jacklegmech
Cadet
- Joined
- May 10, 2013
- Messages
- 25
I have a mid 90's 5.7 mercruiser engine. i had a small engine fire. I have most of the tools, a good place to work and am fairly machanically skilled. Due to the amount of work and my regular job schedule i had a marine mechanic repair and replace all problems caused by the fire. While he had it i had him repair/replace the alpha one outdrive that had quite a bit of slop (rather than go the kit repair route) and replace all cables. As he neared completion he broke his arm so i completed the work myself. That included installing the new carb, hoses etc. I was able to find the old type shift interrupter switch, tested it and it was good. I mounted it on the plate and commenced to make my adjustments and tweek the engine/ carb and get the RPMs right. I haven't had the boat in the water yet but i've run it on the water hose lots of time in the yard. I've shifted it back and forth while fine tuning the process of shifting from fwd to neutral to rev and back and forth. For about a week i didn't touch it and yesterday i ran the boat for 12 to 15 minutes. I shifted into fwd, neutral slowly and then rev and as i went back to neutral it shut off. I looked at the engine and the brown lead to the shift switch was smoking. I immediately shut the batteries off, removed the switch and tested it. It tested fine. It has no arc damage from any grounding short and I can't tell what caused the problem cause everything else on the engine looks fine. I removed the switch and it showed no signs of grounding to anything; just the damaged lead and I tested it and it functioned perfectly. It?s not sticking either. Can someone tell me what you think the problem is? The way I had it connected was to the positive side of the coil and to ground. It was working fine before this .I can?t seem to get to the water. Thank you