Sergeant_M
New member
Good evening all,
I recently inherited a 91 Forester 16ft fishing boat with an Evinrude 50hp VRO2 (E50TLESR) Motor. The boat had been in storage for 15+ years, but was still in pretty good condition. I've already serviced the lower unit (New Water Pump), lube, etc. I rebuilt the carbs, fresh plugs, went through the whole checklist in the manual. I had tested everything yesterday, the motor ran good and it was pissing water as it should. I was finally ready to launch today and was just getting the final touches together. I pushed the battery back into it's little storage area and jumped out to grab the fire extinguisher I was going to mount. I get back to the boat and there is smoke pouring out of the entire length of the remote control wiring harness. I quickly pulled the battery out and disconnected the positive side. As I was disconnecting the positive lead the starter kicked for about a second. It appears that the Negative and Kill Switch Wires have completely melted. Initially I thought that there might have been a short between the Neg and Kill, but looking at a wiring diagram those wires are of the same polarity. None of the other Positive wires seem to be damaged. I do not read continuity between the negative wires and any of the other wires. The starter motor currently reads 0 Ohms resistance from the positive lead to the mounting screws. The key was not in the ignition, so there should not have been any voltage to the starter. I thought that maybe my cheaper klein meter was not sensitive enough to detect minor impedance so I also confirmed with my Fluke and the resistance is indeed zero. There are no obvious signs of burning after the harness connector going into the motor. I put my meter on just about everything I could think of to find a short circuit somewhere, but I am not familiar enough with this boat to know for sure. I am trying to figure out what caused this problem before I install a new $300 harness just so that it can burn up again. I am completely stumped at this point. If anyone has some input it would be greatly appreciated. I was having issues uploading images directly to the forum so I uploaded them to imgur here, https://imgur.com/a/XrwpWf7
Thanks in advance!
I recently inherited a 91 Forester 16ft fishing boat with an Evinrude 50hp VRO2 (E50TLESR) Motor. The boat had been in storage for 15+ years, but was still in pretty good condition. I've already serviced the lower unit (New Water Pump), lube, etc. I rebuilt the carbs, fresh plugs, went through the whole checklist in the manual. I had tested everything yesterday, the motor ran good and it was pissing water as it should. I was finally ready to launch today and was just getting the final touches together. I pushed the battery back into it's little storage area and jumped out to grab the fire extinguisher I was going to mount. I get back to the boat and there is smoke pouring out of the entire length of the remote control wiring harness. I quickly pulled the battery out and disconnected the positive side. As I was disconnecting the positive lead the starter kicked for about a second. It appears that the Negative and Kill Switch Wires have completely melted. Initially I thought that there might have been a short between the Neg and Kill, but looking at a wiring diagram those wires are of the same polarity. None of the other Positive wires seem to be damaged. I do not read continuity between the negative wires and any of the other wires. The starter motor currently reads 0 Ohms resistance from the positive lead to the mounting screws. The key was not in the ignition, so there should not have been any voltage to the starter. I thought that maybe my cheaper klein meter was not sensitive enough to detect minor impedance so I also confirmed with my Fluke and the resistance is indeed zero. There are no obvious signs of burning after the harness connector going into the motor. I put my meter on just about everything I could think of to find a short circuit somewhere, but I am not familiar enough with this boat to know for sure. I am trying to figure out what caused this problem before I install a new $300 harness just so that it can burn up again. I am completely stumped at this point. If anyone has some input it would be greatly appreciated. I was having issues uploading images directly to the forum so I uploaded them to imgur here, https://imgur.com/a/XrwpWf7
Thanks in advance!