2005 Mercury 50ELPTO - Hooked up battery backwards - Please help

[Joseph10]

Hello,
I was working on the cranking battery today on a boat I just bought. The boat has a 2005 Mercury 50ELPTO outboard motor.

I had the battery out cleaning it, adding water and charging it. When I put it back in I was in a rush and started hooking up the positive cables to the negative side of the battery by accident. I then realized my mistake and while I was un-hooking the screw up - the negative cables fell from where I had them susepended and hit the positive battery terminal - creating a connection for several seconds before I could get lift it off. The ignition was not on when this happened.

I noticed that it blew a 9A fuse on the on-board battery charger cable. The 20A in-line fuse on one of the 2 cables running back to the engine (I assume one is a straight hookup to the starter and the other a charging cable) was intact and not blown. I also checked all the fuses in the boat fuse box and the 20A fuse inside the cowling. All of those fuses were still intact.

I have not tried to start the motor (I just bought the boat and have the lower unit pulled putting in a new impeller, changing the gear oil etc.).

I have read on several other websites that I could have blown the diodes in the charging system's rectifier or possibly ruined other things.

Does anyone know this engine well enough to be able to tell me if the fuses would have protected me from such an event?

Thanks for any help. This has been a long day.

Thanks,
Joseph

 

[blackbox]

Re: 2005 Mercury 50ELPTO - Hooked up battery backwards - Please help

after you get the motor back together, try to start it up. if it starts chk. the voltae at the batery as you run the motor at 2500rpm. the voltage should rise to 13 to 14 volts (chk. voltage befor starting as a base line). if the voltage rises above 15 volts or dose not change from base line voltage, the regulator may be bad. the part # of that part is 883072T. lets hope you do not need it.

 

[Joseph10]

Re: 2005 Mercury 50ELPTO - Hooked up battery backwards - Please help

Thank you for the response. I will give that a try once I get the motor re-assembled.

Joseph

 

[Joseph10]

Re: 2005 Mercury 50ELPTO - Hooked up battery backwards - Please help

Update: I was able to get my motor put back together today. I started the engine and ran it a little while just under 2000 RPM. Here are the voltages I observed:

Engine off, battery only: 13.2V
Engine running, 2000 rpm: 14.2V

I lowered the RPM to 1000 and checked the voltage, it was about 13.9V.

So it seems like I must be OK. Does everyone agree?

Thanks again for the help!

Joseph

 

[Silvertip]

Re: 2005 Mercury 50ELPTO - Hooked up battery backwards - Please help

You are good to go. Charging system appears ok.

 

[Joseph10]

Re: 2005 Mercury 50ELPTO - Hooked up battery backwards - Please help

All,
Thank you very much for the help on this. I really appreciate it!

Joseph