Sony Car Radio loses power intermittently??

[Richard10002]

Fitted the Sony MEX BT3900U car radio in my boat 5 years ago, and it has worked fined until a week or so ago. I leave it connected 24/7, including the continuous power supply required for memory, and it has retained it's memory for all these years, (except when I deliberately disrupt the power supply, perhaps when topping up or changing batteries, or similar).

The symptom is that it looses power for a fraction of a second, thus turning off and on. When this happens it looses all the memorized settings and channels, thus requiring me to retune, and re select all the channels I want memorised. - hope that makes sense.

I've checked all the connections, and remade those that I can, and they all seem to be fine. Other things on the same supply circuit, (TV, charging iphone, iPad, Bose speaker), continue working without interruption when the radio loses its power, so I don't think it is an interruption in the power to the radio. Given that it's intermittent, and momentary, it doesnt seem to be as simple as connecting a meter up and seeing what happens.

I guess it could be a low voltage issue, but the voltage has been occasionally very low, (11.5V or so), during the 5 years its been fitted without issue, and it hasnt been that low when the thing loses power over the past week or so.

Whilst there are other things I could spend the money on, if it's a problem with the radio, I'm quite happy to buy a new one, and would actually like one a bit more intuitive. However, I'm wondering if it's more likely to be a problem with the radio itself, or with the power supply, (or earthing, grounding, etc... ).

If I buy and fit a new one, I'll know pretty quickly whether it was an issue with the radio or the supply, but it seems a bit drastic to spend a hundred quid to diagnose.

Any thoughts and pointers welcomed...

Many Thanks

Richard

 

[PaulRainbow]

Buy a Bluetooth speaker or soundbar and install the radio player app' on your phone. Pretty much every station in the country and better sound than a car radio. Does require some data on your phone contract.

 

[Richard10002]

Pretty much every station in the country and better sound than a car radio. Does require some data on your phone contract.

I've got a bluetooth speaker, and Tune In Radio, but I worry about the data useage. I can listen to the radio stations I prefer on the TV, so it's not the end of the world, but the car radio feeds a couple of Kef Egg speakers, which sound very good, even with the car radio as a source