Bertram33 User Forum

OK Tim, Isn`t this a real stumper? I was wondering if your mechanic changed the distributor cap when he swapped distributors? Usually a spark issue will be more of a problem under load but sometimes strange things happen. Like a carbon trace inside a distributor cap, so if he didn`t change it yet, I would. Also if he didn`t change the spark plugs after the intake gaskets, I recommend it. A small chunk of gasket material can foul a spark plug easily, and I`ve seen it more than once. At this point , if you don`t have a big vacuum leak, it will end up being something small that no one thought of, so like I said before, you have to be thorough. Where are you located? I`m guessing by the fact that you`re still in the water , that you`re south of Massachusetts by a bit? I would really be interested to hear it run, if you were close by. One more thing, does it take throttle smoothly in nuetral as you throttle up, like the other engine? Or does it feel/ sound a little ragged? Taking the spark arrestor off the carb will let you hear it a little better. Can you quickly give it , say, half throttle and it takes it without hesitation and no roughness? Frank Price

Frank, I am in naples, florida and the weather has been beautiful and in the upper 80s still. thats why it really hurts to have my boat sitting at the dock. I dont know if they switched the distributor cap or not .I will ask them. I went looking for anything unusual today so i crawled on the port side of the port engine and found a green wire dangling by a thread . It was off of what i think is an oil pressure sensor,which was near the bottom of the block near the rear.I could not find a replacement part on a sunday ,I have to replace it because the prong that the green wire is attatched was broken off.Could this be my mystery problem??i wouldnt think that it would be if this is an oil sensor what do you think?I also installed a new 4 bank charger today because my original sentry was only working on manual.and my starboard battery and house battery were not staying charged.and i also noticed that last time i went to crank my starboard engine i had to use my battery parallel switch which caused my port engine to stall..i know i am grasping at straws but maybe you see a connection to any of this madness Tim Stamm Photo Finish 1981 33' Bertram FBC

when the engine is cold it idles up without any hesitation after the engine is fully up to operating temp is when i have my problem it does not happen every time however 3 out of 4 times it will happen in gear or out of gear in gear sitting at my dock it will stall without adding throttle sometimes immediately and sometimes after a couple minutes out of gear i can usually let it sit there for a long time 15-45min.but when i throttle up smoothly or abruptly it stalls out. the funny part is i can take her from my dock even after it has warmed up idle out a little then open it up and run it as long as i wish but if i slow down and start idleing in to dock that is where it starts stalling then it runs a little then stalls and after a while it stalls immediately after i put it in gear and of course this always happens when i am trying to go up my canal and spin the boat around to dock..not easy to do with one engine. Tim Stamm Photo Finish 1981 33' Bertram FBC

Tim, I think you should change the oil pressure sender. I don`t know why you`re not getting an alarm from it if it`s not doing it`s job.It probably isn`t causing this problem but , like I said before, you have to be thorough. When I bought my boat I had a problem similar to yours with the starboard engine.The first thing I did was run a jumper wire from the main power wire on the starter solenoid to the positive post on the coil. The problem went away , telling me that it was electrical. Here`s what I found: Plugs, wires, cap,and rotor all sucked.Just in case, I changed the pickup in the distributor. Since it was winter, I didn`t have the liesure of running it after every try , so I kept looking at other things. I didn`t want to be fighting this problem during the summer, like I`m sure the last owner did. The starboard battery also was no good , so obviously that needed to go. I also changed both alternators with new 100 amp ones. I also was leary of the connection for the main wiring harness so I pulled it apart and made sure all the pins and sockets were clean.(these looked pretty nice) My oil pressure also was a little low on that engine , so I took a chance and changed the sender. It worked , the pressure reads normal. After all that, I put a little over two hundred hours on her this summer and Niether engine skipped a beat. Like you I was also worried about docking on one engine , especially since I`m way up in the marina without a lot of room to save it if one engine suddenly dies. So my advice now, Tim, is take a small jumper lead and bring a source of battery voltage to the coil when it has the problem, and see if this fixes it. If not, you know it`s not electrical. If it does fix it, you know it is electrical. This could be as simple as a loose connection on the ignition switch. The problem is identifiing it. By the way, the guy I bought the boat from wouldn`t admit it had a problem(scumbag)and when the broker would finally discuss it, he admitted that it "sometimes would have a problem when it got warm" . They were chasing the wrong things.It allowed me to buy the boat pretty cheap though. Good luck. Frank Price

