I Found It I Found It

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sailaway78

sailaway78

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May 11, 2005
3,431
Seidelman S37 Slidell, La.
Finally figured this thing out. Went with some help today, determined to find the damn electrical gremlin that has been plaguing me. Yesterday left shore power hooked up, charger on, to make sure batteries topped up. This morning checked batt. voltages, all is good. After disconnecting shore power and charger, had 13 volts on house bank and 12.9 on start. Checked the resistance on the solenoid, and it was just a tad high, but not out of reason. Had 12.9 at the starter positive. Had helper hit starter switch, and had 5 volts at starter. Not good. I checked the voltage at batteries with starter engaged, and only dropped about .2 volts, so check some more. Checked resistance on everything, and nothing jumped out. All cables and connections had virtually no resistance. I knew there was something not making a good connection somewhere, but it was once again hair pulling time. There are few places for this little problem to hide, because the house bank, and start are virtually two seperate systems, meeting only at the batt switch. Grounds are even totally seperate. And then this board saved me. Blitz mentioned the origional cables on the Seidelmans can be suspect. The only common cable that is origional, is between the battery switch and the starter. It only took a few minutes after that to make it work. Wiggling the cable and the lug around, and all worked fine. THANKS BLITZ, and all others for all the ideas and suggestions. And no, not gonna leave it alone. Will replace the cable with new, and go over all the others carefully. But think this is the only one origional. Anyone wondering, or having a problem like this, the cable appears fine, and shows no extra resistance when checked with an ohm meter, but will not carry the necessary current. Once more, thanks to all for the suggestions and ideas.
 
Roger Long

Roger Long

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Nov 22, 2008
3,562
Endeavour 32 Portland, Maine
Hppefully, Maine Sail will see this and tell us if there is a way to test cables for this condition. Sounds like it had corroded so that just one strand was connected. No voltage drop with the tiny current from a meter but huge with the initial flow to the starter.

I'm curious because I have a big pile of disconnected battery and engine cables sitting on my quarter berth.
 
Maine Sail

Maine Sail

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Feb 6, 1998
11,667
Canadian Sailcraft 36T Casco Bay, ME
The best test is the one N&E did. You usually need to load up the cables to see the problem. It is very rarely apparent with a meter.

Many older boats had undersized battery and starter wire. Seen some Catalina's with #4:doh:. With battery cables I have learned that bigger is better. Unfortunately the ABYC does not address starter cable sizing due to lack of info from manufacturers. I have had many discussions with the ABYC and folks like Roger H. at the Landing School about this. The Landing School/Roger have done some intensive experimentation with starter cables and found that most manufacturers ship with cables too small.

Roger suggests to use the very unscientific approach of "sound". When the motor springs to life and spins off like a Tasmanian Devil you've got your cable sizing right with minimal to no voltage drop to the starter. Of course this is tough for a DIY to do and very expensive buying a bunch of different sized cables. If you are fusing a bank, and also use it for starting, larger wire becomes a necessity to size the fuse right for the starter load and to protect the wire.

What have I found? For sailboats with small engines, sub 50HP, this is a cable normally in the 1/0 range. There are noticeable differences in the way a motor starts with 2GA vs. 1/0 or 2/0. Sabre was one of the few who used properly sized battery cable. Unfortunately many of them came through with bare copper welding cable and poor quality bare copper lugs and they corroded up quickly which leads to high resistance.

For new cables GenuineDealz.com will make them up for you for $1.00 per crimp plus materials. You really can't beat this deal. Just measure your length, hole to hole, and your stud sizes, 1/4", 5/16", 3/8" etc. and send them an order for RED for positive & YELLOW or BLACK for negative.. You would be best to specify the GenuineDealz HEAVY DUTY lugs. I no longer even bother to stock battery cable in anything smaller than 1/0 and use 1/0 and 2/0 most often.

Properly built battery cables will use a crimper that literally swages or shrinks the OD of the lug in a 360 degree manner and then heavy walled adhesive lined heat shrink is applied over the lug and cable jacket to completely seal it.



If you don't have your own lug crimper, or access to one, I would not bother making up your own cables and would let GD do it.

One of the most common points of resistance I see for starters is the starter case ground to the engine. Removing the starter and cleaning the metal and contact points fixes this. A 3M Roloc disc works great. You can then re-install it with some conductive terminal grease like No-Ox-Id "A Special" and your starter to engine ground resistance issues will be a thing of the past..
 
Roger Long

Roger Long

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Nov 22, 2008
3,562
Endeavour 32 Portland, Maine
Maine Sail said:
The best test is the one N&E did.
Click to expand
Is there any way to test my cables without putting everything back together first? Or, is this one of those things were replacement doesn't cost much more than testing?
 
