Starter or Solenoid or??

[ydewberry]

Here is the situation. I have a twin engine Mercruiser with two IB 454's. Went to start the port engine and I heard clicking. Tried the starboard engine and it cranked right up. Tried the port again and would only crank slow or click. tried about 10 times and it started. Shut the engine off and tried to start it again and got slow or clicking. Bought a new Solenoid and had the same problem. Had the starter rebuilt and had the same problem. Jumpered from the battery to the starter and had the same problem. Tried one more time and the wire around the engine started to smoke and the solenoid acted like I had not turned off the ignition key. The only way I stopped it from getting hotter was to shut the main battery switches off. Do I need a new starter? Could it of been in such bad shape that the rebuild did not work?

 

[Bondo]

Re: Starter or Solenoid or??

It can Only be 1 of 3 things.....<br />1) Bad Rebuilt Starter......<br />2) The Engine is Binding,+ Turning Hard.....<br />3) The Outdrive is Binding,+ Turning Hard.....

 

[crazy charlie]

Re: Starter or Solenoid or??

are you sure the battery is fully charged????

 

[snapperbait]

Re: Starter or Solenoid or??

May not be starter or solenoid causing the problem... Resistance somewhere in the circut caused the wire to get hot and smoke....<br /><br />Make absolutely sure that all connections are clean including the negative side, especially the negative connection to the engine block... <br /><br /> I would look at maybe replacing the battery cables, and possibly the main battery switch.... Battery cables do fail.. They can be totally corroded on the inside and still look fine on the outside...

 

[loadnet]

Re: Starter or Solenoid or??

You are NOT going to want to do this but you may want to pull the plugs and see if the engine shoots any water out of your cylinders.<br /><br />You may have a bad head gasket, or manifold causing the cylinders to fill up with water.<br /><br />Also.. check the timing to make sure it hasn't jumped time on you.<br /><br />If it's way out of wack on the timing the engine will crank like a dead battery and heat up your battery cables in a heart beat.<br /><br />Please post what you find..in the wind up.<br /><br /> customerservice@401hosting.com

 

[ydewberry]

Re: Starter or Solenoid or??

Thanks for all the reply's. The problem ended up being two things. The batteries (2 pairs) were wired incorrectly into the Emergency Start switch (which ended up causing the overload) and the port side battery even though ready 12.5 volts did not have eonough CCA to start the engine. The reason I thought the battery was fine was becasue the starboard engine started fine. But the wrong wireing to the Emergency start switch, incldung port batteries to port engine and starboard batteries to starbord engine threw me. Once agin thanks to all as this was my first time and all the comments really made me think about what I was doing.