353 stereo and remote replacement
 

The time has come to replace my stereo and I just picked up a marine Kenwood bluetooth head unit and wired remote. My speakers were replaced a few years ago with Exelon pieces and the amps seem to be fine so I'm leaving those for now. The 10 CD changer will be removed since it is obsolete for any new head units. My biggest gripes with the old unit were very poor FM reception and difficult menus / operation. Also adding a small independently amplified Kenwood subwoofer under the rear bench seat. Has anyone run into any issues replacing their stereo components? I am concerned about the wiring for the remote and really don't want to relocate it off of the helm area. Thanks for any info.

Its not a fun project to update the wired remote, but not horrible if you have fished wires thru he boat before. The original owner tried to go wireless with an Alpine unit on my 353, that was a joke.

I went with a Fusion setup with a remote in my GPS. I ran a NEMA cable around from the helm to the fridge cabinet (fairly easy).

Hopefully you get lucky and can reuse the remote wiring, technology likely has changed.

I'd not mount aan amp under the seat, very tight to deal with batteries and wet/humid if it rains in the boat.

The new remote only has 3 skinny wires and one is for backlight so hopefully we can reuse existing wires. Not sure if old unit is glued on or what from the factory. As for the sub, im thinking the amp could go where the cd changer currently is which is a safe spot and has power running to it already. Trickiest part of project might be cutting the hole in the bulkhead below rear bench.

Formula fid some creative wiring in the late 90’s, the soldered into the remotes. Don’t know what they did in the newer models.

The previous owner of mine put 4 10” subs back there, 24 other speakers in the cockpit. I had to rerun every wire when I redid the interior and had lots of fiberglass in my fingers.

Wow my sound system is nothing crazy like that. Hearing is bad enough from the open exhaust trying not to make it worse. :)

the old kenwood wired remote will work with a new kenwood head unit. Shops tell you it will not because the connections are different. however coming out of the kenwood harness is a remote wire. if you cut the original connector off of the remote wire where it connected and just use a butt connector it works. It is a single wire connection. I have done it in three fastechs no issues

My 292 came with a broken headunit located in the cabin with no remote. I always thought it kind of... stupid to locate the unit in that location.

I like to control the tunes from the driver's seat.

So, I installed the older version of this
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_020CMS5/Clarion-CMS5.html

Since I was running all new speaker wires + amps + subs I put the brain in the back near the seats, along with the 2 amps.

I used the existing hole in the dash for what was the antique looking volume control and that put the unit within touch distance from the helm.

I'm pretty happy w/the setup. I load up a USB stick with a hundred+ songs, or can have my wife bluetooth to it and play pandora, amazon music, etc. right from her phone.

just offering an alternative to the car radio type setup.

I put in the alpine CDE-172BT head unit, and added Qty 2 wireless remotes. Put one on the right side replaced the original wired remote. Works perfect and no wires to run.