Hooking up an am/fm radio tomorrow and had a quick question for you all. The diagram says to connect the yellow to the ignition switch, the red to a positive 12V source and the black to the ground. So the question is can I hook the yellow to my perko switch and the red and black to the battery and will this turn the radio off and not draw any current? It seems to me it would always be drawing, therefore draining the battery?
The yellow is for memory. You can connect both to the same 12V source or I like to connect the yellow to an accessory switch. Do not connect it to your ignition switch because then your key will need to be on to listen to the radio. Bad idea. Also if you choose to bypass switch and connect straight to the battery with yellow wire to maintain stereo memory when perko is off, it will drain your battery in a couple weeks. Also not a good idea. Hope this helps.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day. FISH 24/7---- 25 Grady w/ a couple of Gas Guzzling 175 Johnsons “O-SEA-D” the old “Havanadaydream”
Like Havana said, yellow is for the station preset memory. I would not hook directly to the battery. Best way is to add a power buss-like a Blue Sea:
http://bluesea.com/category/9/35/productline/186
wired to the positive post of your battery switch and a common ground. Crimp some heat-shrink ring terminals to your red,yellow, and black leads for the radio and attach them to the Blue Seas buss. That’ll give you room to add other electronics in the future.
Your gonna lose memory every time you turn your battery switch to off, but most folks I know don’t use the station presets anyway.
“Never argue with an idiot…he will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.”