Ignition breaker problem |
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tullfooter
Grand Poobah Joined: March-02-2007 Location: White Lake, MI Status: Offline Points: 2225 |
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Posted: September-16-2013 at 9:46am |
Tried to start my '85 BFN Saturday. Seemed like the battery was a little low, but she turned over slowly. After about 5 seconds, the breaker (red button) kicked out. I was able to reset it a few times, but it instantly kicked out when I turned the key to start it. I put a booster jump box on the battery, so there was plenty of battery power. It just kept kicking the breaker.
Any thoughts? |
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Play hard, life's not a trial run.
'85 BFN '90 BFN White Lake, Michigan |
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Dreaming
Platinum Member Joined: May-21-2010 Location: Tacoma, WA Status: Offline Points: 1870 |
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check your starter load. If the starter is drawing too much current, I would imagine that the breaker would pop. The other thing to check would be the wire connections. Extra resistance will cause the amperage load to go up when you hit the start button.
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TRBenj
Grand Poobah Joined: June-29-2005 Location: NWCT Status: Offline Points: 21171 |
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Nothing in the high current portion of the start circuit (batt/relay/starter) goes through the breaker. That's the unprotected side. Unless its wired wrong, of course.
What alt do you have in the boat? The charging circuit goes thru the breaker. |
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phatsat67
Grand Poobah Joined: March-13-2006 Location: Indiana Status: Offline Points: 6157 |
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Steve, When you say you turned the key to start you mean all the way to start position when it kicked the breaker the last time right?
Take the starter loose and see if it clicks when you go to the start position. Could be a crappy ground wire back to the battery from the block too. A lot of times the cable ends look fine but over the years water has made its way down the cables and started corrosion near the ends. The starter shouldn't click the main breaker because it draws its operating power directly from the hot battery lead via the positive battery cable. The solenoid could be bad causing too much load during start position operation. All the main breaker does is supply all the power to the forward section IE the boat electronics. So if the main breaker was kicked off theoretically you could still get the starter to turn via jumping across the two large poles. |
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tullfooter
Grand Poobah Joined: March-02-2007 Location: White Lake, MI Status: Offline Points: 2225 |
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Fixed it. Phat nailed it. Very simple; the negative cable at the battery was loosing continuity. I check for power at the starter, and found none. But it wasn't the hot line, it was a lack of ground because of the end of the negative cable at the battery. When I took the end off, it was gray and ugly. I cut off 6" and reattached. She fired right up.
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Play hard, life's not a trial run.
'85 BFN '90 BFN White Lake, Michigan |
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70CC
Senior Member Joined: June-12-2006 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 338 |
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Giving this thread a bump. I had the same problem with the circuit breaker popping when I tried to start the boat this past weekend. Cleaning up the battery cables took care of the problem. Thanks Zach!
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