boat mystery

[tomkat]

If anyone has a clue what could cause my boat to suddenly have no power to the ignition and the trim and tilt please let me know. It was at night and I still had power to my lights. Battery connections were good and I tried switching to the trolling motor battery with no luck. The next day it started and ran perfectly. I took it to my mechanic but he could find no problems. Thanks

[Sinker]

Loose connection, low power on battery, bad ground......just to mention a few.

 

S.

[DRIFTER_016]

HMMMMMMMMMMMM, Aliens maybe??

[tomkat]

What causes a bad ground and how do you find it? Thanks

[lunders]

Sounds like a bad connection. Since you had problems with tilt and starting, it may be the grounding cable going from the battery to your engine. (Probably connected somewhere to your engine block.)

 

Take it off and check for corrosion etc. Use a steelbrush or sandpaper to clean it.

 

A bad connection like that might give you trouble with your more power consuming components. (Such as starter motor and tilt.) Meanwhile lights, radio etc may work.

 

Good luck!

[TroutnMuskieHunter]

Mine did the exact same thing yesterday!!!...I loosened off the wing nuts on both terminals and re-tightened them and then she started....I didn't really notice corrosion on the terminals so I'm a little stumped as well....Just in case though I sprayed each terminal and lug with WD-40...

[Radnine]

Is there any chance that the battery is just done? It happened in my van recently. The motor would just not start (click, click) so I jumped it and it worked fine for weeks then it would happen again.

In the end it just died for good. But when I look back it was "going" for the past few months.

Jim

[NAW]

I had a very similar issue with my motor.

 

There was a wire coming from my kill switch (15 Hp motor) that was had been rubbing on a part of the motor. It eventually war though plastic wire casing, and left bare wires, which was causing grounding issues. It was a finikity issue, cuz sometime the bare wires would be touching causing issues, and other times there wouldn't and the motor worked fine.

 

I would chase all the wires on your motor and make sure you don't have bare wires. If so, get some electrical tape and zip ties.

[tomkat]

Thanks for the suggestions this happened at night with my son miles from the cottage. I had no way of contacting my wife and it took 2 hours to get back with the trolling motor so she was starting to get really worried. This really has me thinking about a kicker.

[acmarou]

I asked my wife to leave and everything's been working fine ever since.

[tomkat]

That costs way more than the kicker

[lund06]

tomkat if it a merc 4 stroke efi look under the hood and locate the fuse panel at the front of the motor and check the fuses....... because this is exactly what happened to me.

good luck

[tomkat]

It is a merc 4 stroke 50hp. I checked fuses but will look again thanks

[lund06]

they are the tiny fuses so look real carefull

[ohhenrygsr]

Check the fuses you be surprise what you might find

[Greencoachdog]

Check the fuses you be surprise what you might find

 

 

Yeah!!!... Gremlins!!!

[ohhenrygsr]

GCD loosing a fish

 

[Badger Shark]

Ihad the same thing happen to me and it turns out it was a fuse issue but the thing is the fuse was in the motor itself in a small black box. Once we switched out the fuse it was fine. It turns out ther was a loose ground wire under the dash to my fishfinder.