A little help please on Saturday the whole thing just quit no power at all. The only thing in the boat that has power is the trim pump. From the gauges, to the inside lights, radio everything has no power. At first I thought it was the battery or a cable to or from it. But after the trim worked that is what is funny or should I say not so funny. We can hot wire the motor will crank over but will not start. The boat is a 1991 Checkmate Convincer 251 GTX if that will help anyone. Thank's for the help

My 1st guess would be that the main engine harness is loose. Tighten it up and put a hose clamp around it if it does not have one.

Thanks I will try that but I already thought that might be a problem but I never thought of the camp trick.

Check to see if your starter ground is corroded if that does not work.

All the grounds looks good but I will loosen and clean all of them. Thanks for the help.

Try pulling the "umbilical" connector (main power) from your motor and take a look at the pins. I've got an '86 boat and over time, both of the main power pins have broken loose. Merc sells a replacement connector end that splices in pretty easily.

The symptoms I had were identical to what you describe.

Good luck,
Brian

Get this, after a couple of hours of playing around with this, we found that if you turn on the bilage pump the boat is fine. The control panel must have the ground problem. You turn on the pump and everthing works fine. Have you ever seen that. I have not.

Sounds to me like you have a ground problem. The circuit is most likely finding a ground through the bilge pump.

It is definitely a grounding problem.

Somewhere you fried a wire, you better find it, before others decide to go.