Hi,
NOTE: My motor originally had a rectifier only, it now has a regulator (rectifier was removed). I installed it yesterday. Even with the regulator it's pushing 16.1V at WOT. It seems not everyone is reading my entire post which is understandable since I wrote wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much!
My first post and sorry it's so long, but this battery charging issue is driving me crazy!
:facepalm:
I rebuilt a 14' Fiberglass boat, from all the great topics on here. It had a rotten floor and transom. I will post pictures of that at some point, the boat looks like new!
Anyway... We've owned this motor since new, original stator, rectifier, trigger. The power pack went about 10 years ago and was replaced by a dealer with a mercury part, he did not replace anything else at the time.
I was replacing the fuel lines (rotten) and noticed the stator yellow wire housings were all cracked, I touched them and BOOM the housing just fell off the wires - wires were very corroded (fresh water too). A common issue from what I've read and people have soldered to about 2" of good wire at the stator. Well that worked. But I decided to ohm test the stator and found it to be bad (BLUE/BLUE-WHITE failed the ohm test) - lesson learned ohm test before wasting time repairing something that is dead I replaced it with CDI stator 174-5454k1.
The trigger ohm tested perfect after I repaired one of the wires on that.
About 15 years ago my dad disconnected the battery with the motor running, tach smoked. So I figured I'd ohm test the rectifier as well, it tested bad. So I replaced it with a CDI rectifier 154-6770. Strange thing with the ORIGINAL rectifier the voltage was 13.98V at idle! One of the Yellow posts had continuity both directions to ground.
New CDI rectifier hooked up measured 16.85V at IDLE at 2000rpm it was around 17.1V I never voltage tested it under-way or at WOT. Took it for a spin, new tach was working great for 40 minutes until magic smoke came out it
Traced it down to the wiring harness fuse went sending all the rectified voltage into the tach. Harness had a direct connection to the rectifier and a FUSED link to the solenoid/battery post. The glass on the fuse was broken - probably during my maintenance and the solder joint of the 20A fused failed... "Disconnecting the battery" - therefore smoking my tach. I have rewired the harness as per CDI he said Mercury did some very odd wiring in the early 80's - Fused link from harness to solenoid (20A) and a separate fused link from the rectifier to solenoid (30A). Both fuse values suggested by CDI.
After reading about boiling batteries I decided to install a snowmobile rectifier/regulator (01-154-16) Kimpex ($39). It's rated at 200W or less which means it can handle 16A (My stator according to CDI outputs 9-11A). I installed it yesterday... cranked it up... 14.84V at idle... WOT it's outputting 16.1V so it is regulating!
I was VERY pleased however 16.1V is still WAY too high with a regulator.
The battery was purchased in 2008, it's a Walleye Marine Starting battery made by Crown Battery listed as "maintenance free" on the top label and "low maintenance" on the side of the battery. It's 550CCA. I popped the caps off and negative side of the battery water level was just below the plate. We took this as a maintenance free battery so NEVER checked the fluid. Boat/motor was last used in 2009 because of the rotten transom, battery has been charged on a regular basis - and is in "green" - I don't remember the actual gravity level on the battery hydrometer. It was used a few times with a winch to pull out sea-doos on a marine railway, but was always charged up afterwards. From what I've read, probably not very good for the battery since it's not a deep cycle one.
So far I've purchased a new CDI rectifier, Kimpex regulator, CDI Stator, 2 tachs (I have a replacement one but I'm not hooking it up until I solve the voltage issues). I've ordered parts to build a small voltage regulator JUST for the tach it's a low dropout one too (only .5V lost) and can take up to 32V DC and regulate it to 12V. When I spoke to the guy at CDI he suggested part # 193-5114 ($89) instead of using the CDI rectifier I had just purchased. This part is not on their site, but it's a regulator/rectifier made for Johnson motors but would work fine with my setup. But requires no heat sink??
Could a bad battery cause this? Or is the regulator I bought a POS? Would I be better purchasing a genuine Mercury reg/rect #883072T1 ($175)?
I do have another battery but it's from the same year which is used in our Inboard/Outboard. I also have a lawn tractor battery which we use in a boat that has no charging system (it was just purchased 2 months ago). Multiple sled batteries as well. But I think the small batteries would be too small to crank over this motor?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Ben
NOTE: My motor originally had a rectifier only, it now has a regulator (rectifier was removed). I installed it yesterday. Even with the regulator it's pushing 16.1V at WOT. It seems not everyone is reading my entire post which is understandable since I wrote wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much!
