[konaya]

Author Clark Beard is a senior technical service advisor for CDI Electronics and also serves on the advisory board of AMTECH.

[Markjupiter]

The timing wheel cover is a machinery guard. Use care and caution when working on a running engine. MASTERTECH MARINE, CDI Electronics and their respective employees cannot be held responsible for any injuries or damage resulting from the use of, or application of the following data. Please read the final paragraph below.

[shadowdust]

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[doublec]

Please review our Warranty, Returns & Refunds policies before you place an order.

[preventhrtattack1]

Note:
The readings should rapidly increase as the engine RPM increases and stabilize below 400 volts (voltage exceeding 400 V DVA indicates a bad pack). A sharp drop in voltage right before the miss becomes apparent usually indicates a bad stator charge coil. [links]

[SmokeTooMuch]

If all the tests so far show good readings, check the DVA output from the power pack on the primary coil wires as follows: here

[Yort]

Just to straiten a few things out. Neither of those tests work with a digital meter. The forward voltage drop of a diode is significantly higher than the resistance test voltage of a digital meter. It only works with analog meters, since they use a much higher voltage to test resistance on non-VTVM meters. Since the higer voltage leads to errors in testing, it is not used with Digital Meters or VTVM's.<br />In order to allow you to test diodes, digital meters all have the 'Diode Test' function. It may be the 'pointy thing pointing at a line' setting on your meter. Like this <br />->|-<br /><br />Use it instead of the resistance setting. It tests the voltage drop of the diode with an (appx) 2 volt, current limited test voltage. Good working diodes will usually test between .4v and .7v on this setting when forward biased (read 'in one direction') and overrange when reverse biased. (read 'in the other.')<br />Diodes fail in two ways - open or shorted. If it's open the meter will display overrange in both directions. If it's shorted, it will display something very low, like .003, in both directions. Failing shorted is far more common than failing open - ie, the diode melts down, turns into a conductor and so stops heating, since it now has negligable voltage drop. It sounds to me like this is what is wrong with yours.<br />Good luck!

[hannahsmith]

Re: Evinrude rectifier testing.. [links]

[Dark Shikari]

Re: Evinrude rectifier testing..

[becauseIfuckingCANbitchz]

Using the K.I.S.S. method with a $8.95 volt/ohm meter, the following would tell the tale.<br /><br />Remove the rectifier wires from the terminal block. Using a ohm meter, connect the black lead of the ohm meter to the rectifier base (ground), then one by one, connect the red lead of the ohm meter to the yellow, yellow/gray, then the red wire (some rectifiers may also have a yellow/blue wire. If so connect to that also). Now, reverse the ohm meter leads and check those same wires again. You should get a reading in one direction, and none at all in the other direction. <br /><br />Now, connect the black lead of the ohm meter to the red wire. One by one, connect the red lead of the ohm meter to the yellow, yellow/gray, and if present, the yellow/blue wire. Then reverse the leads, checking the wires again. Once more, you should get a reading in one direction and none in the other. <br /><br />Note that the reading obtained from the red rectifier wire will be lower then what is obtained from the other wires. <br /><br />Any deviation from the "Reading", "No Reading" as above indicates a faulty rectifier. more

[hendi]

A faulty rectifier wouldn't damage the tachometer, the tachometer simply wouldn't work. This is due to the fact that the tachometer operates off of the charging system and the rectifier converts AC voltage to DC voltage, enabling the charging system. A faulty rectifier disables the charging system, and the tachometer simply doesn't register. [links]

[ircicq]

Disable your ignition, put a voltmeter on your battery and crank the mtr over to run the battery down to about 12 volts. Don't do this all at one time to give your starter a rest. Then leave the volt meter on the battery and start the mtr up and run it long enough to see if your voltage goes up. If it does your charging system should be okay. Your posted numbers were to close together. The tach may be another matter. more

[markhudsn36]

You mentioned that you might have damaged the new one by hooking it up wrong. If the old one is still functioning, why don't you try hooking it back up and see if you get better reading and tach. If so, then the new one is damaged. more

[noles]

NOTE: For the later models that DO NOT incorporate a wiring terminal strip, splicing into the "Yellow Wire" mentioned will be necessary. [links]

[marcusaurelius]

Hi wifisher, thanks for the reply. The voltages I have read are varied. With the motor off I read 13.11V, 13.38V, 13.43V, 13.57V. With motor on I read 13.10V, 13.08V, 13.28V, 13.38V, 14.51V, 13.33V, 13.36V, 13.29V. These readings were with just the motor cables connected to the batteries, no accessories running at all. How does this sound to you?

[hamiltontak]

I suspect a bad contact in the remote since the first start of the day is always tough, jiggling the throttle back and forth until the ignition connection is finally made (for some reason all future starts after it's warm are easy). [links]

[r4king]

The tachometer worked really well for about 3 hours on the water that first night and then *almost* all day (7 hours) the next day with numerous starts between drifting, starting (starts in an instant after carbs have fuel) again to get to new spot with intermittent episodes of running it 3200 to 4000 . As we were pulling in to the marina I noticed the tach had flatlined at 1200. I took it out yesterday and the tach still never responded and sat at 1200 just like the night before but there was still enough juice for multiple starts even when a few other issues started to come up. more

[jesmurf]

Anyway, I'm going to jump to the wild conclusion that I have a bad rectifier due to the fact that when I connected the send wire to to adjacent yellow wire to on the engine terminal block the tach response was instantaneous (after reconnecting the battery and hitting the ignition with a quick flick). I have an in-dash voltmeter and voltage reading on my fishfinder and neither one shows the voltage increase with increased RPMs, although I think it has dropped from 12.4v to 12.1v (maybe more?) over the course of a couple of days with many hits of the trim and some time running the bilge and radio and one harder start at the launch after I forgot to prime it. Before this weekend I had always dropped it on the charger the night before to make sure I always started with a fresh battery. I also don't recall if the voltage would climb at acceleration before getting the tach working. more

[bitcoin2paysafe]

Also, it idles way too high: 1200 in neutral and 900-1100 in gear (in the water) so I think the extreme drop in rpms when backing off the throttle is likely more a symptom of the timing so hopefully a sych and link will fix it. [links]

[swinewine]

I had been troubleshooting tach problems with this motor from day one but I didn't see any posts addressing a bad rectifier until I finally stumbled across one a month into my efforts. It seemed like posts to my question were met with exactly the same answer - bad tach or it's wired wrong, set to 6p, etc. To be fair, often this settled the post even though I knew mine was wired correctly and already replaced the tach.