Electrical demons

[Bucktail II]

Still scratching my head about this one. Volvo Penta KAMD43P inboard diesel.
Was out fishing Saturday, boat was running great. Went to run up and start another drift and nothing!
NO power to the dash, gauges.....nothing. Radio GPS all working just fine. Checked wiring, connections, switched batteries......nothing.
Ended up getting towed in.
Head down to the boat yesterday with a game plan to try and isolate the issue. First checked for power at the key on the dash board.....no power at all.
Ok.....at least I know it's isolated to the black box on the top of the engine with the harness and several solenoids inside.
In the black box....I checked the breaker to make sure I had power coming in and out, even though it never indicated it had popped....all good there.
Traced the wiring back to solenoid #1.....good power in and out as it should be (BTW had the key in the on position while testing these).
Continued tracing wiring to solenoid #2......good power in and out. Now I'm concerned....I'm out of solenoids to check. So with my test light on the negative side of the battery, I begin just checking to see if I have power on any of the other connections inside of the black box. The second connector I touch with the probe...I hear a pop which sounded like it came from the compressor clutch. I look up at the dash and all the gauges are now lit up. I walk over, turn the key from on to start and she fired right up !
I'm happy it's running, shut it off and restarted it 20 times.....no issues. I'm trying to figure out why it happened in the first place.

Any ideas????

 

[Fluke Whisperer]

Still scratching my head about this one. Volvo Penta KAMD43P inboard diesel.
Was out fishing Saturday, boat was running great. Went to run up and start another drift and nothing!
NO power to the dash, gauges.....nothing. Radio GPS all working just fine. Checked wiring, connections, switched batteries......nothing.
Ended up getting towed in.
Head down to the boat yesterday with a game plan to try and isolate the issue. First checked for power at the key on the dash board.....no power at all.
Ok.....at least I know it's isolated to the black box on the top of the engine with the harness and several solenoids inside.
In the black box....I checked the breaker to make sure I had power coming in and out, even though it never indicated it had popped....all good there.
Traced the wiring back to solenoid #1.....good power in and out as it should be (BTW had the key in the on position while testing these).
Continued tracing wiring to solenoid #2......good power in and out. Now I'm concerned....I'm out of solenoids to check. So with my test light on the negative side of the battery, I begin just checking to see if I have power on any of the other connections inside of the black box. The second connector I touch with the probe...I hear a pop which sounded like it came from the compressor clutch. I look up at the dash and all the gauges are now lit up. I walk over, turn the key from on to start and she fired right up !
I'm happy it's running, shut it off and restarted it 20 times.....no issues. I'm trying to figure out why it happened in the first place.

Any ideas????

Bad ground or loose connection?
I had a similar problem with my outboard, I replaced the ignition switch thinking that was the problem, several days later i go to start the engine and got nothing, turned the ignition off and back on and it started, finally figured it out, it was a bad relay switch on the starter, replaced and never had another problem, when I tested the old relay it worked fine then on the 5th try it didn't, don't be too sure that those relays/solenoids are good, when they start to go they do exactly what your going through right now.

 

[Leprechaun]

Having stressed thru a nasty electrical issue this Spring, I can understand your concern. Hopefully it was just a slightly dirty contact somewhere in that last circuit you checked and the issue will not reappear. I would look closely at all the connections of that circuit to try and find the cause. What you don't want is an "intermittent" that makes itself known every 5th trip, or something like that.

 

[NoFlukenName]

These electrical gremlins will drive you nuts. Had a 10 amp fuse that all of a sudden kept blowing last year and this year, dealing with a bad ground or connection on my house battery where my house battery slowly discharges over the course of a trip. Boat yard can't trace and confirmed both my alternators are working perfect and recharging starting batteries no issues. House battery recharges while on shore power, but not while underway. It's maddening.

 

[captmike28]

These electrical gremlins will drive you nuts. Had a 10 amp fuse that all of a sudden kept blowing last year and this year, dealing with a bad ground or connection on my house battery where my house battery slowly discharges over the course of a trip. Boat yard can't trace and confirmed both my alternators are working perfect and recharging starting batteries no issues. House battery recharges while on shore power, but not while underway. It's maddening.

I have had a similar problem with my starter battery which seemed to charge fine at the dock but would discharge over the course of a trip to where I actually had to replace the starter battery 2 years in a row. Typically, I would get 3-4 years lifetime out of my starter. My house battery is a 4D beast that is on its 7th season and only now starting to show some signs of decay.