My first post and sorry it's so long, but this battery charging issue is driving me crazy!
:facepalm:I rebuilt a 14' Fiberglass boat, from all the great topics on here. It had a rotten floor and transom. I will post pictures of that at some point, the boat looks like new!
Anyway... We've owned this motor since new, original stator, rectifier, trigger. The power pack went about 10 years ago and was replaced by a dealer with a mercury part, he did not replace anything else at the time.
I was replacing the fuel lines (rotten) and noticed the stator yellow wire housings were all cracked, I touched them and BOOM the housing just fell off the wires - wires were very corroded (fresh water too). A common issue from what I've read and people have soldered to about 2" of good wire at the stator. Well that worked. But I decided to ohm test the stator and found it to be bad (BLUE/BLUE-WHITE failed the ohm test) - lesson learned ohm test before wasting time repairing something that is dead
I replaced it with CDI stator 174-5454k1.The trigger ohm tested perfect after I repaired one of the wires on that.
About 15 years ago my dad disconnected the battery with the motor running, tach smoked. So I figured I'd ohm test the rectifier as well, it tested bad. So I replaced it with a CDI rectifier 154-6770. Strange thing with the ORIGINAL rectifier the voltage was 13.98V at idle! One of the Yellow posts had continuity both directions to ground.
New CDI rectifier hooked up measured 16.85V at IDLE at 2000rpm it was around 17.1V I never voltage tested it under-way or at WOT. Took it for a spin, new tach was working great for 40 minutes until magic smoke came out it
Traced it down to the wiring harness fuse went sending all the rectified voltage into the tach. Harness had a direct connection to the rectifier and a FUSED link to the solenoid/battery post. The glass on the fuse was broken - probably during my maintenance and the solder joint of the 20A fused failed... "Disconnecting the battery" - therefore smoking my tach. I have rewired the harness as per CDI he said Mercury did some very odd wiring in the early 80's - Fused link from harness to solenoid (20A) and a separate fused link from the rectifier to solenoid (30A). Both fuse values suggested by CDI.
After reading about boiling batteries I decided to install a snowmobile rectifier/regulator (01-154-16) Kimpex ($39). It's rated at 200W or less which means it can handle 16A (My stator according to CDI outputs 9-11A). I installed it yesterday... cranked it up... 14.84V at idle... WOT it's outputting 16.1V so it is regulating!
I was VERY pleased however 16.1V is still WAY too high with a regulator.
The battery was purchased in 2008, it's a Walleye Marine Starting battery made by Crown Battery listed as "maintenance free" on the top label and "low maintenance" on the side of the battery. It's 550CCA. I popped the caps off and negative side of the battery water level was just below the plate. We took this as a maintenance free battery so NEVER checked the fluid. Boat/motor was last used in 2009 because of the rotten transom, battery has been charged on a regular basis - and is in "green" - I don't remember the actual gravity level on the battery hydrometer. It was used a few times with a winch to pull out sea-doos on a marine railway, but was always charged up afterwards. From what I've read, probably not very good for the battery since it's not a deep cycle one.
So far I've purchased a new CDI rectifier, Kimpex regulator, CDI Stator, 2 tachs (I have a replacement one but I'm not hooking it up until I solve the voltage issues). I've ordered parts to build a small voltage regulator JUST for the tach it's a low dropout one too (only .5V lost) and can take up to 32V DC and regulate it to 12V. When I spoke to the guy at CDI he suggested part # 193-5114 ($89) instead of using the CDI rectifier I had just purchased. This part is not on their site, but it's a regulator/rectifier made for Johnson motors but would work fine with my setup. But requires no heat sink??
Could a bad battery cause this? Or is the regulator I bought a POS? Would I be better purchasing a genuine Mercury reg/rect #883072T1 ($175)?
I do have another battery but it's from the same year which is used in our Inboard/Outboard. I also have a lawn tractor battery which we use in a boat that has no charging system (it was just purchased 2 months ago). Multiple sled batteries as well. But I think the small batteries would be too small to crank over this motor?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Ben
