VHF Marine Radio in Ranger Reata

[somnendo]

For those of you who have put a marine VHF radio in a Reata, have you wired it directly to the battery or to a terminal under the console. If to the console, where did you wire it to so that it did not blow fuses when transmitting?

[fetchwillie]

I had the dealer do mine at the time of purchase, I was out this last weekend and I blew fuses when trying to talk to other parties and my HB also went down so I would say he wired under the dash, Dealer (servise guy)simply told me to take out the 3 amp fuse and put in a 5 or 7.5 amp fuse

[Pezman38]

I have the VHF on my boat on the same switch as my lowrance lss1 module. Blows fuses constantly. I am going to rewire it to a separate switch and see if I can find a different fuse for it as well, either inline or on my fuse panel.

[1MoreLastCast]

My Reata had an unused lighted accessory switch on the dash. After tracing that switch, I found that it was powered through a 5 amp fuse in the fuse box next to the helm. Using a multimeter, I was able to find an unused negative terminal on the negative bus and wired the negative wire to it. There were two negative buses under the dash, and only one would provide the -12VDC ground for the negative. I'm not sure what the other bus was for.

The radio was installed in April, and has been powered up a few times to listen to the forecast and on the handful of times that I keyed the mic, it hasn't blown the fuse.

[somnendo]

I talked with Joe at Ranger boats today and he recommended wiring directly to the starting battery with shielded wiring for the least amount of interference. I may go that route just to keep everything simple!