Boat troubles

So I went out today after some toothy critters again. We fished one spot, then we moved to another. After I shut down the motor, my tilt/trim wouldn't work. Went to start the motor back up, wouldn't do anything. I thought my starting battery may have been dead, so I swapped out all the wires over my my dual purpose battery, still nothing. Had my brother tow me in with his boat, got it on the trailer, and spent forever trying to figure out how to get the motor trimmed up so I could tow it home. Checked both batteries after the fact, and they are both good. I have no idea whats wrong. Any of you guys got any ideas on something I may check, or have overlooked? :|

Is there a safety switch, kill switch or fuse? Do you have power on the rest of the motor (starter)?


Do you have electric or hydraulic tilt?


Check the wires where they attach to teh motor / pump and see if they are corroded - feel them becuase they will rust on the inside leaving the insulation intact. If they feel "cruncy" they might be bad


If they look fine use a jumper to bypass the switch so you can see if you have a bad pump / moor or bad switch.

Sounds like a fuse under the cowling to me. My Nissan did the same thing once when I tried to jump start it & crossed the clamps by accident. Fuse under the cowl popped. Took a while to figure it out & where it was. Replaced it & everything was fine.

Captain Ahab said:

Is there a safety switch, kill switch or fuse? Do you have power on the rest of the motor (starter)?


Do you have electric or hydraulic tilt?


Check the wires where they attach to teh motor / pump and see if they are corroded - feel them becuase they will rust on the inside leaving the insulation intact. If they feel "cruncy" they might be bad


If they look fine use a jumper to bypass the switch so you can see if you have a bad pump / moor or bad switch.

Click to expand...

No, It doesn't even try to crank, just clicks. Not sure if there is a fuse or not, I checked the fuse panel underneath the dash and couldn't find one blown.

The tilt i'm pretty sure is hydraulic.

When you say "the motor/pump", I assume your talking about the pump for the tilt/trim?

I know its not the switch, because none of the switches work, and they did before.


We tried finding any signs of fuses underneath the cowl. We did find one inline fuse that was blown, but that didn't fix the problem. :|

check your voltage at the motor . that will narrow down your problem

redbug said:

check your voltage at the motor . that will narrow down your problem

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Where exactly would I need to check the voltage? I'm not great with dealing with electrical problems. #-o

check the voltage at the starter
you will see where the leads from your battery enter the motor follow the to the starter

it sounds like your not getting power to the motor
you just need to fid the bad connection.

Does that explain why the trim stopped working as well?

You say you found a blown fuse?
Did it blow again when you put a new one in?

Zum said:

You say you found a blown fuse?
Did it blow again when you put a new one in?

Click to expand...

Nope, Not quite sure what it was for though. :|

Bubba said:

Does that explain why the trim stopped working as well?

Click to expand...

it sounds that way to me.... seems strange that both your trim and starter would go
at the same time
when trouble shooting electrical problems start at the battery the check every connection until you find the bad connection

like zum said recheck that fuse, if it blew again you have a dead short someplace causing the problem

I am thinking there maybe a bad ground between the motor and the battery.This would cause the fuses to experience an over amperage because the bad ground reduces the voltage.Remember as volts go down it takes more amps to run starters and motors for the trim.

Ok....Good News! I figured out the problem! Bad News! I feel like a dummy! :lol:

When I swapped the wires over to my dual purpose battery, I couldn't really get to my starting battery that well, so when removing the wires I was just going by feel. Turns out I totally missed removing the main ground from the starting battery, so even though I had all the other wires on the dual purpose battery, I didn't have to ground hooked up to it! :lol: So that blow fuse we found was the original problem, not having the ground hooked up to the battery when we re-tried it was the reason replacing that fuse didn't work. :lol: Although I don't feel too bad, because there was 3 other guys looking at it trying to help me figure out the problem, so they looked over it too. #-o

I believe the reason the fuse blew in the first place, was when I was installing my depth finder on my dash(since I had taken it out last), I found a wire that had been cut, and looked like something had been re-wired. I didn't think much about it at the time, but I believe thats what caused the ground, which blew the first in the first place. So got that wire snipped down and taped the ends, so hopefully that is what had caused the fuse to blow. Anyways, Just glad to figure out the problem.

glad to here you got it fixed....it's always the easy stuf that gets overlooked

Glad you figured it out. =D>