1985 85hp force no fire

Doug hicks

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Aug 27, 2015
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Hi I have a 1985 85hp chrysler force motor ran fine this year and then all at once no fire on all cylinders . Kind of lost and looking for some info . Any help would be greatly appreciated thanks
 

jerryjerry05

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May 7, 2008
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Outboard ignition . com (remove the spaces) has test procedures for troubleshooting your motor.
 

Jiggz

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Oct 23, 2009
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When you do not have any fire on any of the cylinders, the most obvious is to check the position of the kill switch or also called the lanyard switch. Visual check is not enough instead you should try activating and resetting it. If that does not help, the next step is to get into the engine cowl and then disconnect the white wire coming off the CDM from the terminal board. Tape them off to make sure they do not touch ground and then try again.
 

Doug hicks

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I by passed the kill switch and still nothing , unhooked the white wire and no change. I'm thinking it's the stator or trigger do you know how to test them?
 

fisheymikey

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Jul 30, 2012
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you must have a voltmeter, set to ohms... between yellow and blue wires you should read restince 680-800 ohms they must be almost the same. a bit variance will screw around with everything. for your trigger 48-52 ohms

but if i had a guess its not your stator. or trigger. check all wires and recheck
 

Doug hicks

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Well the reason I say the stator is I replaced it last year well two of the screws came loose and grinded on the flywheel and tore the heads off the screws just thought it grounded the stator out and fried it
 

Frank Acampora

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That is possible. Pieces of screw bouncing around under there could eat through the insulation.

The kill switch ONLY disables the starter solenoid. In fact, you can jump the solenoid with NO wires (Other than battery) connected and the engine will crank, start, and run. Stopping is done through the white and blue wires.

It is unlikely but not impossible that both CD charging circuits on the stator are grounded. When no spark is had on all three cylinders then look elsewhere

However before going crazy check the grounding system. ALL the electronics are mounted on the metal mounting plate and all are grounded to that plate. The plate, in turn, is grounded to the engine block with a tiny black wire connecting the bottom of the plate to a bypass cover bolt--not a good system. Make sure the ground wire is still there and not broken.

Personally, I like to "daisy chain" all the electronics with a heavier black ground wire and connect this wire to the ground terminal on the terminal board on the starter side of the engine.
 
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Doug hicks

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I checked the grounds everything seems to be good. You mentioned blue and white wire are you talking about the magneto wires? And should they be under power at any time? Because I checked them for power and nothing their.
 

Frank Acampora

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The blue and white wires connected to the two "M: terminals are the kill circuit. The white wires from the CD boxes are connected directly to the internal capacitors.The white wires, while the engine is starting or running should have about 240 volts BUT you can not read this with a regular VOM because the voltage rises and drops so quickly. When the key is turned off, the white is in continuity with the engine ground through the blue wire. The internal capacitors are shunted to ground instead of to the coils and no spark is generated, stopping the engine.The blue wire is the wire that grounds the white when the key is turned off and while running or even stopped, will show no voltage.

As I said, it would be rare to have both charging coils on the stator bad. It would also be most unlikely to have both sides of both CD boxes bad. Note that the bottom CD box has both a yellow and blue wire connected to it. This is because each charging coil has a positive and negative side. (actually, it is a type of alternating current and I use positive and negative for simplicity) The top box uses positive (let's say it's yellow) for one cylinder and negative (blue) for the other cylinder. The second charging coil MUST have somewhere for the voltage to go so both yellow and blue are connected to the CD box. Later Force engines used (I think) Green with yellow tracer wires for the charging coils.

Whether or not your engine has quick-connects or is connected via a small terminal board on the electronics plate, check for broken wires inside the insulation. Trigger wires do sometimes break where they enter the trigger but no all three. Pull the flywheel and check that the center magnet is still intact as this activates the triggers. check the rim magnet strip because this charges the capacitors.

Hope that helps a little.
 
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Doug hicks

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Aug 27, 2015
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Thanks for all the info hopefully it helps. Will give this a try this evening and see what happens
 
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