1975 OMC starting

"hey gang... here's the qu

"hey gang... here's the question... hooked the batt up and am changing the oil in the outdrive... it is a 1975 OMC sterndrive, yes, the electric shift... I want to lower the foot, outdrive, so I can fill the oil properly... all it is doing is clicking and I can't seem to figure out why the drive won't drop... it sounds like a starter click or a relay click... shouldn't it just drop or is there something wrong here? I have power because the lights work... but if I click the ignition it does the same thing... it will just click, so it will not start either... but I figured that with the batt hooked up I should at least be able to drop the drive... any solutions??? Adam"

Maybe you haven't hooked a

Maybe you haven't hooked all the wires up? Sounds like the relay is picking but are there separate heavy wires for the tilt motor or possibly a fuse is gone?

"could it be solenoids? does t

"could it be solenoids? does the current travel thru the solenoids first? and if they were bad, they wouldn/t supply the motor with the juice it needed to work??"

"If there isn't enough cha

"If there isn't enough charge on the battery to engage the starter yet, you probably don't have enough to set the tilt motor going. The solenoids are mounted on the rear of the engine on a bracket at the rear of the intake manifold. One for up, the other for down. When it does have enough, remember to be careful! Those babies drop like a brick! Even in the water, from full up to full down on mine takes less than two seconds!"

"Sorry...I didn't catch th

"Sorry...I didn't catch the starter issue in the first post. As Dave says, make sure the battery is fully charged and check/clean all connections from the battery to the engine. You can meter a solenoid. The small wire should have 12v when you hit the switch and the 2 large wires, one will have 12v all the time normally and the other will have 12v when the solenoid is energized. (hit the switch)"

"hey all.. well, I went thru a

"hey all.. well, I went thru and cleaned every last wire contact I could find... installed new battery cables and then went for a fully charged good battery... that seemed to help because she is up and going now... evidently the battery was not as charged as I thought and the cables had some corrosion on them and rust as well... I figured out that I could bypass the tilt solenoids and drop the foot that way then finally got the boat started after... thanks for the help and this case is closed!"