenna / Auto‑Antenna
Blue/White	AMP Remote On
Orange/White	Illumination Dimmer Input
Brown	Telephone Mute Trigger
Violet	Reverse Signal Input (for camera trigger)
Violet/Black	Parking Brake Sense (for video enable)

[hindsbeans@hotmail.com]

Thanks for the quick response SilentSeven.

I’ll give your suggestion a go this weekend and see how I get on.

In terms of the head unit not working, I doubt that’s it, as it’s in good shape (no signs of corrosion, whereas the head unit it replaced was starting to show some corrosion on the top side.) but a good one to bear in mind.

I’m guessing the ground wire is the one screwed into the back of the head unit so will also make sure that line shows an uninterrupted line to the battery.



In the meantime if anyone else has any other suggestions of where to go looking for a blown fuse I’m all ears.

By the way, I did see that the oval remote control works with some of the more recent Clarions, but just not the display. So you’ll be able to skip songs in a playlist, volume up and down and mute, what more do you need?!! When working my stereo is just an amp really, I got a €10 blue roof receiver that I plug into the aux Jack and then play everything from my phone beside the dash

[SilentSeven]

Actually...I forgot that you can get a round remote dash insert to replace the oval one. https://nautiqueparts.com/remote-con...round-remotes/

Be curious what you find. I had to replace my head unit last year when the rear channel RCA outputs died. Nothing is guaranteed on these old things.

[hindsbeans@hotmail.com]

So I finally got round to doing more investigation this weekend (it turns out just being out on the water is a higher priority than a working stereo, who knew?!), here's what I found (alongside some youtube watching on car stereo wiring):

• The ground wire has a complete connection through to negative on the battery. The ground wire is the black one, it comes out of the stereo through the white plastic connector (seems to be a standard car audio stereo connector) and then goes to the metal casing of the stereo (right in the middle of the 1st photo) with 2 other black wires. I did a circuit test from there to the negative node on the battery and it showed an uninterrupted connection.
• The red wire shows 12v when the ignition is on and 0v when ignition is off (as expected - this is the wire that tells the stereo to power up - but it is not the power source)
• The yellow wire shows 0v (this should show 12v, the yellow wire should show a constant 12v from the battery, it is the power source as well as the constant feed for the memory). The yellow wire enters the stereo through the white plastic connector (which seems to be a standard car audio connector) as shown in the attached photo (the one without my hand in the photo - ignore the blue arrow, this photo was used in my previous post, I just added the yellow indicator on top). This wire connects to a bigger connector as shown in the second attached photo.
• In my first post in this thread I suggested that the power comes to the unit through the black socket, but I now believe this is the connector to the remote control unit beside the steering wheel.

I think now there is a fuse gone somewhere on this line. I traced that cable back to the driver console (under the steering wheel) and tested there was a unbroken connection to that point. From there the wire is routed back under the floor and comes out beside the fuel tank at the back of the boat and into the engine bay but I wasn't able to find where it went from there (it's so hard to get a hand down to the bottom of the engine bay to open up the plastic wire casing to check the wire colours, I'm looking for a red, black and white wire).

Does anyone know where there might be a fuse in that line????

[hindsbeans@hotmail.com]

A little more info, I found the following in one of the wiring diagrams (see the 'Wiring Diagrams' link in the header on all pages) so I've sent the poster a private message to ask where this fuseblock (the blue circle) is on a 2005 SANTE 210:

[NautiqueJeff]

If your boat really is a SANTE (as in Team Edition), it won’t have that fuse block. The wiring diagram you posted is for an SE, not a TE. Only the Signature Edition boats have that fuse block.

[hindsbeans@hotmail.com]

Thanks for the super quick reply Jeff. Yes, it's a team edition.

I don't suppose you know if there is a fuse somewhere else between the yellow cable into the stereo and the battery positive terminal on a team edition? I'm working on the assumption that it's a fuse that has blown that means I'm not seeing 12v to the yellow cable in my photo.

I tried looking for 'team edition' wiring diagram at https://www.planetnautique.com/vb5/f...iring-diagrams but couldn't find one, I'm probably missing something though!

[hindsbeans@hotmail.com]

So I emailed Correct Craft support to see if they had a wiring diagram for a 2005 210 Super Air Team Edition and although I was very impressed with their response time (within 20 mins of emailing!) they didn’t have a wiring diagram.

This weekend I took out the back bench so I had full access to see where the wiring went. I couldn’t find where there might be a fuse in the power/memory line (yellow cable going into the stereo) however I did find that there is a direct line from the battery selector switch (the switch under the starboard side of the rear bench where you select which of the 2 batteries to run from) up the port side to the amp under the stereo unit so I plan to cut the yellow wire before it goes into the stereo and connect a wire from there to where the red cable from the battery connects to the amp. I will wire a fuse on that line, just in case. Hopefully the stereo has some details on max amps it needs so I can get an idea of which fuse to put in.

I will add details once that’s done.