no spark please help

[curtisimo1981]

ok heres the deal. just got this motor a couple of days ago. its a 1989 johnson 90hp. has a new powerhead. it has run great up until today. had it out yesterday and friday it ran great. today we were running to the beach and about 30min into the trip the motor just quit. no problems leading up to it. it was charging fine and everything seemed to be going great untill it stopped. checked for spark, and to my suprise i have no spark on all 4 cyl. each cyl has it own coil pack. any sugestion on what it could be.

 

[offshore100]

Re: no spark please help

power pack or kill switch.

 

[curtisimo1981]

Re: no spark please help

my power pak would be the coil paks correct? and the kill switch isnt hooked up its been disabled. i'm using the same controls that i had my stinger on

 

[offshore100]

Re: no spark please help

my power pak would be the coil paks correct?

nup, your power pack is that mysterious little black box that wires from under your flywheel go into, and wires to your ignition coils come out of.
You need to check its output with a peak reading voltmeter.

 

[curtisimo1981]

Re: no spark please help

well i have another whole motor that runs that is the exact same motor. is it easy to change? i bout the motors a set that were on a bigger boat. they were ran as twins. but i'm using them as singles. where is located... i'll just swap them out and see if it fixes it. I dont know much about outboards. i'm an auto techinician, so i figured outboards would be easy to me but i'm soon relizing that they are completely different than cars....lol

 

[offshore100]

Re: no spark please help

Lucky you. Quite a luxury to have parts on hand to troubleshoot with.
Just follow the wires back from your four coils to the black box (it should say something about "CD" on it...."Capacitor Discharge.") That's mainly what's in it, a capacitor, and a rectifier and some SCR's.
Switch it out, make sure you ground it real well.
Good luck and let us know how it goes.

 

[curtisimo1981]

Re: no spark please help

yeah i'm in the process of changing one of them out but it began to rain. i'll let you all know if that fixes it. I hope it does. i'm just wondering if that is the problem could there have been something that caused it to go bad? or do they just go out all of the sudden all the time.

 

[iwombat]

Re: no spark please help

It's usually a bad/dirty ground that causes an electrical component to overheat and go bad.

Sometimes it's just time for them to give up the ghost.

Of course, if your careless enough to let the smoke out, they'll quit working. All electrical components run on smoke.

 

[curtisimo1981]

Re: no spark please help

ok changed that out. i now have spark on the other two cyl. but not on the two the pack was on. how could that be? i'm really getting agravated with this boat. lol please help....

 

[tashasdaddy]

Re: no spark please help

check out the bottom part of this page.
http://www.boatpartstore.com/page34.asp

 

[curtisimo1981]

Re: no spark please help

ok found out whats going on with my motor. after figureing out i do have spark on the other two cyls. i decided to a compression test. wish i wouldnt have.,..lol got 45 lbs of pressure in left two cyl and 97lbs in right two. also have water on spark plugs in left two... i'm pretty pissed right now. could it need a head gasket?

 

[offshore100]

Re: no spark please help

could it need a head gasket?

yes

 

[Molaker]

Re: no spark please help

If it was a newly rebuilt powerhead, the heads should have been re-torqued after it was run a short while. Otherwise, you can blow a gasket. Does that sound about like it?

 

[curtisimo1981]

Re: no spark please help

yeah you see the place i got them from said nothing to me about that. I guess maybe i can call him to see if he will at least buy the gaskets...(long shot though...) I hope that that will fix it. they look pretty easy to get too so i guess i'm going to have to try to tackle it out.

 

[Dennisanoka]

Re: no spark please help

curtisimo1981,

While you have the head off, run your finger around the inside of the cylinder to feel for any scoring on either one. Also when you have the head off you shoul place the head on a straight edge or truely flat surface to see if it could be warped. The gaskets are only about $8.00 but If you don't do those two things you might be throwing away $8.00 and another trip to the parts store. When you put the head back on it needs to be torqued to the correct LBS. and in the correct sequence.

I hope this fixes it for you!

 

[mikesea]

Re: no spark please help

if you havent pulled the head yet,and have a torque wrench,of which you will need at assembly,check to see where the bolts were torqued to,its possible the guy went to lunch before torquing the head, a long shot,but something made that side have low comp,I agree with the checking for strait,it seems both cyl. have same comp,so some common prob is with both cylinders,leaving them with exact low comp.ODD .Keep us posted

 

[curtisimo1981]

Re: no spark please help

ok changed the head gasket and checked to make sure it was straight. from what i can tell it was good. i put it back together, didnt have the torque sequence but i'm an auto tech so i just torqued it the way you would the majority of heads. the torque was 20ftlbs from what a mechanic at a marina told me. everything is fine now, i have good compression in both cyl. the motor just kinda seems like it runs different now. not sure if its better or worse havent had a chance to take it out in the water yet. just used the muffs.. i'm just baffled as to what made it blow, bc the old gasket looked pretty good, it had some corosion on it but nothing that i could see that would cause it to blow.

 

[reload]

Re: no spark please help

The old gasket showed corrosion, was this a rebuilt powerhead or was it just replaced used?

 

[curtisimo1981]

Re: no spark please help

it was suposed to be a rebuilt power head. but i'm thinking it wasnt, or if it was it was done a while back. he said since it had been rebuilt it hadnt been in the water, but theres signs proving that, that was not true or it sat for a long time.