New Switch boxes on Merc

[garbubba]

I had a thread here a while back but it's time to start again.

I've been chasing down an intermittant problem with my '96 Mecury 200 offshore (2.5L) for a while now & with some help from y'all figured it was the switch box. I bought two new after market boxes & plan to replace them shortly (when i can get away from building my shop).

Any words of advice?

The one on the port side looks easy enough, the one on the stern looks like a pain, any trouble to watch out for?

Do y'all use dielectric grease on the connections?

I sure hope this fixes it, of course if it doesn't more incentive for that Yamaha 150 I've been drooling over....


Doug

[steplift20]

i changed my two switch boxes and the manuel doesnt say to put on and type of grease but it does say to make sure that there grounded good, what wasthe problem? mine was shutting down half the cylinders and causing the low oil alarm to go off

[spareparts]

make sure you get a good ground, thats probably the number one problem with switch boxes. I usually just srpay the connections with terminal protector after I get everything hooked up

[bigshrimpin]

I just read your old post. The problem sounds more like a stator. Do you have a manual and a multimeter? A bad highspeed coil (blue wires) in the stator will cause those symptoms. There is a test you can do to check the high speed coil on the stator . . . MJ knows all about this :)

A bad switch box will cause you to lose spark on on side or the other (usually the whole side). You can check with a spark tester. If you don't have spark on (or one plug) try swapping switchboxes and retest. If the spark comes back it's that switchbox you just swapped out . . . otherwise it's not.

Spares - Is there a mercury bulliten about AGM and Gel batteries causing Merc stators to crap out? I read this post a while back and I've never had a stator fail until this year until I swapped the batteries out with fancy AGM's.

http://continuouswave.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/000916.html

[spareparts]

I'll check next week about the batteries, I can't see any reason why they would have any effect on the switch boxes. It could load up the stator's charging circut if you have the high output stator as AGMs and Gel Cell batteries are not designed to handle high amperage or high finishing voltage charging systems. The rare few times I've installed AGMs or gels( i usually talk people out of installing them), I've had to change out the onboard chargers(or change the switch on the back if they have one), and turn the altenators down if they have an adjustable regulator. I will not honor the warranty for labor if I install an AGM or Gel on a customers boat, and I tell them this up front. I know there are a lot of people out there that swear by them, but I can't find a reason to justify their cost, and the reduced capacity of the electrical system if its properlly set up. I put them in the same catagory as split fire spark plugs, I could never figure out why some one would spend $100 on a set of plugs thinking that would fix their boat, but wouldn't pay a profesional mechanic to actually find the problem. I've seen plenty of people that would put $300 worth of batteries in their boat, buut would pay me $100 to replace the crappy battery cables they hooked them up to

[bigshrimpin]

I was so proud of myself for finding a deal on surplus UPS AGM batteries this spring. I got 4 super deluxe Northstar NSB100FT(list price was $468 each) brand new never used for $40 each gov. surplus from Big Hog batteries. I thought I was so smart :)

http://www.wellcraftv20.com/communit...=AGM+batteries