just had this out first time Sat. voltage meter reads high, like pegged out. Whats my problem? I am worried about my electronics and batt. Thanks for any help.
If the water is up on your battery, and the connections are clean and tight, the battery is shot. A bad connection will make the voltage go high.
This is a 9 amp unregulated system which relies on the loads (instruments, lights) and the battery to regulate the voltage. It works fine as long as you regularly maintain your battery. With bad connections, it can easily hit 80 volts at WOT.
OK, thank you for the reply. I do have a new battery and all the boat wiring is new including the batt wires.(spent the winter restoring the whole boat) I also have a promariner 8 onboard charger that's been hooked a couple of weeks. Is there a way to "regulate the voltage down to about 14?
I guess you need to define "too high". A good battery will hydrolyze (convert water to free hydrogen and oxygen) and hold the voltage down to 14 and small change, which is fine for everything else. As long as you keep up on the water for the battery it doesn't seem to shorten battery life enough to worry about.
You can find a place to mount and splice in a later model 20 amp regulator and it will regulate the voltage to about 13.8 volts. It's pretty easy. Yellows go to stator, reds go to battery, black to ground, and grey to tachometer.
thank you all. I have a new battery for the kicker also. So this weekend I'm gonna swap batteries and see if that helps. Oh, yeah too high is at least 18v. j_martin, I used to live in Mora, and Hugo, know where Isanti is.
After you verify that your batteries are good, the next thing you need to do is get a baseline. Put the battery on your charger and get it fully charged. You should be reading about 13.3 on a voltmeter. Next, turn on a few accessories and burn off the surface charge. The battery will read 12.6 when that's done and it only takes about 5 minutes in most cases.
Now put your motor on the hose, fire it up and observe the voltage gauge and test at the battery with a volt meter. If the both read higher than 13.6 volts at idle then it's likely that the problem is either a bad rectifier (shorted) or a stator charging coil that's going south. Anything above 15.5 volts is telling you that there is a problem with one of the charging circuit components. Just for the record, I've seen brand new CDI unregulated systems run at 16v WOT but I've never seen one run at 18v.
I encountered the same situation with my 1971 Merc 800. With a fully charged battery, I would get 17+ volts while running anywhere over 3000 rpm. I'm sure that none of the electronics or the battery were very happy with that voltage.
If I let the battery run down, then run the boat, the voltage would stay about 13-14V UNTIL the battery was charged and then the voltage would spike back up to 17V or more. I could see it happen on the gauge.
Last spring I installed an aftermarket regulator and it worked perfectly all last season. I posted a thread on these forums somewhere last year about this time.
Thanks again. The 18v was at my dash voltmeter which is new but..........not sure how accurate they are. I think I will get an aftermarket regulator. I keep the boat on a charger/maintaner and they are always charged. I'm retired and can't afford to replace my electronics. especially the Raymarine autohelm. Since Moody blue has one that worked could you tell where you got it?
I found Moody Blues post from last year and after reading one thing bothered me. I don't quite understand how the tach works but it does. Would installing a voltage regulator have any effect on the pulses going to the tach? As you can already tell I am not and electronics genius.
The tach works just fine with the new regulator. Typically, the tach is connected to the rectifier on the motor. The rectifier takes "pulsed" voltage from the stator and smooths it out to DC. The tach "reads" these pulses to determine the rpm.
The new regulator incorporates a rectifier as well as the regulator circuitry so there is no need for the old (existing) rectifier. The tach signal is derived from the internal circuitry of the regulator and is available on the GREY wire output.
sorry to be such a dummy, but if i purchase this one I need help with wiring. Currently the one on the motor is wired like this; facing the rectifier on the motor the top left has a red wire on it and a +. to the right of that is a terminal with a yellow wire on it. below that the bottom terminal has a brown and a yellow wire on it. There is also a black wire under the bottom mounting screw. How would I connect the 6 wires on the new one? I only have 5 wires now. Thanks
sorry to be such a dummy, but if i purchase this one I need help with wiring. Currently the one on the motor is wired like this; facing the rectifier on the motor the top left has a red wire on it (12V feed to battery) and a +. to the right of that is a terminal with a yellow wire (one of two wires from stator) on it. below that the bottom terminal has a brown (tach wire) and a yellow wire (second of two wires from stator) on it. There is also a black wire (ground) under the bottom mounting screw. How would I connect the 6 wires on the new one? I only have 5 wires now. Thanks
The device I bought was a 5-wire type. Yellow to yellow, red to red, black to ground (make sure the case is well grounded also) and grey to brown. It is highly recommended that you install it on a heatsink of some sort.
The regulator has 2 reds. They both go to the red wire.
The two yellows go to the two yellow stator wires.
The grey wire goes to the tachometer (probably the brown wire, on a rectifier, the tach goes to one of the stator wires)
Black is ground.
Thank you sir. One post said I should use an Al heatsink so I've been looking for a mounting place. On the stbd side of the engine there is a large aluminum plate where the coils and switch boxex mount. That plate extends forward 3 1/2" below the starter motor. It also hase three threaded holes in it. The only thing attached there is the neg batt cable. Was something mounted there? Should there be something there? Can I use that space to mount the rect/reg? It's already and Al heat sink of sorts? Thanks for any replies
