Before Posting, Please Read Our Posting Guidelines Below.
1. Use the full 4 digit year for everything you are asking your question about. Example: 1962, 1988, 2000, 2011 2. Include the correct name of your Whaler model. Example: Montauk 17, Montauk 170, Outrage 26, Outrage 260 3. Include the length when necessary. Example: 16, 17, 18, 20, 22 4. Do not post your email address anywhere on this site as it is already in your user profile.
Electrical opinion requested - potential big finding
As some of you know, I bought my Whaler 15 from a fellow member davis422. And he had issues with starting, battery drain, etc. When I tried to start the boat the first time, the battery was dead. Davis422 confirmed that he disconnected the battery between usage as advised by his mechanic. His mechanic said that something was using power when the ignition was off and boat was not in use. Fishy to me - and I have yet to diagnose. Could be a 'soft' short in the wiring somewhere, but....
Once I charged the battery, I couldn't start the engine. Absolutely no fire. So, I started doing bench tests on various components (stator and rectifier) since the boat was located in a spot where I couldn't provide cooling. Following some of the online diagnostic info (e.g. CDI electronics), I learned that one of the sets of wires on my stator was open (infinite resistance). That was between the brown and brown/yellow wires. The orange/orange-black coil was fine at 420 ohms.
So, I set out to acquire a stator. After an eBay mishap (after my purchase, seller realized they didn't have any more of the stators and provided a power pack and rectifier instead (all in all, not a bad trade for $25 including shipping). I then won a second auction and today I received my stator. While not as clean as the one I removed (and by the way, removing the flywheel was REALLY tough), it was the right part - yea! But, something else become obvious quite quickly. The brown wires were located side by side in the molded plug as was the orange wires. In the stator I removed from the engine, the wires went brown, orange/black, brown/yellow, orange as you move around the circle. Uh oh!! Looking at my power pack confirmed that it should be brown, brown/yellow, orange/black, orange (labeled A, B, C, D).
So, electrical geniuses. Would this cause the system to slowly drain down a battery? Also, how might it impact operation of the engine? What's weird is that the engine ran (davis422 had it running when I picked up the boat). But, I wonder if there a different numbers of poles in the stator - thus impacting the voltage the two different sides of the power pack was expecting. Regardless, I'm not sure how it got into that state, but I've changed the wiring back on my stator to match the power pack. I was also able to verify that brown to brown/yellow was not open but rather high resistance. I think I'll re-install my original stator and see what happens. My hunch is that the mechanic removed the pins from the plug (usually one would open only the kill wire to verify that system's impact on spark) - and accidently swapped the two outer wires. If so, fail on him. I can't come up with another reason why they were incorrect.
All feedback on how this came to be and what impact it might have on engine operation and/or battery discharge while boat was not in use is truly appreciated!!
I have seen what you appear to have found in the past. All of these pin type connector plugs do have removable pins and if the mechanic took them out and re installed them wrong it is a very hard issue to find. Sometimes you will have to either buy a new part or find someone who has the exact one so you can trace the wires and match the colors in the pin plugs.
I do hope you have found your problem and commend you for going through all the trouble. If the pins were re installed incorrectly, imagine what it would have cost to have a mechanic do all this tracing to find it, if he even could! I had it happen on the 4 wheel drive unit on my ATV. Corrosion inside the plug was found and the mechanic took it apart to clean and then got the wires crossed. I ended up having to buy a complete new unit because the mechanic said it was shot. With both the old and new units in hand I was able to see that the wires in the plugs were different and a simple switch got my old unit working perfect.
