Late last fall, as I was getting ready to put my
boat away for the year, the starter stopped working. Instead of cranking the
engine, I would just hear the solenoid clicking when I turned the key. The odd thing was that sometimes it started. Everyone told me it was probably the
batteries, because it was cold and they were four years old. The marina was able to easily jump start it to run
antifreeze through it, and so they concluded the problem was my
batteries as well.
This year, I replaced all the batteries.
Battery Bank 1 is two Group 31 batteries, and
Battery Bank 2 is one Group 24 starting battery. The
engine was working fine earlier in the summer. But today (it was 100 degrees outside) I got the same clicking sound. I tried battery bank 1, battery bank 2, and both. At first, I thought it might be the malfunctioning
solar charger that may have boiled the batteries, thereby ruining them. (It was a flexcharge PV7D, that seems to be malfunctioning because I've seen it bring Battery 2 up to 15.5V even though its specs say it should cut off at 14.2) But then I tried a few more times, and the engine turned over and started quite well. I ran it for ten minutes, and shut it down. I then easily started it again.
So my question is what can be wrong with it? Is it the batteries again? Should I try replacing the
cables from the battery switches to the
motor? (The ones to the battery are new.) Is it the solenoid or the starter
motor? If the latter, how hard is this to replace? Any
advice would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Joe