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2005 Mercury Optimax 115 died & fixed itself?

T

Travis Schwickerath

New member
I bought a new to me pontoon last year with a 2005 Mercury Optimax 115 on it. The engine itself had always been maintained by a dealer in the past and has around 200 hours on it. Last year it ran flawless and no problems what so ever. I winterized the boat and put it into storage and it fired right up last week with no problems. I took it out over the weekend and it ran great all day then after sitting in a cove for a few hours I went to start it up and as soon as I turn the key on the alarm starts chirping rapidly and the engine will not crank. I had the stereo on all day and thought maybe it was low voltage so I hooked up a booster pack to the separate battery I have for the engine and that made no difference. I also noticed that I'm unable to tilt the engine up/down either. When I pretty the button to tilt I can hear the electric motor attempt to move the engine but it wont like its not getting enough power.. It was starting to get dark so I just had someone tow me in and went home. The next morning I started tracing wires from the captains station down through the floor since there were a few not hooked to anything but likely were never hooked to anything and couldn't find any problems. Then I had a friend stop by that started looking at the wiring and just randomly wiggled the wires and everything started working again.

I can only think of 1 of 2 problems. 1. Bad ground wire? 2. Bad sensor or short in a sensor wire shutting down the power to everything...

I'm really leaning toward #1, I wouldn't think there would ever be a sensor that would prevent you to tilt the engine if something was going wrong engine wise. I haven't traced any more wires yet but definitely want to figure out the problem or I will be paranoid to take it out again. Any ideas on where to start? The engine is on a Palm Beach pontoon is that makes any difference.

Thanks in advanced!
 
Thanks! I'm pretty new to boats but am pretty mechanically inclined and I haven't done any looking on the boat itself yet since I won't be back too it for a couple days but is there a 'chassis' ground like car would have?
 
Sounds good, does it sound like a ground issue to you? Is there any type of sensor that would cut power to the engine & engine tilt or cause a rapid beep with just the key on? Would the kill switch override the engine tilt?
 
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sound like a dead battery, what is battery voltage at battery and make sure it is same on engine starter solenoid. charge it properly and test it if needed most batteries are not mean to be drained, do u have a auto battery isolator of battery switch?? pcm will not run below 10 volts so while staring or trying to crank voltage drop below 10v pcm wont fire ignition or injectors
 
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