Anyway, I could not live with the constant replacement of starter batteries so last week I began looking at all the ground connections, planning to disconnect each one, clean and re-grease them and reassemble hoping to find the source of my "electrical demon". The main ground from the starter battery to the engine block was fine. But I also have a grounding block on the forward engine room bulkhead with 4 other major ground lines feeding into it, house battery, bow thruster and 2 other major accessories.

When I went to disconnect the first ground, I found the wire literally slid out of the ring terminal! In fact, it looked like this =terminal had never even been crimped onto the wire. So, a quick cleanup, a nice new crimp and the connection is now rock solid. Hopefully this will cure my issue of rapidly deteriorating Stater batteries.

 

[Bucktail II]

Thank you all for your thoughts.
After countless hours of testing and isolating, it turns out to be the starter relay. Thankfully it was the cheaper of the two relays and it's plug and play. After isolating it to this relay, the biggest issue was finding a replacement.....most parts are considered obsolete since my engine is 21 years old. The folks down at All Island Marine were awesome in tracking down the relay and getting it to me so I didn't loose too much time on the water. Fingers crossed this is the end of this nightmare.

 

[NoFlukenName]

Thank you all for your thoughts.
After countless hours of testing and isolating, it turns out to be the starter relay. Thankfully it was the cheaper of the two relays and it's plug and play. After isolating it to this relay, the biggest issue was finding a replacement.....most parts are considered obsolete since my engine is 21 years old. The folks down at All Island Marine were awesome in tracking down the relay and getting it to me so I didn't loose too much time on the water. Fingers crossed this is the end of this nightmare.

Great news!!!

 

[Fluke Whisperer]

Thank you all for your thoughts.
After countless hours of testing and isolating, it turns out to be the starter relay. Thankfully it was the cheaper of the two relays and it's plug and play. After isolating it to this relay, the biggest issue was finding a replacement.....most parts are considered obsolete since my engine is 21 years old. The folks down at All Island Marine were awesome in tracking down the relay and getting it to me so I didn't loose too much time on the water. Fingers crossed this is the end of this nightmare.

quote "don't be too sure that those relays/solenoids are good, when they start to go they do exactly what your going through right now." end quote.

Just so everyone knows, I have a BSEE, I use to program PLC's for General Analysis Corporation in Norwalk Ct. before I got into Networking Technologies. I use to be a bench technician for a Major Company in Waterbury ct. back in the early 90's.

John/ NoFlukenName​

It sounds like your problem maybe in the hardware and or program that controls the voltage regulating in your engines, this hardware/programs sense when a battery is fully charged and shuts down the regulators so it doesn't overcharge the batteries, It may sense that your house battery is full and will not charge it, one way to find out when you get a chance is to swap batteries around, if this is not the case, and I imagine you have 3 to 4 battery switches on board that somewhere in the connections or the switches themselves might have a problem, checking the alternators to make sure they are charging is fine, but it's the circuitry that controls the output to the batteries that may be your problem, I could be wrong but my experiences with hardware/and programmable logic controls makes me think this might be your problem.

One last thing, did the tech put a voltmeter between your cable from the engines to you battery that is draining?
Sure sign of a device drawing current will show up on the meter, I had a problem where my batteries were going dead, I put a meter in-between the bat and starter cable and sure enough something was drawing current, it turned out to be the relay switch for the fuel pump, a tech at Diamond Marine here in ct. was doing a checkup on my engine pulling relays out of my engine with a pair of needle nose pliers, turns out he crushed the casing and shorted out the relay making it sat on all the time. This is why I now do all my own work, both my boat and my cars/trucks, I don't trust anyone to do their job correctly anymore.

 

[Leprechaun]

"This is why I now do all my own work, both my boat and my cars/trucks, I don't trust anyone to do their job correctly anymore."

I feel the same way. Though my background is in scientific instrument sales, I was a Snap-on Tools dealer for 13 years so I have a good idea of how to apply tools and test equipment to automotive and marine issues. Not to mention I docked at the waterfront house of a guy I always considered the best marine mechanic I'd ever met, so that was kind of a 20-yr apprenticeship. A pretty tough one at that. Not to mention being a hot-rodder in my yoot, in fact still own a classic big-block Vette that I restored myself, more than 25 years ago.