Frank, well i changed out the battery charger and the oil pressure safety switch.I ran the boat at the dock for almost an hour moved the throttle up and down in gear out of gear not one problem.I was so excited i took it out in the bay last night.it ran good for a while.then the port engine stalled .i put the jumper cable on like you suggested and it seemed to help.then the starboard engine stalled a new twist.so i pulled the jumper cable off the port and both engines stalled only now they were having a hard time restarting. so i sat there for awhile to let them cool down a little and the port fired up but the starboard wouldnt so i put the jumper on and presto it started right away... so as i took the jumper off the starboard i noticed the wire cable on top of the coil had come off so i put it back on but when i did there was oil coming out of the coil and as i crawled all the way back to my dock both engines kept stalling. Tim Stamm Photo Finish 1981 33' Bertram FBC

Well Tim, you know you need a new coil.(at the least) Go to radio shack and get a small jumper lead. It sounds like you`re using big jumper cables to do this. All you need is a piece of 14 ga. wire with a couple aligator clips.By jumping the coils, all you`re trying to do is by-pass all the connections between the engine and everything else that may be causing a bad connection. Be careful to go to positive on the coil.At this point I`d try it again at the dock as long as you can , I`m sure you can put it in and out of gear while tied up?You need repeatability here, it has to work all the time . If the jumper works for a little while but not all the time, you`ve got issues with the components on the engine but at least you MAY have isolated it and it MAY not be the harness or switches etc.Try again but please be careful. While you`re at radio shack, get a multi-meter and a test light. You`ll love them. Frank Price

Frank, i am using a 12 gauge wire with alligator clips.Can the engine run for a long time while connected this way without any possibillity of damaging anything? Tim Stamm Photo Finish 1981 33' Bertram FBC

Tim, My ignition system ran that way for a good 4 hours the day I brought it home from Boston , with no problems. My system is stock mercruiser, not mallory however. I`m not sure if these boats use a resistor wire on the ignition or not and usually if they do it`s reduced to about 9 or 10 volts. I`m going to stick my neck out and say that if the extra 2 or 3 volts for an hour or two hurts your ignition system , it`s not a good system.However , I would not plan on leaving it this way for any longer than necessary to diagnose it. Alternators can easily fluctuate a few volts without the expectation of blowing a coil or pickup.If you`d like, it would be a good idea to start your starboard engine and check the voltage at the positive lead on the coil, and then compare the two engines. While it`s running it would be a good idea to check voltage at a few places , like the battery and the feed to the starter for example. Is it running any better? Or have we fried the coils? (just kidding , the coils should easily take the voltage) Frank Price

Tim, don't know what dist. you have but I'll try to post a few links for you. http://go.mrgasket.com/pdf/605_609.pdf http://go.mrgasket.com/pdf/29371.pdf http://go.mrgasket.com/pdf/UniliteTest.pdf Bottom line is you HAVE to have a ballast resistor installed. They also say not to use steel plug wires. When the previous owner had my 1978 Mercs rebuilt in 1998 they installed Mallory Unilite dist. Since researching them, I have picked up a spare ballast & ignition module from summitracing.com. This may not have anything to do with your current problem, but these are good files to be aware of. Al 1978 33 FBC NITES OFF

Thanks Al and Frank, i ran the port until it stalled then i put the jumper test on, it worked great! I also noticed that my voltmeter on the bridge jumped up almost 2 volts it was only reading maybe 12 volts now it reads 13.5-14 with the jumper on.my whole problem could be a bad alternator or voltage regulator.? Tim Stamm Photo Finish 1981 33' Bertram FBC

Tim, Actually it sounds like you may have a bad connection somewhere. If you have 13.5 -14 volts at the engine, your alternator must be working perfectly.It sounds like it back-fedthrough your ignition wire when you clipped on the jumper. This could be the problem you`ve been having all along, or it could be just something else that needs attention. I would take apart the main plug at the engine and look especially hard at the female end. They make small stainless brushes to fit inside small ares like this. Also, they make contact cleaner for this sort of thing. I also would access the switches behind the dash and look hard at the crimped connectors and the screw connecting them to the ignition swithches. Just to be safe, on my boat , I replaced the eye connectors at the switches and made sure the connections were clean. It sounds like you`re on the right track. Frank Price

