1986 196 BR.....COMPLETE electrical failure! Help!

clattin

Petty Officer 3rd Class
Joined
Jul 18, 2012
Messages
89
Soooooo.....where to begin? While my boat was in winter storage, I disconnected the negative battery connection, still the battery was stone dead and wouldn't take a charge (brand new battery). I took the battery back to West Marine and replaced it with another new one and used it to take the boat out for the first spin of the summer....no problems.

That was about a month ago, went to take the boat out yesterday afternoon and the battery was stone dead again. I hooked it up to my charger and it just stuck at 74% charge. I did end up taking it out on the water and it ran good for awhile. We stopped and fished for about 30 minutes and it struggled to start. We ran back to the dock and against my better judgement, I shut it down when I went to get the trailer backed down the ramp. Needless to say, when I went to start it up to load it.....stone dead. Not even enough charge to tilt the lower unit.

I brought it home and put the charger on it....again, wouldn't get over about 60% so I borrowed a neighbors charger and had the same effect. I took this battery back to West and they tested it and said it was fine but I swapped it out for a new one anyway. Brought it home, hooked it up and............nothing. So clearly, I'm not getting power from the battery to the rest of the electrical system, right? And it seems like there must be a short somewhere too that is draining the battery?

I HATE electrical stuff but I can't really afford to take it to a shop right now......the cables running from the battery to the engine appear to be in good shape and the connections seem tight. Could it be a bad alternator?


Engine is a 1986 Mercruiser 230 (5.0LX) which is the GM 305

Battery is the West Marine Dual Purpose 810 CCA 80Ah

Thanks!
Chris
 

Fiat4Fun

Petty Officer 1st Class
Joined
Sep 14, 2009
Messages
215
Re: 1986 196 BR.....COMPLETE electrical failure! Help!

Hi there,
I have a couple suggestions. First, charge the battery up for a few days, at the lowest setting, like 2amps.
Then start the motor, and put a tester on the battery terminals. See if you are getting 13 volts. If you have a alternator tester, or a charging system tester, than that would be good. See what the readings are. My guess is that the alternator has a bad diode, and is
draining your battery. I have also worked on another Chris Craft 17' Scorpion that tested fine, but when I removed the alternator, and had the alternator shop test it off the boat, it came up bad. I believe you 1986 Chris Craft has a regulator that is built into the alternator, so that is another possible cause. Not sure if your alternator is mounted on the top of the motor or not, for easy removal.....

I assume that the folks at West Marine did a load test on the battery?

Hope that helps?

Let us know how it works out.....
 
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