1992 OMC Ford 5.0 Maj. Electrical malfunction

I'm in trouble and can't for the life of me figure this out. Here's the skinny; Up to this morning the boat ran perfectly, it had what I would call a "wink out" electrical problem, where it would run, then nothing, no gauges no starter no trim pump nothing. This boat does not have fuses, it has breakers, and none of them would flip. So, since I have had ign. switch problems, I replaced that, it has a brand new solenoid, new ESC, new distributer, coil, ballast resistor etc. So this morning the wife and I got up to load up the boat to go to the lake, I get in to start it, just to make sure it is ok, and the starter would run, but the engine would not turn over. All the wiring to the coil is new, as to the distributer. I had put the out drive down to start the thing, and after I cranked , I stopped to see if there was gas in the carb....., there was. When I sat back down to turn the key, nothing happened, except I heard a snapping sound come from the engine. I checked the breakers and nothing had flipped, so I changed out batteries to one I knew was in excellent condition, same thing. None of my gauges work like they are supposed to, when I turn on the blower and the bilge or the nav lights, the gauges all flip to their highest readings. So I started jumping things, and I bought and installed a new solenoid...., nothing. So I decided I would take a screw driver and jump across ign terminals, and it made no difference at all. I went and jumped across the new solenoid and nothing happened, so I went back and jumped across the ign terminals again, and heard the new solenoid snapping. I got back in the drivers seat and turned on the key and all the gauges worked normal, and the outdrive pump worked once again as normal. So I thought I would try and start the engine, and as soon as I turned over the key, I heard a snap coming from the engine compartment, and everything went back to malfunctioning again. I got out the selock book, but frankly I am stumped. Has anyone had this happen to them, and if so, what did you do to fix it. Is it possible that my starter has gone T.U on me, if so, why would I lose ign. spark, when I had it all perfectly the last time the boat ran, I have not touched a thing until this morning. So any advise would be most helpful, if I can't fix this, I am going to have to take it in at over 90bucks per hour......Help! Rick

Look for horses, not zebras. First check for tightness of your battery terminals, the terminals on the starter lug and the large terminals on the main power solenoid. Check your engine ground to battery.
Possible bad switch, or your neutral safety switch.

The way you say your gauges jumped I would tend to think a grounding problem. These type of problems can drive one nuts but most of the time it's just a bad connection and normally the ground.

As stated before, solenoid is new today, ign. switch is new, the terminals are new, the main engine ground is bad, but rerouted it to a new clean spot on the engine, no help there. Battery terminals are new and tight, even put in a brand new battery, no help there. Must be a bad ground possibly, or a bad switch/relay interconnect somewhere. I hotwired and jumped all the usual and customary places, no help again. If this would have been strip *****, I would be buck ***** by now. I tried every trick I know, and some I don't, I followed the book. The 50amp breakers on top of the left exhaust tower never tripped, as none on the dash tripped. I am stumped, and I don't have the time to chase this one down, so I sent it in to the pros, sometimes you just have to give in and pay the piper his due. As for me..., I will post his solution when I get the boat back next week, if it is done. The sealock manual leaves a bit to be desired. Thanks for the help! Rick

Well, here it is straight from the professional feed bag....., the mechanic says my solenoid is bad, so he replaced it. No matter that I had just put a new one in not 5 hours before he tested it. The new one is defective..., funny...I tested it, and it worked perfect for me....Huh? I asked that the neg ground strap be changed, as it is in poor condition........he ignored that. Do you know why...., because the solenoid is within very easy reach...., the ground strap is in the very back of the engine on the bottom part of the block, not easy to get to, which is why I wimped out and was willing to pay someone to change it. I'm not a happy customer.

Keep shopping. You'll find one that doesn't suck eventually. Ask around. a LOT.

Well, apparently what I was told was very premature, because it is what the service writer thought she heard...., she was wrong. I went to the shop today to get the real story and talked to a boat diesel mechanic who was up visiting his sister, and they put him to work as they were behind....it's a family shop. So far there are 3 problems, and 2 have been solved, with one outstanding. 1, the ground strap had fried because of extensive corrosion, that was replaced, and the only reason that any power came to anything was because of a very small 14 gauge ground that was attached to something else, and it was still ok. Once that was fixed the electrical system now works as normal; 2, the starter was very dirty and there was corrosion on the terminal posts, once that was fixed the starter now operates as normal, but the ign. system won't fire. My new Mallory marine distributer is fine, but the coil tests out with positive voltage on both positive and neg terminals, which has them stumped. No one had ever seen an electrical system behave like this before, bad ground or not. But he theorizes that with what was going on, that some high voltage could have back fed through the system and possibly fried my MSD Blaster coil...., but they don't quite know for sure. I should have he boat back Thursday. O yes....,my new solenoid checked out to be fine after all. When it is all done, I will pass on what the final solution was. Rick

Need a pic. What happens when you put back the original distributor and coil? Probably fires right up, that's what.

Ok, here's what happened, and I am partly to blame. There is this green with white strip wire that comes off my new Mallory distributer, it's instructions said to put this wire with the coil ground wires. Since I was finishing building the ESC circuit from my new 50,000 volt coil, I thought that since this was just a ground wire that it could really go anywhere. Wrong-O...., it's a ground trigger wire, and should be put up on the neg post of the coil. This is what kept the engine from starting, as I put this wire on a block ground on the other side of the engine. So when I cranked the engine over and over, the bad ground strap blew, as did the positive lead to the battery. Once all this was fixed, the boat ran like a race car.