New Switch boxes on Merc

G

garbubba

Junior Member
I had a thread here a while back but it's time to start again.

I've been chasing down an intermittant problem with my '96 Mecury 200 offshore (2.5L) for a while now & with some help from y'all figured it was the switch box. I bought two new after market boxes & plan to replace them shortly (when i can get away from building my shop).

Any words of advice?

The one on the port side looks easy enough, the one on the stern looks like a pain, any trouble to watch out for?

Do y'all use dielectric grease on the connections?

I sure hope this fixes it, of course if it doesn't more incentive for that Yamaha 150 I've been drooling over....


Doug
 
i changed my two switch boxes and the manuel doesnt say to put on and type of grease but it does say to make sure that there grounded good, what wasthe problem? mine was shutting down half the cylinders and causing the low oil alarm to go off
 
make sure you get a good ground, thats probably the number one problem with switch boxes. I usually just srpay the connections with terminal protector after I get everything hooked up
 
I just read your old post. The problem sounds more like a stator. Do you have a manual and a multimeter? A bad highspeed coil (blue wires) in the stator will cause those symptoms. There is a test you can do to check the high speed coil on the stator . . . MJ knows all about this :)

A bad switch box will cause you to lose spark on on side or the other (usually the whole side). You can check with a spark tester. If you don't have spark on (or one plug) try swapping switchboxes and retest. If the spark comes back it's that switchbox you just swapped out . . . otherwise it's not.

Spares - Is there a mercury bulliten about AGM and Gel batteries causing Merc stators to crap out? I read this post a while back and I've never had a stator fail until this year until I swapped the batteries out with fancy AGM's.

http://continuouswave.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/000916.html
 
I'll check next week about the batteries, I can't see any reason why they would have any effect on the switch boxes. It could load up the stator's charging circut if you have the high output stator as AGMs and Gel Cell batteries are not designed to handle high amperage or high finishing voltage charging systems. The rare few times I've installed AGMs or gels( i usually talk people out of installing them), I've had to change out the onboard chargers(or change the switch on the back if they have one), and turn the altenators down if they have an adjustable regulator. I will not honor the warranty for labor if I install an AGM or Gel on a customers boat, and I tell them this up front. I know there are a lot of people out there that swear by them, but I can't find a reason to justify their cost, and the reduced capacity of the electrical system if its properlly set up. I put them in the same catagory as split fire spark plugs, I could never figure out why some one would spend $100 on a set of plugs thinking that would fix their boat, but wouldn't pay a profesional mechanic to actually find the problem. I've seen plenty of people that would put $300 worth of batteries in their boat, buut would pay me $100 to replace the crappy battery cables they hooked them up to
 
you're still ahead of the prie of new batteries, I don't think they had anythign to do with the ignition, just check the charging system output of your motor, its usually not problem with old school two strokes, just an issue on anything with a high output altenator. Personally, I can't findd a better battery than the Deka 24-M7 no maintance(same thing as the west marine 1000 MCA white battery), I have sold probably 50 of them in the past 5 years, I haven't seen one of them go bad form other than missuse or lack of use
 
hey while on the mercs this merc 150 on the deck boat i just got has fire on the right bank of cylinders but the left 3 no fire. it's a 1994 Merc Blackmax 150 what ya think?
 
Thanks for the replies y'all. I have been out of touch for a while. My mom was in the hospital in Pittsburgh over the holidays, it was cold up there.

I still haven't swapped out switch boxes (chore # 1241524) but thats the next thing I plan to do. It sure acts like half the cylinders just drop out. I've had that happen with (i think) older mercs on work boats, the mechanic called it a power pack then.

As soon as I get those switch boxes on I'll let you know how it went.

BTW I've messed with al sorts of high tech batteries & I always come back to a deep cycle marine, it's the longest lasting & toughest battery.

Doug
 
Chasing old threads to fix this same (or similar) problem & see I didn't finish this thread up. It was the power pack, switched them both been running fine ever since. 7 years!

This time it has half the power it should but there was no intermittent stuff, it just never would run right, from startup. - new problem, new thread.
 
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