Maine Sail

Maine Sail

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Feb 6, 1998
11,667
Canadian Sailcraft 36T Casco Bay, ME
Roger Long said:
Is there any way to test my cables without putting everything back together first? Or, is this one of those things were replacement doesn't cost much more than testing?
Click to expand
If you have a carbon pile load tester you can connect a cable to the batt and the load tester to the other end and compare the voltage at the batt end and lug end. You need to be careful though and keep in mind that this still wont simulate a starting load if the load tester is a small model. Also you need to be fast as most testers are 15 seconds or less. Another alternative, if the cables are in good shape, long enough and properly sized is to cut & strip back to clean copper & re-terminate.
 
sailaway78

sailaway78

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May 11, 2005
3,431
Seidelman S37 Slidell, La.
Not sure yet

At this time I suspect that the terminal end at the starter has corrosion issues in the cable. But haven't removed it from the boat yet. When I get it off will cut the crimp and see what is going on in there, but thats what I think at this time. I will try to cut this open and get a pic when I get around to it, but family obligations will make it be a couple of weeks before I can get to it.
 
zeehag

zeehag

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Mar 26, 2009
3,198
1976 formosa 41 yankee clipper santa barbara. ca.(not there)
awesome, phillip--am glad you were able to find your gremlin....
ms--i like your crimped bit---i must get one a doze for my boat.....
 
B

Blitz

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Jul 10, 2007
676
Seidelmann 34 Atlantic Highlands, NJ
I found that the problem was in the crimp made by Seidelmann at the starter. I replaced all cables with the help of Maine sail's recommendations. Also, original cables were not tinned and not very flexible so they needed to be replaced anyway. Glad this was all it was, don't feel bad I spent many hours assuming it couldn't be as simple as the crimp on the cable.
 
Don12364

Don12364

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Dec 2, 2003
1,637
Hunter 376 Warsash, England --
If you had tried the two tests I described you would have found it immediately. They are on load tests using the motor as the load.
 
Mark Maulden

Mark Maulden

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Jan 25, 2011
2,399
S2 11.0A Anacortes, WA
I'm currently adding a start batt. Ordered wire from Genuinedealz. 2/0 wire:

GD $6.33/ft
WM 13.99/ft
same wire specs and well worth the $1.00 labor to terminate the wire ends. My boat (new to me) came with #4 with about a 25' round trip length
 
Maine Sail

Maine Sail

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Feb 6, 1998
11,667
Canadian Sailcraft 36T Casco Bay, ME
Mark Maulden said:
I'm currently adding a start batt. Ordered wire from Genuinedealz. 2/0 wire:

GD $6.33/ft
WM 13.99/ft
same wire specs and well worth the $1.00 labor to terminate the wire ends. My boat (new to me) came with #4 with about a 25' round trip length
Click to expand
Just as a point of reference your #4 could carry only 57 amps @ 25 feet with a 3% voltage drop and that is considering perfect terminations. Starters are generally drawing in the 100's of amps...

Your 2/0 can carry 179 amps @ 3% VD...
 
sailaway78

sailaway78

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May 11, 2005
3,431
Seidelman S37 Slidell, La.
Donalex, I agree

I agree that if I had done it that way earlier, would have found the problem much quicker. Problem was, no remote start button, no helping hands. The starter on the Yanmar is very difficult to get to at all, let alone adding another process. Actually, to really check anything in there, I had to remove the alternator just to get to the starter.
 
Mark Maulden

Mark Maulden

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Jan 25, 2011
2,399
S2 11.0A Anacortes, WA
Thanks Maine. I'm putting in a dedicated start batt and halved the distance. I ordered the wire late morn west coast and it arrived today. Looks to be good quality wire with very heavy duty terms. I'm impressed.
 
Mark Maulden

Mark Maulden

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Jan 25, 2011
2,399
S2 11.0A Anacortes, WA
Damn... I see they left off a heat shrink. Fortunately, it's not the batt end. I"ll be able to slip a piece over and heat it......And... you know, it's getting to when I buy something I open it up at the store. Half the time it's either damaged or missing parts....
 
woodster

woodster

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Sep 15, 2009
6,243
S2 9.2a Fairhope Al
Mark Maulden said:
Damn... I see they left off a heat shrink. Fortunately, it's not the batt end. I"ll be able to slip a piece over and heat it......And... you know, it's getting to when I buy something I open it up at the store. Half the time it's either damaged or missing parts....
Click to expand
that suprises me as i know Mike to be very good at getting it correct...i bet if you contact him he will send you the heat shrink to take care of the problem......

regards

woody
 
Mark Maulden

Mark Maulden

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Jan 25, 2011
2,399
S2 11.0A Anacortes, WA
I did send him an "FYI" email and he did offer to send me some heat shrink, however, I need to install tomorrow and I think I have a piece that will work. If not, it's easy to get. Not a big deal. I would buy from him again in a heartbeat as the product is very high quality and he's very responsive to emails to satisfy his customers.
 
Mark Maulden

Mark Maulden

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Jan 25, 2011
2,399
S2 11.0A Anacortes, WA
update: I added the additional grp 27 battery and 2/0 cables through a battery switch. I chose not to got the high tech route at least at this time with isolation etc. I did measure 15.0V on the batteries with engine running so I need to address that. I also cleaned up the dirt/corrosion etc on the starter terminal. When I took possession of this boat in Feb, it was ~30 sec cranking (very slow) and eyeballs rolled up. With injector servicing/kill cable adjust, and new battery/wiring, it was an instantaneous start today after 3 wks of last engine run. Uncorked a good bottle on this one.....
 
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