69 Johnson Dies. Investigators find no clues.

So my 69 Johnson, 55hp, is still a giant P.O.S.

I was having a lovely day, catching Kokanee by the bucket load, when my motor stopped. It didn't choke out, shimmy and shake, or anything interesting. It just cut out like I had turned the ignition off.

After a few minutes of profanity, I fired up the Minn Kota and headed for the dock (into the wind with more profanity.) My wife reached over and turned the ignition back on and the motor fired right up. I got about a minute of half throttle back towards shore, and the motor cut out again, the same way. 10 minutes later, it fired right back up for a few minutes and then cut out again.

I have traced every wire I can easily get to and haven't found anything loose or coroded (all the wires are about 3 months old.)

Thoughts?

Re: 69 Johnson Dies. Investigators find no clues.

Sort out whether its ignition or fuel problems by using a timing light when it quits and won't fire.
If the timing light shows good spark then try pumping the bulb, don't do this test the other way around.

Post back your results.

Re: 69 Johnson Dies. Investigators find no clues.

Hey fella,sounds like you need turn the helm over to the lil wifee.Have you checked the connections to the keyswitch,might have something loose there.Your keyswitch provides kill to the powerpack.Its basically grounding the pack,its possible your switch is going bad,sometimes you get a ground leak through inside of the switch

Re: 69 Johnson Dies. Investigators find no clues.

Your key switch is not grounding out your power pack but providing power to the pack. This mtr had a battery cd type ignition where you had to have 12 volts going to the pack to make it run. What you may have is a bad ignition sw or loose wires coming from the mtr to the switch or back all the way to the pack.

Re: 69 Johnson Dies. Investigators find no clues.

did you try to start it when it just quit on you or did you swear and wait for 10 mins. before wife tried?

If this follows the same scheme as my 1970-

You should be able to read if you have power back to the terminals when you turn the key on. If you do, then your down to the sensor, powerpack and coil.

Re: 69 Johnson Dies. Investigators find no clues.

Looks like it was a power-pack failure Thanks Joe! I also found an ignition wire that wasn't getting a very good connection and found a lot of corrosion on the main wire that connects to the positive battery terminal. I fixed/replaced all of that and the problem went away. Not sure which was the culprit, but I am now free to move on to the other issues.

Thanks for all your help!