1984 Mercury 6 Cylinder troubleshooting, possible solenoid problem?

[Menemsha1968]

Hello again fellow boaters!
It's been an up-and-down summer working on the Whaler, and now yet another new issue has popped up with the outboard. Just this past weekend out in the water a shocking thing happened- when we tried starting the boat after it died on us unexpectedly, the starter engaged butwould notdisengage. The key switch is spring loaded and went back to center but the starter kept running for a good minute or so. Also, while the starter was running out of control, we turned the key switch to "off" but it still kept rolling. Then it shut off inexplicably on its own. We obviously thought it was the key switch, but we also wondered if it could be the solenoid causing a closed circuit condition as well? Is there some type of odd solenoid failure that can cause a closed circuit condition such as this?

Thanks for any advice in advance....

Dean & Karen

 

[Chris1956]

Re: 1984 Mercury 6 Cylinder troubleshooting, possible solenoid problem?

It could be the key switch or the starter solenoid. The only way to tell is to use a voltmeter on the solenoid, to see if the ign switch is still supplying voltage to it, when not in the start position. That failure is odd, but not extremely uncommon.