Old Boot hasn't been thanked so many times for nothing.
Just been reading my seloc manual on diagnostics and its brilliant so really its just time to get the starter fixed and sit back and wait for the manual to arrive. Mine took just a bit over a week from the same place I'm guessing.
Yeah like I said previously, its a 100 horsies.Originally Posted by oldboot
I've tried 4 different batteries, all freshly charged so I doubt the batteries are the problem... I will get the new batteries tested though just to make sure.
Jarrah Jack, I've ordered my Seloc manual from Betterworldbooks.com and unfortunately received an email this morning saying the shipping would be delayed and the book would be sent from a third party supplier... so who knows how long it will take...?
Will hopefully get some news on the starter shortly...
Cheers,
Trav
Got the starter motor back from the auto electrician. According to them the armature has nothing wrong with it and after they replaced the brushes last time, it is working like new when provided with a solid 12V supply. They believe the fault must be elsewhere in the wiring... So the whole boat is heading down in the morning... Hopefully I dont have a charging issue at all and I just have some dodgy (original)wiring that they can find that fixes the starting problem.
I'll update tomorrow... once they have looked it over.
Cheers,
Trav
I am always happy to help where I can, I have learned so much from this and other forums over the years..... expect to contribute in return......I hope others feel the same.... cheers
Its the details, those little details, that make the difference.
Ok... As for my starting issues, after some more diagnostics, it appears that I am experiencing excessive resistance through either my negative leads/terminals or my battery switch. At the batteries, when cranking the starter, the voltage drops from 12.9v to about 11ish. At the starter motor, the voltage is dropping from 12.9v to as little as 2v!When I remove the battery switch and connect the negative and positive leads from the engine directly to either battery, the starter cranks the motor perfectly and the voltage at the starter drops to around 9V during cranking... Might need a new battery switch or re-terminate my negative leads (or both!)
On the plus side, I know there is nothing wrong with my batteries (tested by the auto electrician) and I can confidently start the motor no matter where I am.
The charging circuit is an issue that I will put on the back burner for the time being but I will definitely try hooking a flat battery up and switching over to it and see what the rectifier/regulator does
Looks like you nailed it..the whole lot! with your dodgee switch charging should work fine after the resistance is decreased i would guess but testing will tell all.
i decided against anything complicated here and simply carry a known good battery with me every time also a piece of rope to pull start if ever needed, still one day when the lights go in i may need to fit a house battery but plan to keep it all super simple with a solenoid insted of a switch..had too many problems with them over the years.
cheers fnq
Yeah I can see myself dropping the coin on one of those BEP isolator / vsr panels to replace my battery switch... I guess my "Heavy Duty" $30 switch just cant cut it out in the elements... ah... Bring On Another Thousand
I think that when that manual finally arrives you'll be able to confidently use a multimeter around all the electrics to do your own trouble shooting from now on.
Cheers
My manual still hasnt arrived but I did a bit of diagnostics this morning to determine the cause of my starting issues... with the batteries under the centre console (7m total circuit length pos+neg) the motor wouldnt start. I have new 4AWG cables (21mm2). So assuming the cables are too small, I put the same battery on 2 x 1m long 6AWG cables right beside the motor and it fired up no problem.
When I checked the voltages at the starter motor and the drop during starting, I was only getting about 7-8v during cranking at the starter with the batteries under the console. I hooked up another 6 gauge cable on the positive side (in parallel) and the voltage went up to about 9v at the starter and it kicked over. Just saw my dad's mate who is an industrial electrician and he is going to give me 2 x 50mm2 @ 4m length cables to try. If they give me the amps I need with minimal voltage drop over that length I will be ripping out the new 21mm2 cable and replacing it!
Hopefully a lower resistivity cable will assist my charging too and all my problems will go away! (Could it be that easy??) I will report back tomorrow after I try the new cables...
I'd be thinking terminations being the problem rather than the size of the cable.
starting high compression race car engines with the battery in the boot 5 meters of cable and chasis earth return seems to be no problem.
if you are crimping up new cables... spray the bare ends with lanox or similar before crimping... then wipe down the cable & lug with solvent and apply glue lined heat shrink.....spray all bolts and mating surfaces with before bolting up.
cheers
Its the details, those little details, that make the difference.
Mate, have you tested each termination yet?
I would be curious to find where exactly the problem is before pulling it all apart.
Easiest way to test each place where the cable ends and something else takes it place ie battery connection or lug or battery switch is to put your voltmeter across the 2 ends of the join ie one lead in the cable and the other on the battery clamp or one lead on the battery clamp and the other pushed into the battery terminal or one lead on the common terminal of your battery switch and the other on the battery 1 and 2 terminal.
If you get a reading when you apply a load ie try to start the motor then there is the faulty connection.
Make sense?? Hope so. If not please say so.
It surprising where dodgy connections happen
Personally I crimp and solder each termination and then the resin cored heat shrink it. But that's just me...and never had a problem that I know about.
I intend on living for-ever....so far so good
I agree, my first suspicions lied in the terminals and connections too! So we have just last week re-terminaled all leads and connections. All are clean, using those cutting washers between lug and terminal. All terminals were crimped, soldered, heatshrunk and then wrapped in self amalgamating tape to be sure.
I have tested the voltage drop through the connections as you describe finga and there is nothing in particular that stands out on any connection, yet the overall cable drops 3-4v under cranking load. The test cable isnt costing me anything so it is worth a shot anyway, I'll pick it up this arvo and test it out and post back...
PS: My mate who used to do the fitout on Seafarers said that for all battery wiring they used to use 0 AWG wiring, particularly when they needed to locate the batteries remotely to the engine for weight distribution purposes.
If you do a ohms law calc for voltage drop over a cable, assuming a 3.5m (one way) wire length and 150A current draw for the starter at 12VDC you would need a 1/0AWG (50mm2) wire to get around a 3% voltage drop over that distance. Lets see if the theory turns out in practice... Will post back tomorrow
Bloody hell Trav
see what happens when you do it right
hope it gets solved soon and the headaches are over
all the best mate
s & c and the fur kids
IFISHCQ2
That manual should have turned up easily by now. I ordered mine through that marine engine website. Time to fire off a few emails. Hope you get it soon.
yeh this crimp and solder argument will always continue....& recently replaced the battery cables on the new tub...........quite a bit of the cable had black wire disease.....I chopped and stripped the cable to see the extent of the corrosion.......it had gone a couple of meters up the cable.
however the dense part of the crimp.....I cut the crimps apart.... was still clean......the old crimps were done with the " old style nipple crusher" crimp tool that just thumped a big dint in the lug........the new hex crimp tools used with the correct size crimps for the wire... should perform better................. I still maintain that soldering a properly made crimp is not an improvement....it introduces a corrosive eliment ( the flux)... and a properly made crimp should be air tight and near to welded.......add some low viscosity corrosion inhibitor like lanox......should do the trick,
OH and tinned battery cable is the go too... I used #2 b&s... which works out to about 32mm2
cheers
Its the details, those little details, that make the difference.
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