Here is the deal. I bought a boat with a 86 mercury 90hp inline 6,on a 24ft pontoon. First time I took it out it idled ok but seam to have a random miss and would sputter at ? throttle and got worse the more you throttled it. Then when I came back in it wouldn?t idle. I found a few loose plug wires and mixed matched plugs so I changed them and put the wires all the way on the plugs.That seam to get ride of the miss. I was told to clean the carbs and I did. They where full of junk in all the bowls so I ended up cleaning them twice and inspecting all the passages and they where clean. Well when I took it to the lake to adjust the carbs it still wouldn?t drop the rpm real low. It was like once the motor hit about 800 rpm it would just shut off. It still would not run WOT very well and only did about 20 mph wide open. On my way back in I kept smelling burning wires but I couldn?t find anything burning. When I got home and out the motor in a bucket I was trying to adjust some of the cables because they weren?t at the right settings. I cranked it to try it and well after about 5 minutes the motor just shut off. It had no fire. Well I found the burnt wires. The two yellow wires going to the rectifier had corroded and looked like they sparked cause the other wires around it had light black marks on them right at the bad spot of the wire. Cut the bad spot out hoping on a small prayer it was savable but no luck. I tried unhooking the yellow and black wires from the boxes still no fire, then it says to unhook the two yellow wires from rectifier and still no fire(which are the ones that burnt. What I am asking is how to test the stator, trigger and switch boxes so I can know just what it shorted out if not all. There is no fire on any of the 6 cylinders so I am hoping its just the stator. Any ideas?
Just thought I'd share the burnt yellow wire story with you so you might not fry a new stator with a shorted rectifier