I have a 93 Stratos and I replaced the radio a couple of months ago. I turned it on in the garage for a while and it seemed to work fine, but when I took it out and after running for a while it got real hot on the back and quit. When I got it home, I checked the wiring and found the inline fuse holder had gotten pretty hot and deformed a little but the fuse was not blown. It was 10 amp fuse. The 15 amp fuse in the back of the radio was not blown either. I thought the fuse holder might have had a bad connection in it, so I replace the fuse holder and fuse. Turned the radio on and, again, it seemed to work fine. Took the boat out this weekend and the radio quit again. I haven't checked the fuses yet, but I know the back of the radio got real hot again. I used all the wiring from the stock radio (tape player) which was working with no problems. The stock radio did not have a remote wire, so I have the power wire and remote wire run together to the battery with a toggle switch hard-wired in. The stock radio had a positive wire to each of the 4 speakers, but only 2 negative wires. The front pair share a negative and the back pair share a negative. So both front grounds from the radio go to a single ground wire and both rear grounds go to another single ground to the speakers. The speakers are all 4 ohm and the radio is rated for 4-8 ohm. Could sharing a ground cause the speakers to be wired parallel and lowering the resistance? I don't think it is a ventilation problem, because there is more space behind the unit than if it was in a vehicle.

Somebody please help me out.

I got ask? You do have it wired 12V correct? What kinda radio head?

when you say remote wire are you talking about a blue one? or do you mean the switched 12V+ wire (usually red)
The "remote wire" (blue) is to send 12V+ to switch on an amplifier. you dont want this hooked to your power wire.
The red is your 12V ignition wire. this can be connected with the yellow to a switch (yellow allows memory retention but also draws power, so most boats unless hooked to a charger when stored, have both red and yellow on a common switch)


Also on the speakers it sounds like a common ground system which means youll need to either run a pair of wires to each speaker or possibly see about a floating ground adaptor(which ive never fooled with so dont know much about)

You need to run a pos and neg to each speaker. The original set up was common ground, the new radio is not set up to run that way. Surprised you didn't fry the radio.

The info swampslut gave about the "remote wire" is also correct. If you have it hooked up the way it seems, you need to change it.

You guys are right about the remote wire and that is how i did it. The blue is taped off and the red and yellow are hooked together then ran to a switched hot wire.

alright then it sounds like your problem is in the speaker wiring. hopefully youll run new wires and hook up pos to pos neg to neg and itll start rockin just fine, if not u may need to find that receipt.