mercury 200 efi will not start

[lowercase_j]

I have a 1998 200 efi on my ranger bass boat, I have only hade this boat for about three months. Went to take off the other day after getting in the water and it would not start. Ran my battery down, so I jumped from one of my trolling batteries. When I made the last connection there was a pretty good arc, then nothing. Still would not start, so I let it set for a while, I tried four or five times and never did get it to start. Never hade problems till now. I got home and plugged my chargers up and just out of curiosity I tried to start my motor again. The darn thing fired up with no problems, time after time. Could someone help me figure out what the heck is going on here?

 

[jimc_LA]

Re: mercury 200 efi will not start

lowercase, Without more information troubleshooting your situation is difficult. I have a 2000 V6 200 EFI. One thing that happened to me once was that I had left the live well pump on overnight at the camp w/o plugging into the charger. Drained the battery down dead as a doornail (and I lost most of my live bait). I jumped it and the motor would spin fine, but would not start. Tried all sorts of things until I read in the user manual that unless your battery has at least 12.5 volts, the high pressure electric fuel pump (located inside the VST) will not operate and the engine will not start. I let the battery charge for about an hour and she fired right up as if nothing had happened.

It could be that your cranking battery was so dead that it was sucking the life out of the jumping battery while jumping. This has also happened to me. In my case, I ended up having to disconnect the dead battery and hook the fresh one up directly to the cables. Apparently the dead battery drains just enough voltage to have the net voltage drop below 12.5 volts. It can be frustrating because the engine seems to spin fine while trying to start, but it won't fire.

Once you got home and re-charged the main battery - problem solved.

Just my 2-cents. I have had this same experience and it was only through reading the user guide that I came across the required 12.5 volts for the fuel pump to operate.

Hope this helps.

Jim C

 

[lowercase_j]

Re: mercury 200 efi will not start

thanks a lot, thats sounds like a likely explenation.