Should I be worried?

[cutwater]

Yesterday afternoon I was out for a run on the lake. While at around 3500 rpms, I pushed the "Bow Down" switch for the starboard tab. After about 5 seconds nothing had changed so I held it for about 10 more seconds (usually, by that amount of time the boat would be standing on its side!). Then tried the port tab, same thing. About 5 seconds later I lost all power, the engine quit. Turned key, gauges did not come up.

Then I noticed the Ign. Sw. fuse had tripped. Popped it back in, engine missed first turn over then fired right up. After that, tabs worked as well. Return home everything ran fine.

I'm guessing the tabs are on the same circuit as the ignition switch, and maybe I had a momentary short in the tabs which popped the fuse and caused me to lose spark? Any other thoughts? What could I have damaged during the hard shut-down that I should check?

[BlownCrewCab]

What kind of tabs? Bennett? In the past (say around 1990) their system if you pushed 1 tab up & 1 tab down at the same time it would blow the fuse every time, where you doing this? somehow it created a dead short, if the fuse in your tab system is large enough it could cause a big enough load on the whole system to Pop the breaker.

[cutwater]

Yes Bennett.

No, I wasn't pushing one up, one down, but maybe the port switch got stuck in the up position or something. About 30 seconds prior I had brought both tabs all the way up, so it's feasible. This boat was rigged in 1989, so I could possibly be seeing the problem you described. Good grief, that's appalling to me as an electrical engineer. What a fundamental design flaw!

[VetteLT193]

verify if the tabs are on the same circuit as the ignition. I can't remember if I have to have the key on in my boat to get the tabs to move or not but I'm thinking that I don't have to have the key on.

It could have been a problem anywhere in the wiring, have you gone through to make sure nothing is pinched, crossing, etc.? I had a bad wire going to the ignition on mine, power would intermittently come up but it would kill as soon as I tried to fire the engine. I had a bad ground.

The factory wiring on my boat was pretty crappy, I'll finish re-wiring everything when I get it back from paint. :nilly:

Good luck, I'm sure you know more about wiring than any of the rest of us do so I'm sure you will find the problem :yes:

[DonziJon]

The Bennett Tabs on my '86 Minx work without the ignition switch being on. One thing I have always been aware of is that once the tabs are fully retracted, and you continue to hold the rocker switch down, the trim pump will continue to run as long as you hold the button down. There is no auto cut off. For this reason I installed Bennett "Trimdicators" after my first season with the boat so I would Know where each tab was. The indicators I got 12 years ago show tab angles from Zero to 20 degrees depression in one degree increments with an LCD digital readout as well as LED indicator lights.

Maybe your pump circuit overheated and tripped the breaker. John

[cutwater]

Good luck, I'm sure you know more about wiring than any of the rest of us do so I'm sure you will find the problem :yes:

Haha - actually I design integrated circuits... stuff you can barely see with the naked eye. That doesn't mean I'm an expert regarding anything practical :wink: Actually, electrical engineers get a bad rap for not having much practical knowledge, but most of the guys I work with fix their own cars, boats, etc.

[cutwater]

Thanks for the advice guys, I'll go through the boat more carefully when I have some time. I was in a hurry to get off the water Sunday, so I want to make sure I didn't miss anything.

[Donzi Vol]

Haha - actually I design integrated circuits... stuff you can barely see with the naked eye. That doesn't mean I'm an expert regarding anything practical :wink: Actually, electrical engineers get a bad rap for not having much practical knowledge, but most of the guys I work with fix their own cars, boats, etc.

cutwater, I thought you just played with calculators all day :wink:

[gcarter]

The stock breakers are doo-doo. They are a really terrible design and not even water resistant.
On the Minx, I had the tabs fused and weren't even on the breakers. Neither are yours unless they've been changed.
Do yourself a favor and use some real waterfroof breakers someday. I knew someone who made a small auxiliarry panel located under the dash that contained the "real" breakers and left the original bad ones in place on the dash.

[cutwater]

Thanks George. Believe it or not that was the first thing that popped in my head when I saw that it had tripped. I always remember your post from a along time ago about how bad the factory setup was on your Minx. I have thought about rewiring but I'll probably leave that for a winter project. We've got another month of good boating left here on Ft. Loudon.

DonziVol - Sometimes I feel that way!!