A bit of a scare this weekend

Gofirstclass

Gofirstclass

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,698
Tri Cities, WA
Boat Info
Boatless in WA
Engines
No motor
We had a bit of a scare this weekend and I thought I'd share it in case it happens to anyone else.


We had just pulled into the lock at Ice Harbor Dam on the Snake River and had gotten secured to the bollard. I was on the fly bridge and my wife was on the walkway on the stbd side of the boat.

She yelled up to me that she smelled something very hot. I hot footed (OK, bad pun there, sorry!) it down and could smell it also. I opened the hatch to the engine room and was greeted with a bit of smoke and a strong smell of smoke, and a whirring sound I'd never heard before.

I went down into the engine room and discovered the smell and whirring sound were from the starter motor on the stbd engine. I quickly shut off all battery switches on the main panel (port, stbd and genset/house batts) and the noise from the starter motor stopped.

I left the hatch open so the smoke could dissipate and went back down into the engine room. The starter motor was hot to the touch. Not so hot that I couldn't momentarily touch it, but I would not have wanted to hold my hand there.

I turned the switches for the port and genset/house batts back on and restarted the port engine. After a few minutes I turned on the stbd batt switch and the starter motor started spinning again so I shut it right back off. We were able to make it out of the lock and back to the slip running just on the port engine.

I went down to the boat this morning and tried the battery switch again and the starter motor spun up again, so I turned the switch back off.

Next stop was my mechanic. I explained what happened to him and turned it over to his capable hands.

I don't know if that could have started an engine room fire or not. It was not THAT hot when I checked it, but who knows what might have happened had we not been stopped inside the lock. Had we been cruising and had the runaway starter motor we probably would not have smelled it and been able to turn it off in time before it self destructed.

Neptune was smiling on us yesterday!
 
Interesting.... Not something I've heard of before or even considered. But hats off to tou guys for the quick thinking and working as a team to avoid a potentiallly more serious incident.
 
I have heard instances where a wiring issue at the starter caused the solenoid to engage therefore causing the starter to constantly run. I would suspect if it ran long enough there could be an issue.
 
Thanks for posting. Nice teamwork. And it is great that a story of a mechanical problem ends with "Neptune was smiling on us yesterday!"
 
i have heard of it happening before on cars back in my racing years. not sure if it would cause a fire or not but this is usually caused by a bad solenoid or a stuck ignition switch
 
Something similar happened to one of my cars - solenoid was stuck open and kept the starter motor on. It ended up burning out the starter motor. Ironically I was in the scrutineering lane before heading out on the track. Was dangerous though as I pushed the clutch in and turned the motor off - let the clutch out thinking the motor had stopped and the starter inched the car forward nearly in the back of the car in front of me until I realised what was going on.
 
Last edited:
NorCal Boater said:
Interesting.... Not something I've heard of before or even considered. But hats off to tou guys for the quick thinking and working as a team to avoid a potentiallly more serious incident.
Click to expand...
NC, I'd heard of a runaway starter motor but never really thought much about it. GW did a great job of recognizing the smell of a hot motor and letting me know about it quickly. When I opened the hatches to the engine room and the smoke started coming out that freaked her out. She told me later she thought we were going to be on fire right there inside the lock. It took awhile to calm her down after we got back in the slip. Almost as long as it took me to calm down.

In all honesty, I don't know what made me think to turn off the battery switches. Never having encountered that situation before, and not being much of a mechanic, I'm surprised I thought of it.
 
Turning the battery switch off was a smart move.
I'm sure the mechanic will take a look at it, but make sure you look at the battery cable and other wires going to the starter to make sure they are ok. They may have sustained some damage, and if so, they will give you problems down the road.
 
Very happy to hear that everything worked out well. Great lesson to others on what to do when something goes bad in the DC system. My friend had his bow thruster stick on while in the marina and his brother turned off the breaker to kill it. A 480 Motor Yacht in a marina trying to go in circles!
 
Good catch ...

I've seen this happen on a number of different types of engines with some nasty endings - damaged ring gears or fried wiring harnesses.

An excellent example of why one should keep the access path to the battery disconnects clear and quickly accessible and fire extinguishers or engine room halon fully operational.

A fire in a "lock" can ruin your whole day!!

Larry
 
Wow - well done to both of you.

The starter motor pinion throws itself out under centrifugal force to allow the cog to engage, there is usually a spring that pushes it back also once the engine gets up to speed and you let go of the starter power.

Your fail seems like electrical, but I once had a car fail that way (long ago like in Fred flintstone times) and the pinion teeth had worn so much that the starter motor could not disengage even when I took power off the starter, they effectively were meshing mechanically. Be interested to hear the outcome of this.

Btw GFC - the admiral and I took a drive last week from our home in Vancouver BC down to our SoCal winter home to get it ready for the season. We usually drive the coastal and I5 route but decided this time to drive the 90,82,84 etc. down through tri cities, Idaho (we stayed at twin falls) Nevada,Vegas and across to cal.

You live in a great part of the world. We took some great pictures of the lock system (on admirals camera and I am now back at the grindstone so cannot share yet). Pretty amazing inland waterway system there - my first trip through that part of the world so a lot of great sights, and I loved the drive - compared to two days on the I5 it was a total breeze. Mohave desert is stunning - who knew :grin:
 
Last edited:
Could be a variety of things - faulty solenoid, bad starter (pinion gear), ignition switch, or a flywheel issue. Your mechanic will sort it out easily I'm sure. I'm glad nothing major happened.
 
SeaAyeOwe, This is a pretty decent place to live. We certainly don't have the boating destination options you enjoy, but it's almost always sunny and warm, and that makes up for some of the lack of destinations. I wish I'd have known you were coming, we'd have taken you out for lunch. Enjoy the rest of your trip.

As far as the boat problem is concerned, I went back to the boat yesterday to bring some stuff home. I turned on that stbd batt switch and the starter motor kicked into high gear again, so I just shut it back off.

I sat down with our mechanic yesterday (http://columbiamarinecenter.com/) and explained what happened. We probably won't be on the boat again until late October so he has a month to take care of it for me. He's a good mechanic, been in the biz for many years and, over the couple of years he's been taking care of my boat we've become more friends than just a biz relationship.

I usually give him a lot of time to get things done for me. Right now his biz is up to its eyeballs doing winterizations. By me not wanting this fixed right away, he can take care of the winterizing and get to mine later.
 
Knot, I'm not sure that a camera would have shown anything except maybe a bit of the smoke. There wasn't a lot of smoke there, even when I opened the hatch to the engine room.

The second part of you post has me stymied. What does being retired have to do with it? Just curious.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Forum statistics

Threads
113,247
Messages
1,429,195
Members
61,124
Latest member
hamcfeather
Back
Top