DVILLANDRE
Member
Was wondering why my choke solenoid is extremely hot after running a few minutes since my generator will only run when the preheat button is held then turns off when the button is released.
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I'd not worry about a fuel or carb issue other than the choke function I described above. If the engine runs with preheat on, which bypasses the shutdowns, then you have fuel. You need to diagnose the electrics in the shutdown system. It's pretty simple. You might also want to add to your tests a jumper between #4 and #5 on the terminal block to the remote panel. If it runs with the jumper, you have a bad remote panel RUN switch or a problem in the wiring loom. But before you do more replacing, test.
Seriously. These checks won't even take a half hour and you really don't need even a DVM to do the minimal ones I've outlined here and yesterday.
The difference is that I'm not ready to go there yet (of course the owner can do whatever he wants). Unless you want to guess and throw parts at it....you have to go thru the steps and stop jumping around. If you read through the thread it also ran for 10 minutes without a problem so I want to be sure that we don't miss something in going through the diagnostics. I have seen both Westerbeke and Quicksilvers run with the pre heat switch depressed and it was a fuel system problem. The choke can temporarily overcome a fuel related issue. I just want to be sure that he walks through the steps so that we don't get to the end and realize that we missed the real problem. I believe he also has bypassed the safetys already and still had the same problem.
I agree with you it definitely sounds like a broken wire or bad connector but those are much harder to find since it runs intermittently. It is always a lot easier when they don't start at all. For example, not seeing 12 volts at the coil means you start tracing that wire back to the control board and check the wire end to end. That's what you have to do to solve it.
90% of the time, people ask for help and they get a shotgun of answers from boaters reflecting their own experience. Nothing wrong with that unless you are on the receiving end of all the ideas. If you are, it is really easy to get frustrated and not solve the problem. I'm just walking him through what I would do after working on dozens of these things. It is just a lot harder to solve these problems when you can't put your hands on the generator.