Dead Battery, Replaced but no power to engine - Figured it Out on Sunday

[Keith_274]

I am not getting any power to my 2016 Yamaha 200 HP engine on my 1998 22 Ft Tournament.

I had dead batteries that were 6 years old. I attempted to jump start the engine with a 12V Winplus battery jump pack. I was able to tilt the engine down just into the water covering the prop. I tried starting the engine and it cranked but did not have enough juice to turn over. After that the battery pack didn't have enough charge. I replaced my batteries with a new starter battery and second battery. I get power to the radio, Garmin, and accessory panels controls in the cockpit but the Tachometer and Speedometer do not light up or get power to them. The connections (-/+) are clean and I secured them tight with a wrench.

There is a 40 amp breaker (red) above the starboard side battery and I have pushed to reset but still not getting power to the engine. Is there another fuse I may have blown?

 

[seasick]

You need to check if you have juice at the motor itself. The heavy ground wire connection is as important as the 12 volt cable.
If you attached your booster pack to the old battery and was able to operate the tilt, the ground is probably good. When you say there wasn't enough juice to 'turn over' the motor do you mean the engine turned but didn't start (fire) or it did nothing. Those are two different symptoms. If it did crank but now with new batteries it doesn't, you most likely installed the new batteries incorrectly or left a jumper off. Take a good look in the battery compartment to see if there is a black battery cable hanging unconnected.

Finally, there are fused on the motor itself. They don't blow often but can and if you connected the new batteries backwards, ( I hope not), you may have big issues.

 

[glacierbaze]

Check your voltage where the cables attach to the starter.

 

[seasick]

The positive battery cable attaches to the starter solenoid/relay.

I also just noticed that in the second drawing for the battery select switch, there is no cable shown for the negative wire to the engine. The negative jumper between batteries is shown though and that cable is often left off when replacing batteries.

 

[DennisG01]

Another vote for the most likely issue... a wire that was missed when reconnecting the batteries. Or even connected to the wrong battery post. Otherwise, yes, check for voltage at the starter (relay).

What is that 40amp breaker for? Where does the wire go? Coud it be the feed for the dash? Does it properly reset? Is there voltage on the boatside of the breaker? What about your fuses which, I assume, are up near the dash?

This is an old boat with who knows how many owners - which means the wiring could have been messed with many times. You'll have to do some investigative work on this - we won't be able to help a whole lot on that aspect. But checking the things that have been mentioned so far in the posts should get you there.

 

[SkunkBoat]

The 40 amp breaker sounds like the main accessory feed. If it were bad the motors wouldn't tilt at all but they do (or at least did).
If a cable were accidentally connected to the wrong polarity battery terminal, there could be serious damage.

motor(starter/gauges/tilt) operates entirely from the "starter" cables not the House 12V. The 40 Amp breaker feeds the HOUSE 12V. he has power to House.

First things first disconnect everything and then connect the motor black and red wires directly to a battery...no switches no other connections.
Then what happens. If nothing works( no click, no crank, no tilt) I suspect motor main fuse. If clicks and tilts could be starter. Maybe you killed the battery...

 

[seasick]

motor(starter/gauges/tilt) operates entirely from the "starter" cables not the House 12V. The 40 Amp breaker feeds the HOUSE 12V. he has power to House.

First things first disconnect everything and then connect the motor black and red wires directly to a battery...no switches no other connections.
Then what happens. If nothing works( no click, no crank, no tilt) I suspect motor main fuse. If clicks and tilts could be starter. Maybe you killed the battery...

This is the second time you have corrected my same bad info You would hope that by now I get it.
I deleted my post and will hide in shame for a few minutes..

 

[Keith_274]

You need to check if you have juice at the motor itself. The heavy ground wire connection is as important as the 12 volt cable.
If you attached your booster pack to the old battery and was able to operate the tilt, the ground is probably good. When you say there wasn't enough juice to 'turn over' the motor do you mean the engine turned but didn't start (fire) or it did nothing. Those are two different symptoms. If it did crank but now with new batteries it doesn't, you most likely installed the new batteries incorrectly or left a jumper off. Take a good look in the battery compartment to see if there is a black battery cable hanging unconnected.

Finally, there are fused on the motor itself. They don't blow often but can and if you connected the new batteries backwards, ( I hope not), you may have big issues.

thanks for your input. The engine cranked but did not start. I

 

[Keith_274]

All,

Thanks to everyone for your time and input, it was appreciated. Feeling a bit silly, I did not have the black wire from the engine connected to the battery. I should of taken the battery out and started over and would of seen my mistake. A friend caught it when he looked. I had two ring connector on the accessory cable and I thought that was including the line to the engine. I have stored my boat a marina in the winter since I don't have trailer and they take the batteries out in winter and reinstall in spring when I bring them back. If I had put my batteries in by myself every spring, I would of remember the engine wire.

Nobody got hurt (except my pride) in learning this lesson. I won't make this mistake twice.

Keith

 

[seasick]

All part of the game. Most of us have done that once, the rest are liars

 

[DennisG01]

All part of the game. Most of us have done that once, the rest are liars

Hence the reason that "solution" was my first suggestion, as well

 

[seasick]

Many moons ago, I did the same thing on my new to me 208. The funny thing was that the starter gear would turn, just slowly. It didn't turn fast enough to thrust the Bendix gear outward to engage the flywheel. It took a while to find the problem. The good news was that the second time I made the mistake, I knew right away what the problem was

If we learn from our mistakes, I must be a genius!

 

[Fishtales]

A good practice is to use a tie wrap on the various cables connected to each terminal of the battery. This way you have them at least tied together - in the spring makes connecting easier. Especially as you have/add more direct battery connections.

 

[Don Davis]

I did the exact same mistake this spring at the ramp for the first time, missed the main engine ground cable that had fallen behind the battery. There are just to many ground wires attached to the battery on my 228 so I want to install a negative Blue Sea buss bar this winter. I just can’t decide if I should move the battery first/at the same time to the port side to compensate weight for my kicker as Trapper just completed, it would be the smart time to do it all at the same time.

 

[Willy-C]

I do the zip ties too.

 

[Legend]

I always do the zip ties too - Never had an issue since using them