Re: Another boiling battery...
Many rectifiers are blown by swithing batteries while motor runinng due to fact that Mercury uses diodes that have a low Peak Inverse Rating in the bridge rectifier assembly. The tiniest spark will do it in. Save the old one, get the potting material out and you will see how physically small they are. A largerer bridge rectifier which is not available from the manufacturer could be constructed if you are handy with electronics. A .01uf capacitor across the output of your new rectifier may help to prevent transient voltages from doing to you what has all ready happened once, but the PIV is not high enough and it probably will happen again. The parts to make a new heavy duty bridge rectifier cost less than ten dollars, but I don't know anyone manufacturing them. A very good do it yourself project. Meanwhile, install the capacitor and don't do any switches with the motor running and tighten all connections with lockwashers. Also make sure all batteries that fail in your installation short out instead of going open. Ha, Why, because violation of any one of these rules produce short high voltages which pop these low rated rectifiers like corks.
