Re: Ignition Coil and Electric Choke VERY HOT. Solenoid no longer works too.
Been doing any work on the boats electrical system or the engines electrical system since it last worked right?
06-22-2013 - I found two things today that may be the source of the parasitic draw on my 18 ft 1997 Moomba Boomerang Ski boat with the PCM 5.8L engine ( aka Ford 351W)
With the key in RUN position I tested what voltage was flowing to the solenoid where the main positive red battery cable attaches. It measured 12.6 volts when I put the red voltmeter lead on the solenoid nut and the black lead on a good ground on the rear of the engine block a few inches above the starter. But when I moved the black lead to the place where the ignition coil grounds towards the front of the engine, the voltmeter read 6 volts! If I removed the ignition coil ground wire from the front engine ground, the voltage read correctly at 12.6 volts. Seems like something was making the wire attached to the ignition coil behave strangely. Of course all the wiring is under several feet of electric tape, so I unwound the tape to expose the wires. Nothing was obvious in the engine area, so I removed the wire all the way to the front of the boat where the wiring harness ( about 8 wires in it - red, yellow, blue, black, tan , etc) connects to the instrument panel at the steering wheel. This boat like other inboards routes the wires under the floor in what can be a very wet area. As I was removing the wiring harness I came across the bilge pump wiring in the same area. That's were I found broken and corroded bilge pump wires that had been soaking for some time. This may be where the parasitic draw is coming from. The wiring harness wires looked fine. One other issue may be that I painted the 351 engine last year and the grounds are not shiny bare metal. I'll wire brush or sand the many gounding connections that I see on the block. (Solenoid ground at the rear-side, wiring harness ground at the rear-top, ignition coil ground at the front-top, and the negative battery wire at the front-side). The last thing - if there is ever a last thing on a boat - is that when I removed the ignition key assembly, one of the connectors fell from the brass key assembly. Need to replace that.
So tomorrow, I'll clean the ground areas, rewire the bilge pump, buy a new key ignition and solenoid and put those in. I bought a $30 ignition coil from Autozone in case my existing coil is dead. The battery is charging overnight, so the battery should be fine. I will reinstall the wiring harness, but do it above the floor with a little tunnel to protect the wires from foot traffic. I did buy 000 gauge triple aught wire from Lowes ($3 / ft )to replace the positive and negative main battery wires, but will test the system with original wires first. The 000 gauge wire is much bigger than the original, but this is a boat, so figured it would eliminate the concern of bad battery wires.
Will update when the boat fires up!
