Westernlife
Member
Hey guys I'm trying to help my brother out here, he has a 40hp Johnson don't know the exact year but believe it to be 70's about 74, model#40e74s it hasn't ran in years and the guy he got it from lost the ignition key, so we hooked up fuel to it and we noticed the 2 smaller red wires that hook up to the starter solenoid where the batt wire goes were broken off, so we just ran a quick temp wire from the battery Pos to those wires and twisted them together. Then he took all the wires off the back of ignition and just hooked them all together except the white one, left that one aside because it ran the starter. Everything seemed fine so we cranked on it a few times and noticed that the electric choke wasn't working so we ran the switch wire to the ignition also, then he tried cranking again and as soon as we hooked the battery up those red wires started smoking, so we disconnected the choke wire and it still did it, we did notice one coil seemed to be warmer then the other and was cracked so we took one off an 85hp I had sitting around and put that on temporarily thinking the coil was fried, still smoked. As soon as we put power to those red wires they smoke. It seems that as soon as we either unplug the coil connectors at the engine, or unhook them up where the ignition was the red wires stop smoking, I'm wondering is there a wire we have hooked up at the ignition end that should be getting 12v+ and is grounding something out? Any wiring diagrams would help alot.