Motor Kills When Trimming

Just got back from our vacation up north and ran into some motor issues the last day.

The last day at the cabin I went to start the motor and the battery was dead. Realized I had left the light switch on. I had a charger that got the motor started in quick order and we were off fishing. I let the motor continue to run for about 30 minutes then shut off and continued fishing. At the end of the evening, the engine restarted just fine and we headed back in. It was a short 1 minute run but as we were getting closer to the dock I started to trim up the motor and it almost killed the engine. We went another 100ft and I trimmed the motor again and it shut off. From there the motor was completely dead and wouldn’t turn over. I put the charger back on. As soon as I did, the I could trim the motor up and down without the motor on. Charged it for about half hour then went to put the boat on the trailer. Started up just fine but as soon as I trimmed the motor it killed and was completely dead.

Do I just have a bad battery or something worse going on?

Generally, the rectifier on an outboard doesn’t have enough oomph to charge a dead battery. I’d fully charge the battery and hope for the best.

at idle your stator/altenator is only putting out a amp or less probably so the only real charge time was on your run to and from you spot.

Sounds like a bad ground somewhere.

I’d be looking for a wire coming in contact with metal as your motor is trimmed.

Ralph Wiggum wrote:

Generally, the rectifier on an outboard doesn’t have enough oomph to charge a dead battery. I’d fully charge the battery and hope for the best.

X2
I’d start by fully charging the battery.

X3

Thanks for the replies. I fully charged and double checked that cables were screwed on tight. One seemed loose.

So far so good after testing it.