Starter turning very slow...............v6 crossflow.

[keefallan]

Ok guys. I need some help. Here's the situation:
1)rebuilt my 150 crossflow..........it turns over with ease by hand( I tried it after this starter thing...pulled the plugs......butter)

2) motor has not been fired yet. I just hooked up the battery cables and wanted to bump it over to hear everything before trying to run it. Motor turns slow.

3) I changed my battery. Same thing. This battery is 7 months old. Both have been on trickle charges since coming out of the boat this fall. Voltage is fine. I repeat, voltage is fine.

4) After looking thru the forums this morning, I decided to check my connections. I grabbed my 3rd starter(which was working when I pulled it off a year ago) , cleaned the steel and the block surfaces..............same thing. Slowwwwwwwwwww!!

5) That's when I pulled the plugs to see how hard it was to spin. It's got no resistance.
6) I replugged and went straight to starter with both the ground and positve cables. I bypassed the starter solenoid. I put on a leather glove and held the + to the post to turn it over. Same thing!!!! Here's what's new on the motor electrically:
Wiring harness, Stator and power packs. The timing base and rectifier are reuses. Anybody got any advise? I'm a union electrician. Wiring is pretty easy for me. It's what I do, but something just doesn't seem right. Like I said, all the connections are good. The batt cables are good. I checked them and they are only a year old also. But batt volts are the same at the first connection as the battery. All wiring is good. This is the same wiring that I put on this boat a year ago, brand new.........everything. It's not 20-30 yrs old like the powerhead case.

Advise?????????????

 

[Bill3434]

Re: Starter turning very slow...............v6 crossflow.

Ok guys. I need some help. Here's the situation:
1)rebuilt my 150 crossflow..........it turns over with ease by hand( I tried it after this starter thing...pulled the plugs......butter)

2) motor has not been fired yet. I just hooked up the battery cables and wanted to bump it over to hear everything before trying to run it. Motor turns slow.

3) I changed my battery. Same thing. This battery is 7 months old. Both have been on trickle charges since coming out of the boat this fall. Voltage is fine. I repeat, voltage is fine.

4) After looking thru the forums this morning, I decided to check my connections. I grabbed my 3rd starter(which was working when I pulled it off a year ago) , cleaned the steel and the block surfaces..............same thing. Slowwwwwwwwwww!!

5) That's when I pulled the plugs to see how hard it was to spin. It's got no resistance.
6) I replugged and went straight to starter with both the ground and positve cables. I bypassed the starter solenoid. I put on a leather glove and held the + to the post to turn it over. Same thing!!!! Here's what's new on the motor electrically:
Wiring harness, Stator and power packs. The timing base and rectifier are reuses. Anybody got any advise? I'm a union electrician. Wiring is pretty easy for me. It's what I do, but something just doesn't seem right. Like I said, all the connections are good. The batt cables are good. I checked them and they are only a year old also. But batt volts are the same at the first connection as the battery. All wiring is good. This is the same wiring that I put on this boat a year ago, brand new.........everything. It's not 20-30 yrs old like the powerhead case.

Advise?????????????

You starter could have corroded contacts, bad brushes. Had similar problems did all the normal stuff nothing improved. Replace power cables, old ones where corroded internally; which you have already seemed to have eliminate that problem. Don't know how your starter is constructed but you might want to check that.

 

[boobie]

Re: Starter turning very slow...............v6 crossflow.

Even tho' the battery is only 7 months old, I would take it in to a local parts house and have it load tested.

 

[James R]

Re: Starter turning very slow...............v6 crossflow.

If you are using jumper cables it wont work. You need to use the big old battery cables made for the motor and they must be bolted down. Be sure that all connections are shiny. Boobie and bill3434 are both correct. The V6 motors suck a lot of current and it is common for the brushes etc to fail.

 

[nphilbro]

Re: Starter turning very slow...............v6 crossflow.

If one of the battery cables was crimped or pinched at some point it could have broken enough of the strands to limit the amps it can "push." This can happen closing hatches on it causing a 90 degree bend or pinch or even setting the battery down too hard on top of it when putting it back in the transom. Just about anything, really.The pvc wire jacket could still return to its shape so you might not be able to see it but each individual strand is surprisingly fragile. If enough of them are severed in a single spot you've just turned a 4 or 6 gauge cable into speaker wire. Now instead of 650 or 800 cranking amps available, maybe only 200 or 300 make are available to the starter. Electrons flow on the outside of the wire which is why stranded wire is used instead of solid core - there is much more surface area for the electrons to travel on with stranded. If even a small percentage of the strands are broken you've lost an exponentially larger amount of surface area.

 

[keefallan]

Re: Starter turning very slow...............v6 crossflow.

Thanks everyone. Troubleshoting is a pain. Just so evryone is clear, I've been using the 4 guage factory wires for all the jumping out. I have learned in the past about jumper cables. So, I will look into the actual cables themselves although they started this motor fine in october, and they were new a year and 1/2 ago. I will look into the starters and even the batteries. I have a 3rd battery to mess with also. Its the same as the second one. I'm also gonna pull the plugs and use a torque wrench to see the resistance on spinning the motor over by hand. I'll post those readings. My wrench goes down to 5lbs. Heck I'll even tear one of the starters down. I've got spares. LOL

 

[MWG2600]

Re: Starter turning very slow...............v6 crossflow.

Its not possible you have 3 starters that all went bad at the same time, i wold look into the cables!

 

[keefallan]

Re: Starter turning very slow...............v6 crossflow.

I finally fixed the problem. The cables were fine. 2 of the 3 starters were fine. It was the connections at the block. I think it was fixed after I cleaned them the 2nd time, but I'm not used to the sound of the 35 amp system turning over. It sounded different than my 9 amp systems. SO..................problem solved. The motor fired right up when I put water and fuel to it. The motor only needed about 12 lbs of force to turn over with my torque wrench. That's including the impellor resistance(no water). Now, to just troulbeshoot the miss at idle....nothing like starting a new motor.........LOL! Compression by the way is around 96- 102 with only 10 minutes max of run time.

 

[halfmoa]

Re: Starter turning very slow...............v6 crossflow.

I'm glad to hear you've fixed your problem, but would someone enlighten me as to why you can't use jumper cables to jump past a solenoid?