Am rebuilding a starcraft 18IO and am nearly done and am losing vacation days as I type.
My 120 rolls over from the rear rollover button and I’ve cleaned replaced all the old wiring and have new batteries in it.
But, my dash won’t roll it over.
I need electrical support. All the shops in the area are busy (of course, duh…)
Anyone with experience?? I’m just a shade tree on electrical, but do have some test lites…
Often the gage of the wire originally installed is pretty marginal. The thicker the wire, the more expensive it is, and the harder it is to thread through places. Of course, the thicker it is, the better it is. You won’t see as much energy lost in the run. Also, you want to keep the run as short as possible. The longer the distance, the more energy lost.
There will be 3 wires at the back of the switch a hot, a run, and a start. The hot should have voltage as long as the main battery power is turned on, the run will have voltage when the key is turned on and the start will have voltage when the key is turned all the way to start.
Check to make sure you have 12V to the hot lead on the back of the switch. Put one lead on the wire/terminal and the other on a negative post(can’t really tell you where that would be easiest found on that boat, but there is usually a negative terminal bar in/around the dash) If you have voltage there, move to the start terminal, turn the key and if have voltage there, there’s a break in the circuit somewhere between that and the starting solenoid. If there is no voltage at the starting terminal, then its a bad switchset. If you don’t even have voltage at the hot terminal of the back of the switch, then there is a break somewhere between the battery and the switch. Companies have been creative in routing through fuses, etc. so it might just be a fuse. Also, double check to make sure the switch is wired corectly. If you are off by one terminal, it won’t work.
Sho-
I got far enuf to decide that the coil and the switch were probably worth replacing. Luckily, the ignition is not under the cowling, so I can use a standard auto switch (the marine one was $45!!!)
Since the coil was leaking, i decided to replace it also and did break for the marine one there…
I’ve located the hot wire for the switch so i’m getting feed from the battery in the rear.
Now to separate run from start tomorrow. I’m way behind the curve on figuring that out, but with a new coil in the boat, it may be easier… It will be easy enuf to find the run & start terminals on the back of the switch, but figuring which wire should be connected seems daunting tonite!! 8 hours of sleep may help.
Thank you for the support!!
ttt
Well, made some progress. This is such a simple engine, this is embarrassing…
Replaced the coil and did a complete replacement on the distributor parts, i.e. resistor, points, cap and rotor.
Turned on the blower and then the starter and probably blew a fuse somewhere. Don’t know.
Tried to find hot wires from the switch back to the engine, but failed.
Am concentrating on testing the slave solenoid now as I can’t get the terminals to lite up when the ignition switch is in either position, so i think that leaves me with having improperly wiring the ignition switch or having an open switch in the throttle. I have not found the main buss that is talked about in the literature.
I did hit the jumper button and got a spark at the coil, so that is good.
Now, to get it from the ignition key…
All conversation is welcome as my vacation days dribble away.
Aha!! Slave solenoid was cracked and leaking PCBs so bad i thought the neighbor was breaking the no burning law!! Tomorrow we be buying a new one…
Well, the slave solenoid didn’t come close to solving the issue. But in frustration, I REVERSED the wiring from all the directions.
Rolled over.
Don’t ask me…
So, i poured some gas into the carb CAREFULLY and tried to fire it.
NOTHING.
So, I pulled the plugs…
Some peoples kids. these plugs had NEVER been changed in the life of the boat… 45 years…
Pretty ugly. So, it’s off to the parts store again tomorrow…
Was there spark? Did it pop? Even dirty plugs will normally run, just not very good.
there’s spark to the distributor, but haven’t checked beyond that.
the plugs seemed a bit wet, but there was rust shorting out at least two plugs.
more tests tomorrow after i’ve got new plugs in it. the plugs are so old they have to be ordered from the warehouse!! But, at least they were only $2@…
Went to do a compression test and found a 3/4″ tunnel down to the threads. Frogged around for a day and then remembered that I’d kept an extension for my compression tester IN 1974!!!
FOUND IT!!!
Amazing even if I do say so myself.
Unfortunately, that’s where the silver lining ended.
1 – 60#
2 – 15# kinda
3 – 45#
4 – 60#
So, it looks like popping in a rebuild. I shot the cylinders fullish of ATF and I’ll roll them every day or so, but I’m not expecting much.
Looks like the URL trip is shot and I’m now just trying to salvage the Door County trip in August…
pull the valve cover off and make sure all the valves are opening and closing as they should. may be able to fix it in the boat.
you are correct. i am ASSUMING that the problem is rust and it may be gummy valves.
I’m thinking pulling the heads and looking at the valves would not be crazy…
praypraypray
before removing the head check the valves, take off the rockers and put a straight edge across the tops of them.
Ok the endall be all is I’m changing out the 120 for a 140 I bought reasonable (thank you Al Olson)
But, what is interesting is that b4 i quit working on the 120, the marine shop had me try some stuff that BRP puts out called ‘Engine Tuner’. I was impressed. I will try it again for cleaning old carbureted engines.
I had 60,45,15,60 for readings. Soaked it two days and got
90, 45,15, 90.
If I’d had a balanced engine, that would have worked well.
Well, back to pulling boltons…
Well, some progress. This tub may float yet!!
Al Olson made it unavoidable to swap out for a 140 that he thinks will run. Thank you, Oly. We negotiated hard and sealed the deal over a walleye trip. Only getting two sheepshead almost derailed everything.
So pulled the motors (anyone want a Jolly Roger that needs an engine??)
And popped it back into the starcraft sunday, rewired it monday (quite a number of differences…)
And found a leaky carb feed, but teflon tape solved that issue at least temporarily. (FWIW, swab-able TFE plumbing paste doesn’t work for crap)
So, now it rolls over dry at least. (I hate those rocket bombs shooting thru the roof of the boat barn.)
So, found out that the previous owner had just subbed in rotor that didn’t even fit down into the drive slot, so decided to pull the distributor and use one that i’d already tuned.
Well finding TDC is more than i’d remembered from my 4 cyclinder days…
What #1 and the timing slash said was different from my best MM (marine mechanic) OR the book…
So, once i wired to the crankshaft (you gotta trust the crankshaft…) AND rotated at least 20 degrees off, it at least started to rumble.
Think I’ll start to look for the old timing lite!!!
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