sorry, i meant ceramic magnets. The later starters will not tolerate any banging. By the time you get around to hitting a starter with a hammer, the damage has probably already been done, its a last ditch effort to get it to spin to get you back home. If you had to go that far to get it to work, you need to replace it. I've beat on some older starters pretty hard to avoid having to be towed in, I replaced the starter before going back out.

Check voltage to the starter, check grounds from the battery to the block. Load test your battery if you have a tester(check your connections at the battery cable ends as well). With the key in the start position, check for voltage to teh yellow/red wire on the slave solenoid(either on top of the throttle linkage bracket or at the front of the exhaust manifold), check for voltage out of the larger yellow/red wire coming out of the slave solenoid. Check for voltage to the S terminal on the starter, check for voltage coming out of the bottom terminal on the solenoid on the starter itself. At this point, you should have it figured out. If you replace the starter, make sure the mounting surfaces are clean and unpainted before mounting, always buy new starter bolts when replacing the starter(use the reduced head type sold by Arco or Mercruiser, you'll thank me later)

yep we agree.... if you are stranded and know the starter is bad... sure, give it a whack....might save ya a LONG swim.... if you are at home and don't know what the problem is don't.... could go from a bad ground to a bad ground AND a busted starter

.. as I mentioned earlier I am a computer guy. I know enough about motors to get me in trouble. I have a mechanic friend who I help with his computer stuff. I am going to trailer the boat down to his place and we will fix. Just as a FYI, when I said hit the starter I was more meaning tap it to see if the bendix went back in, I think the solenoid is the problem so I did nothing other than get dirty. I did not know the starter motors were such fragile things, you have educated me.

OK, it's in the hands of a professional now, LOL. He looked at the boat and was not able to fix it in ten min. so I feel much better. There are time when I have looked at a computer and all I needed to do was turn the power switch to on, I kid you not. My Buddy thinks the problem is power and not starter, ie battery.

I'll keep you posted. My daughter's birthday is next Friday and I was counting on doing the boating thing....

no prob... load her up and come on down..... we'll take my welly out on the river

My money is on the starter windings. You said you were cranking her for a long time. You just might have burnt them out. If it were the solonoid you wouldn't get the click of it engaging... (shooting the gear forward to engage the flywheel). But since you say you are getting that sound but the engine is not turning over it tells me that the starter motor is either not getting juice (burned contacts in the solonoid) or that the starter motor is burned out. IMHO

And if you want to turn the engine over you can always put a socket on the crankshaft damper pulley and give a tug with a breaker bar.

pull the spark plugs out and see if it will turn over