A LOOSE SCREW......... A screw on the ignition switch was just a little loose.I am 90% sure that was the main cause.I ran the boat at the dock in and out of gear for an hour and a half and it ran great.I just got back from a test run and it ran much better .It did stall just a couple times while docking.which is still a huge improvement and i feel the loose ignition wire was a major source of the problem...i still feel a little rough hesitation as i begin my acceleration right around 800rpm.I am going to raise my idle a little and check my plugs. maybe since i have been idleing the engine so much as i have been troubleshooting the plugs might be dirty.my idle out of gear is at 800rpm in gear it drops to 600rpm i was going to bump the idle to 900rpm i know this seems high but i think it might run better. Where are some of you with 454's running your idles??? Anyway thanks everyone for all your help especially you Frank your last comments on the ignition wire and the wire harness (which by the way was resting on the exhaust pipe) earned you a couple cocktails if you are ever in sw florida. I still have that 10% to go to get it to not stall ever and get rid of the hesitation which isnt really a real hesitation its more like the engine seems to vibrate and sound a little rough for that split second at 800rpm ,which i think might just be the plugs and idle. thanks again, Tim Tim Stamm Photo Finish 1981 33' Bertram FBC

Tim, You`re not done yet.The idle speed sounds about right . If it were running right , that should be OK. Here`s the next thing I`d do.Before you start it , take all the spark plug wires at the distributor cap and loosen them a little bit, so you can pull them off easily but not out enough to lose a connection.Next, start the engine and, as its idling in nuetral, pull one plug wire at a time. After each one is pulled , the idle should drop about the same.Of course put each one back on after you check it this way. If you find one that you can`t tell a difference in idle speed or smoothness, that`s the one to look at. If you happen to have two that make no or very little difference right next to each other, try switching them.Oddly, sometimes people get a little confused when replacing wires on a big block and its really easy to get a couple wires switched.Just try this, you may get a surprise. Oh, the shock you`ll get should be no surprise. They make an insulated tool for this sort of thing or you can ose rubber gloves , maybe two layers? If you have a bad heart, I wouldn`t try it.(get you mechanic to do this). All joking aside, the spark from this is not so bad, as soon as the wire is pulled , the spark to it stops and a lot of times you get no shock. Frank Price

ok here is the latest, i found a slightly loose plug wire and just for kicks i bought a mallory ignition module and a new resistor bar.i installed the resistor bar but not the ignition module yet. the boat seemed to run better at the dock in the morning.i was happy. later that day i was going to run the boat harder to test it better. oh boy ,now i am baffled.the boat was stalling worse than ever so i tried the jumper wire test again first on the ignition switch ,did not help, then i jumped the coil and it ran fine...so i started investigating the wiring at the starter and found a purple a red and a yellow with red stripe wire.the connections were not real tight so i tried to tighten them however the nut on the post of the yellow wire would not tighten down it is a 2 nut system where as the nut at the base of the post was loose so i got that snug but the top nut would not tighten so i got it as good as i could so i tried to start the engine and got no spark at all now. which has never happened.so i figured something was up with that yellow wire being not tight so as i sat in the cockpit throwing a lure at a tarpon behind the boat i smelled smoke my starter was smoked bad so i shut the battery switch down.sorry about the book i am writing but my point is could a short in the starter be my mystery problem?i am convinced that when i tried to tighten the yellow wire post that enhanced an internal problem in the starter solenoid.i am going to replace the starter and solenoid obviously but do i need to be concerned about the slave solenoid or the 50amp breaker that the satrter is tied too? I think this might be my overall cause of the problem, but I am curious if this is the cause or the affect? if it is the affect i certainly dont want to burn up a new starter. Tim Stamm Photo Finish 1981 33' Bertram FBC

Tim, The problems you`re having shouldn`t have anything to do with the starter or solenoid except that the wires for the whole system connect at the solenoid. The yellow wire you mentioned is the starter trigger wire. My guess is that when you tightened it,it twisted the stud because it was frozen to it and shorted it internally.I think you`re looking in the right area to start. Because the heat exchanger is right on top of the solenoid, it`s a great place to get salt water on it when the heat exchanger leaks and cause corrosion on those wire connectors.If you haven`t gotten test light and a multi-meter yet, you need them. I hope this helps. Frank Price