87 Force 125 battery charging problems?

[Brandon13]

87 Force 125. Two fairly new(less than a year old) batteries. Same with the starter. In the last 6 months, I've taken it out 7-10 times without any battery problems. Last week, put her in the water and started right up. Ran it for about 5-10 minutes and realized I had no gas so I took her out of the water and went and got gas. 20 min later she was back in the water and would not start, both batteries had no juice. Proceeded to use my truck battery to jump start it. once started, ran like a champ for 20-30 min until I turned it off and trying to restart it resulted in the same thing. No juice. It appears that the batteries are not charging plus something had to kill it within 20 min of trailering it to get gas. What seems to be my problem?

 

[carholme]

Re: 87 Force 125 battery charging problems?

Brandon;

There is a possibility that you have been running on batteries alone for some time. Do you have a voltage indicator on your panel? If not, you would have no way of knowing that the batteries were being drained and that your last start was just that, the last start that the uncharged batteries could manage. When you went to turn the key on to start, do you remember hearing a click from the engine?

First thing is to put a volt meter across the batteries and find out what state they are in.

Second is to scrub all connections to make sure that they are clean and have good contact.

Third, take a known good battery and follow these steps:

Without knowing anything else about your engine problem, the easiest would be to accurately measure the battery voltage with a volt meter. A good target would be 12.5V. Then, run the engine and rev it up to about mid range and with the meter record the voltage at the battery again. If it is higher than the static battery voltage, ie; 14V. this will show that the charging system is working.

Ensure that you are using a good battery.

Use a good meter, not the gauge on the instrument panel. If you don't see that the battery is charging, then you have to start looking into other things.

Gerry

 

[Frank Acampora]

Re: 87 Force 125 battery charging problems?

First thing to understand is that the self energising ignition system and the charging systems are completely separate. These engines will run until you stop them or they run out of fuel. So, since you have relatively new batteries, and since the appear to have been discharged, and also appear to not take a charge, the charging system is suspect.

First check the red wire on the engine terminal board for shorts and breaks. especially check the red wire that goes from the terminal board/circuit breaker to the battery side of the starter solenoid. If this wire is burned, shorted, broken, or not attached, the battery will not be charged. IF it comes directly from the circuit breaker and the circuit breaker is popped (doubtful since you can jump start) then reset the circuit breaker.
Finally, check the rectifier. A shorted or bad rectifier can drain the batteries and/or not allow them to be charged. A simple volt/ohm meter is all that is required to test it. You can get them at Harbor Freight for a few dollars. Test procedures can be found in most manuals.