Nevertheless, as John said, some electrical maladies can be maddeningly tough to track down. I would do as FW said above - go the actual pos battery cable, put a multi-meter in-line and look for a draw. If present, start shutting down breakers one at a time and see if that draw disappears. Basic gremlin hunting 101.

Some circuits are "always hot," meaning they could be wired around the battery switches like bilge pumps are frequently set up, but testing those is no different than any other circuit - just more of a PITA. In the case of a bilge pump - pull the hot-side fuse and see if the draw disappears. Of course, having multiple batteries and multiple engines, creates multiple possibilities, so it will be a bit tedious to go through the whole electrical system to track this down - but its certainly doable, just not so nice a job in 90-deg heat. Speaking from recent experience.

I've personally never seen it, but I am told that an alternator can have an internal issue (a short in the windings, or maybe the diode bridge/rectifier, I guess) and that can draw current as well, during rest periods. That would be a tough one to track down, because the power output might be on the money, thus giving a false positive when load-testing that alternator.

Boats: we love 'em, we hate 'em (at times), but we don't usually get rid of them - funny how that works.

 

[Leprechaun]

Tangentially on this subject - have a friend and dock mate that had a Judge 27 built to his specs and shipped up here. He specified an integrated Furuno NavNet electronics suite as his instrumentation - as he was told it was "the Best" at the time. Beside having a maddeningly complex keystroke command architecture, that generation of NavNet had a specific issue that Furuno themselves never told him of - despite his being on the phone with them multiple times on other matters.

The big MFD draws power, even when off. Why, I don't know. But he would constantly be fighting low battery issues, if the boat sat for a few days. After finding this to be the problem, he wired a simple on/off switch into the NavNet power wire, and had no further low-battery problems from there. Crazy, huh?

 

[Roccus7]

Tangentially on this subject - have a friend and dock mate that had a Judge 27 built to his specs and shipped up here. He specified an integrated Furuno NavNet electronics suite as his instrumentation - as he was told it was "the Best" at the time. Beside having a maddeningly complex keystroke command architecture, that generation of NavNet had a specific issue that Furuno themselves never told him of - despite his being on the phone with them multiple times on other matters.

The big MFD draws power, even when off. Why, I don't know. But he would constantly be fighting low battery issues, if the boat sat for a few days. After finding this to be the problem, he wired a simple on/off switch into the NavNet power wire, and had no further low-battery problems from there. Crazy, huh?

Wouldn't it be better to SHUT OFF the batteries? Of course, only if the bilge pumps where directly hooked to power not controlled by the battery switch...

 

[NoFlukenName]

quote "don't be too sure that those relays/solenoids are good, when they start to go they do exactly what your going through right now." end quote.

Just so everyone knows, I have a BSEE, I use to program PLC's for General Analysis Corporation in Norwalk Ct. before I got into Networking Technologies. I use to be a bench technician for a Major Company in Waterbury ct. back in the early 90's.

John/ NoFlukenName​

It sounds like your problem maybe in the hardware and or program that controls the voltage regulating in your engines, this hardware/programs sense when a battery is fully charged and shuts down the regulators so it doesn't overcharge the batteries, It may sense that your house battery is full and will not charge it, one way to find out when you get a chance is to swap batteries around, if this is not the case, and I imagine you have 3 to 4 battery switches on board that somewhere in the connections or the switches themselves might have a problem, checking the alternators to make sure they are charging is fine, but it's the circuitry that controls the output to the batteries that may be your problem, I could be wrong but my experiences with hardware/and programmable logic controls makes me think this might be your problem.

One last thing, did the tech put a voltmeter between your cable from the engines to you battery that is draining?
Sure sign of a device drawing current will show up on the meter, I had a problem where my batteries were going dead, I put a meter in-between the bat and starter cable and sure enough something was drawing current, it turned out to be the relay switch for the fuel pump, a tech at Diamond Marine here in ct. was doing a checkup on my engine pulling relays out of my engine with a pair of needle nose pliers, turns out he crushed the casing and shorted out the relay making it sat on all the time. This is why I now do all my own work, both my boat and my cars/trucks, I don't trust anyone to do their job correctly anymore.

Hey Jay,

That's a good thought but we already went down that route last year. The issue first popped up in August of last year and I immediately put a new House Battery in. On the maiden voyage, she was reading 15.6 volts!!!!! We put a voltmeter on her thinking maybe the display was wrong, but nope, it was accurate. My money is still on a bad ground/loose connection somewhere (like Captain Mike). Incidentally, this issue first occurred after my boatyard fixed an issue where my main power fuse to my port engine was popping. I literally went through 20 fuses. I think when they rewired everything, they screwed something up. Of course, I had them try and fix the issue during winterization and they said all systems were good when they checked.....

