[adegiulio]

One of our recurring problems is when I go to start her up, I get nothing but a click. The battery is new and fully charged. Everything else works fine (blower, bilge pump, etc). Today, I decided to try to tighten things up on the starter (or at least knock off any corrosion). As I turned the wrench, I got a nice spark as the metal touched the housing of the starter (a careless mistake I won't repeat). Now, I get nothing at all, as if a main breaker has tripped. I found a breaker reset switch on top of the engine (the boat is a 2001 Searay 190 Bowrider, the engine is a 4.3l Mercruiser), but pushing the button to reset did nothing. I disconnected the battery (something I should have done at the start) and reconnected it, thinking the breaker might be caught in some sort of electro-magnetic limbo. No help. So now, everything is dead, except for the pump which raises and lowers the sterndrive.

Any hints on what I might be missing? Is there another breaker somewhere? Are these breakers prone to failure? It seems like I am missing something very simple, but being new to boats, I can't figure out what it is...


Thanks in advance.

[magster65]

If it's not a bad connection somewhere, the 'click' was/is likely the starter solenoid.
Your newest problem might be... my '03 boat has a main fuse panel under the dash that has a master reset on it, maybe yours is the same? You can check all your other fuses when you find it.
Let us know how you make out.

[adegiulio]

I also posted this question in the Mercruiser thread. Turns out I blew a 90A fuse that I never would have realized was a fuse without this board. While I have a fusebox under the dash, there is no reset. Changing that 90A fuse did the trick. Now I need to figure out what is wrong with my starter...

[magster65]

Excellent! I wonder if that's the same feed but changed to a breaker instead of a fuse in '03?
Gotta' love the information that's available on this site... it's amazing!

[mkfs9]

HI i had a similar problem on my 4.3 v6.It turned out to be the pre solenoid.this is not on the starter but on top front of the engine behind the reset button.Cheap easy fix.