 

[Leprechaun]

Roc7 - shutting the battery switch(s) would only mask the problem - the phantom draw would continue while fishing at anchor or any other time. Just better to directly address the offending circuit and be done with it.

I have never heard another instance of this - maybe the original NavNet system used a slight draw to power the system's memory? Like an automotive clock is always drawing power, no matter key on/key off? Who knows? I have never had a Furuno anything on my boat. Though the 1815 color LCD stand-alone radar is top of my list, should my ancient Raytheon RL9 radar ever kick the bucket. I would check with Furuno first though, regarding off-time current draw. "Head that nonsense off at the pass."

 

[Leprechaun]

John - are you still seeing 15.6V out of your system? I don't think that's healthy for your batteries. Sounds like a voltage regulator issue.

". . . this issue first occurred after my boatyard fixed an issue where my main power fuse to my port engine was popping."

Are you sure it was TO your port engine, not FROM it?

 

[Bucktail II]

KInda funny.....I was thinking the same thing. 15.6V seems high. It should be right around 14.2V coming out of the alternator.

 

[NoFlukenName]

It’s no longer reading 15.6. Trip starts at 12.2 and battery drains down to 10.9 after 7/8 hours…..Boatyard checked voltage regulators on each engine and they’re working fine. Two starting batteries are getting charged by the engines…..my money is still on a bad connection/ground. That would explain the 15.6 when I first installed this new house battery last August (Group 31 AGM) and why it now discharges so quickly and won’t recharge even when underway but the two starting batteries both recharge….

 

[Leprechaun]

John - that still sounds wrong - you say your system is showing 12.2V at the beginning of the trip - is that with the engine(s) running? Because that should be your "engine off" steady-state voltage level. With the engines running you should see somewhere in the 13.9-14.2V range (depending on where the gauge picks up the reading).

"That would explain the 15.6 when I first installed this new house battery last August (Group 31 AGM) and why it now discharges so quickly and won’t recharge even when underway but the two starting batteries both recharge…"

That sounds not quite right either. No way a 12V battery system should ever read 15.6V, even with a fully discharged battery the voltage regulator should limit the voltage to 14.5 MAX, to prevent battery cell damage.

I think that FW's answer sounds the most right - do you have one of those fancy ACR or Blue Seas electronic battery combiners in your boat's house battery circuit? I know they are all the rage the past few seasons, but I also know that some have reported weird charging problems with them - you can check that on The Hull Truth website. I read that site every morning - doubly so lately, given my recent electrical nightmare.

Also, I seem to recall people having issues with Blue Seas "standard" battery switches malfunctioning internally as well. If you have one of those, you could try jumping the contacts and seeing if the battery voltage jumps up. The more I think about it, the more I like this "test."

 

[Roccus7]

Boats: we love 'em, we hate 'em (at times), but we don't usually get rid of them - funny how that works.

Roccus Boat Rule #1 ^^^^

Boats - The Ultimate LOVE/HATE Relationship...

I'm currently leaning on the Hate side, been beached for a week waiting for tilt/trim replacement motor...

 

[Roccus7]

Roc7 - shutting the battery switch(s) would only mask the problem - the phantom draw would continue while fishing at anchor or any other time. Just better to directly address the offending circuit and be done with it.

True enough, but I'm from the "If I have the battery switch ON, there will be some power drain" School. It would have to be a major draw to run your battery down if you're sitting at anchor fishing and that would obviously initiate a major investigation, and since he probably keeps the machines running at anchor, the problem wouldn't surface.

From what you said above, the "Low Battery" warnings came up after the boat sat for a few days, and something like that wouldn't phase me one bit had I left the battery switch on and ignored the boat for a few days.

Regardless, there should have been some disclaimer or notification that they system draws when powered OFF, and especially if the system needs power at all times to be kept "active"...

 

[Leprechaun]

Just last week had a friend with a Grady 22/Yammy 250 have to haul out as he noticed the outer seal/dust wipers on his two lifting (Trimming? I dunno, I'm an inboard guy) rams were shot. $350 haul-out and labor for a pair of $8 seals. Yep, we do love our boats.